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Just about every video game, young adult novel and buzz-worthy streaming series agree that we need to prepare for a post-apocalyptic world. Up ahead, around a sharp curve or off a cliff, it is waiting – The Apocalypse.
Maybe not “the complete, final destruction of the world,” but certainly “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” to quote the two definitions in the Oxford Online Dictionary. Not yet, but soon.
This has me wondering: How will we know when we move from pre- to post-apocalypse? This summer, my hometown in southern Oregon was crushed under a heat dome, sweltering in triple-digit temperatures. A fire across the state line ignited, and within 24 hours exploded to become California’s largest wildfire this year so far.
The two mountain lakes that provide water to our valley orchards and vineyards are at 2% and 6% full, that is, 98% and 94% empty. Last year, an even more severe heat dome pushed temperatures in normally cool Seattle and Portland to record-shattering levels, wildfires burned more than a million acres in Oregon, and 2,000-year-old giant sequoias perished in fires of unprecedented severity in California’s Sierra Nevada.
Catastrophic extremes are becoming normal. The Great Salt Lake is at the lowest level ever recorded, spawning toxic dust storms. A mega-drought has shriveled the Colorado River, with the beginning of major cutbacks in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Elsewhere in the West, flooding devastated Yellowstone National Park in June, collapsing roads and leading to the evacuation of more than 10,000 visitors.
Widening our view, Dallas is currently inundated with what is described as a “1,000-year” flooding event, following similar flooding disasters in Las Vegas, St. Louis and Kentucky earlier this summer. Across the Atlantic, Europe was scorched by the highest temperatures ever recorded this summer, triggering massive wildfires, the collapse of a glacier in Italy and more than 10,000 heat-related deaths. India, China and Japan experienced record heat waves this year.
I could go on, but no doubt you have read the news, too, about climate-caused apocalyptic events. Closely related is the global extinction crisis, with more than a million species at risk by the end of this century. Bird populations in the United States have collapsed by one-third in the past 50 years, and the world’s most diverse ecosystems, including tropical rainforests and coral reefs, could largely disappear in coming decades.
Let’s also not forget the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed at least 6.46 million people worldwide and sickened 597 million. That pandemic shows no sign of ending as the virus continues to evolve new variants. Meanwhile, the new global health emergency of monkeypox has been declared. And polio, once eliminated in this country, is back, thanks to people who aren’t vaccinated.
What about America’s social fabric? According to a poll taken this summer by the New York Times, a majority of Americans surveyed now believe that our political system is too divided to solve the nation’s problems. The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive has documented 429 mass shootings so far this year in America, with “mass shootings” defined as at least four people killed or injured.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a rapid and stark division of the country into states that permit abortions versus those that outlaw it. Republicans and Democrats increasingly live in separate media universes, with both sides concerned about the possibility of a civil war.
I admit this is a staggering list of “damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale,” but I’m not ready to declare myself a citizen of the post-apocalypse. We don’t have to live there. Instead, let’s accept that humanity and the whole planet are “apocalypse-adjacent.” The apocalypse is before us, and we can see it clearly. But the world is not yet ruined.
Human beings do have this redeeming and also infuriating trait: We are at our most creative and cooperative when it is almost too late. We can – we must – pull each other back from the brink. To fail is to condemn our children to live in the hellscape of a dystopian video game. As they will tell you, that is no place to be.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a naturalist and writer in Ashland, Oregon. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/opinion/guest_column/pepper-trail-coming-soon-the-apocalypse-maybe/article_9306575e-2894-11ed-8aa8-23d76421b88e.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:04Z |
On Sept. 6, the State Loan and Investment Board will decide whether to approve opening three charter schools in the state. For multiple reasons, they should table this decision until a new, elected superintendent of public instruction takes office in January.
There is no urgency to this decision, for one thing. There are no districts in the state clamoring for the SLIB to place a charter school in their neighborhood. Until July 1 of this year, only local school boards could approve charter school applications. Legislation promoted by the current appointed superintendent of public instruction changed that and permitted a state agency with no expertise in education to also authorize charter schools.
The Office of State Lands and Investments manages state lands for maximum return with the proceeds going into education. The agency is staffed with professionals with expertise in surface leasing, mineral leasing, royalty compliance, land transactions and lease bonding. It is not staffed to make decisions about appropriate educational models, but that is what the related SLIB is about to do.
Like both Florida and Tennessee, Wyoming has essentially converted a state agency to override decisions made by local school boards. The state superintendent of public instruction is one of five SLIB members who will make this decision (the others are the governor, secretary of state, state treasurer and state auditor). The decision can wait until an elected superintendent has been sworn in; Wyoming should not be saddled with the agenda of an appointed official who lost his own party’s primary.
This is especially true of our appointed superintendent, who tried to turn our schools into a culture war battleground and was soundly rejected in the primary by members of his own party, which is the second reason to table this decision. The current superintendent has consistently derided public education, referring to schools as “some of the most toxic places on earth for a kid to have to endure.”
While serious educators were wrestling with long-term funding issues, improving normed student test scores and teacher shortages, the appointed superintendent was trying to provoke fear with contrived concerns about teaching critical race theory, sexualizing kindergarteners or kids turning trans to “stick it to mom.”
Our teachers are not teaching students to loathe America. They are wrestling with how to keep them off their phones. The proposed charter schools are a product of this false picture of education in Wyoming, which should surely give the SLIB pause before proceeding.
A third reason for SLIB to table action on approving three charter schools focuses on Hillsdale College, the school that developed the canned curriculum being proposed. Hillsdale College’s president openly disparages public schools and public-school teachers, referring to education departments as “the dumbest part of every college.” In a recent speech at Hillsdale titled “Laying Siege to the Institutions,” Chris Rufo said to great applause “… to get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public-school distrust.”
“You really need to operate from a premise of universal public-school distrust.” Do we seriously want to bring the Classical Academy charter schools into Wyoming, knowing their premise is that public education is the enemy, and their purpose is to run their schools using our tax dollars? That’s a problem for me, as it was for several charter schools in Tennessee, which canceled their contracts with Hillsdale because of its aggressive anti-public-school stance and its doctrinaire curriculum.
It isn’t only Hillsdale. There is a charter school cottage industry, with advocates like our state superintendent who rain distrust down on local school boards. Target teachers as groomers or the dumbest part of every college. Contrive a parent-against-educator narrative. Deceive people about what is really happening in our school districts. Lay siege, even. Wyoming does not have to participate in that nonsense.
A fourth, but not final, reason to postpone approving any Classical Academy charter schools is that school boards are cautious to approve charter schools for good reasons. To be responsible stewards of the educational responsibility they have accepted, the SLIB should be equally cautious. States that have imprudently used tax dollars to fund charter schools are finding bad educational outcomes due to financial mismanagement, substandard curriculum, unqualified staff and, especially, a lack of appropriate monitoring.
Fairness, rejection of efforts to use our students in a contrived culture war, scrutiny of a partner who is openly hostile to public education and learning more about how similar charter schools have failed are just a few reasons the State Loan and Investment Board should postpone considering new charters until the elected superintendent has been sworn in.
Dave Throgmorton, Ph.D., graduated from Wyoming public schools K-UW. Casper College was life changing. He enjoyed a career as professor, academic dean and academic VP at liberal arts and community colleges, and recently retired as director of a BOCHES in Carbon County.
Dave Throgmorton, Ph.D., graduated from Wyoming public schools K-UW. Casper College was life changing. He enjoyed a career as professor, academic dean and academic VP at liberal arts and community colleges, and recently retired as director of a BOCHES in Carbon County. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/opinion/guest_column/throgmorton-slib-should-delay-charter-school-decisions-until-january/article_7002d1fe-27e2-11ed-a0fc-6ffe920f5f77.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:10Z |
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JACKSON — An attorney representing abortion foes looking to uphold Wyoming’s ban said restricting access to abortion protects women’s health.
“The harms to women from abortion are well-documented,” said Denise Harle, the senior counsel and director of the Center for Life at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group.
“Everything from physical harms from hemorrhaging, sepsis infection, death to psychological harms,” Harle said. “There’s a wealth of research showing women after abortions have increased risks of suicide, PTSD, eating disorders and depression.”
However, a Jackson OB-GYN who is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the ban, said the health risks of a full-term pregnancy are greater than those associated with abortions, particularly those performed early in a pregnancy.
The state’s ban is on hold.
Ninth District Court Judge Melissa Owens decided earlier this month that it potentially “transgresses” the state Constitution, meriting a halt on its enforcement until the lawsuit challenging the ban can be decided.
Harle, alongside Cheyenne attorney Frederick Harrison, represents two individuals and an organization that want to intervene in the case: state Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody; state Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, and Right to Life of Wyoming.
Speaking from Georgia, where the Alliance is based, Harle (pronounced Har-ley) discussed the arguments against access to abortion the intervenors plan to make.
Of the resources Harle cited about how abortions harm women was a 2011 PubMed study that measured the association between abortion and indicators of adverse mental health from 1995-2009 and a Charlotte Lozier Institute report on the reality of late-term abortions.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute’s goal, according to the organization’s website, is to “promote deeper public understanding of the value of human life, motherhood, and fatherhood, and to identify policies and practices that will protect life.”
OB-GYN Dr. Giovannina Anthony, who is fighting the criminal ban in court, agreed with the Lozier Institute finding but stated that late-term abortions constitute the minority of procedures and pale in comparison with the risks associated with a full-term pregnancy.
“Almost 90% of abortions in 2020 were before 12 weeks,” Dr. Anthony said. “I agree that abortions performed after 15 weeks have more risk, as she mentions, but this is still a fraction of the risk of the exact same complications that occur with a full-term pregnancy.
“Ironically, by making abortion illegal or difficult to access, this will force women to delay, travel and drive up the second-trimester abortion rate when those women could have had a safer first-trimester abortion.”
In 2020, the risk of death with a full-term pregnancy in the U.S. was 23.8 per 100,000, Dr. Anthony said.
“The risk of dying from a full-term pregnancy is thousands of percentage points higher than dying from abortion at 18 weeks, and even higher compared to first-trimester pregnancy,” Dr. Anthony said. “If we use this logic, every pregnant woman should be informed that abortion is safer and almost 20 times less likely to kill her than a full-term pregnancy.”
Regarding the potentially unconstitutional vagueness of the current language in the law advising on what constitutes a medical emergency, Harle said the defense plans to submit “expert affidavits” from OB-GYNs to show that women are “completely safe” in emergency circumstances when using “basic, reasonable medical judgment.”
“With a medical emergency, every state law allows for treatment when the life of the mother is at risk,” Harle said. “If a doctor can save the life of a mother and that requires terminating the pregnancy, that’s permissible.”
“It’s frustrating to hear pro-abortion doctors acting like they don’t know the difference between an abortion and what’s not an abortion,” she continued. “They’re inserting chaos and causing fear in women by pretending they don’t know the difference.”
Anthony, who has spent three decades caring for pregnant women, responded to Harle’s comment in an email, saying: “That anyone would suggest that after 30 years of obstetrics and gynecology care I or any of my colleagues would ‘pretend’ to not know what an abortion is defies all logic and common sense.
“Take away my ability to provide safe and evidence-based obstetric and gynecologic care, as she is doing, and the chaos and fear that will ensue (and is ensuing) will endanger every reproductive-age woman in this country.”
When asked how the statute doesn’t mention lethal fetal abnormalities, Harle said fetal deaths that have already occurred in the womb, such as miscarriages, are not considered an abortion, but did not directly address fetal abnormalities.
“If you look at the basic definition of abortion it’s the ‘intentional, elective ending of human life in womb,’ ” Harle said. “That’s not the same as treating a miscarriage, and any OB-GYN would know the difference between performing an abortion to end a baby’s life versus a miscarriage where the baby has already died.”
“Every child deserves to be born even if they may face different circumstances,” Harle said. “Abortion has the effect of killing a child every single time and harming the mom. No one should be killed because they may be poor.”
When asked about the recent cuts to maternity care in rural Wyoming communities such as Kemmerer, Rawlins and Riverton, where clinics have been closed due to staffing difficulties and budget cuts, Harle mentioned the work that Rep. Rodriguez-Williams is doing and stressed the need for more programs that support mothers.
“I have no idea what’s going on in terms of the economy, employment issues, but I definitely know that [Rodriguez-Williams] is the executive director of a pregnancy clinic, one of more than 3,000 pregnancy centers around the nation that provide free resources, counseling, support, ultrasounds, blankets, diapers, clothes, job training to women facing unplanned pregnancies in Wyoming.”
Rodriguez-Williams sponsored House Bill 92, Wyoming’s trigger law for abortion restrictions that was set to take effect in if the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which it did in June. Neiman was a co-sponsor.
On its website, the Serenity Pregnancy Resource Center lists itself as a Christ-centered ministry that “provides alternatives to abortion” while also offering “post abortion support.”
Neither Rep. Rodriguez-Williams nor Rep. Neiman responded to requests for comment.
“We would look forward to seeing laws passed that provide real support to women, actually empowering women,” Harle said. “Having to end her child’s life to find success is not supporting the woman.”
Harle was also asked how the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization that aligns itself with protecting religious freedom, responds to a Jewish plaintiff who has claimed that the ban infringes on her religious freedom because she has a different moral conception of when life begins.
“This would be a misunderstanding in terms of religious freedom,” Harle said. “This particular claim has been rejected time and time again.”
Harle cited unsuccessful attempts by the Satanic Temple, recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt church, to bring lawsuits arguing their church has a “Satanic Abortion Ritual” and that exempts its members from state restrictions. If someone says that their conscience would permit them to engage in something that the state has deemed a crime, this is not an effective legal argument, Harle said.
“Pro-life laws are not based on religion,” Harle said. “They are consistent with the Constitution, what laws permit and science, since science says from the moment of conception the baby has its own DNA, heartbeat in a matter of days, and organs are formed by eight to nine weeks.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom cited the Lozier Institute for these conclusions.
A remote scheduling conference is slated for 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 27. The hearing was scheduled to give both parties time to respond to both motions — the motion to certify the lawsuit challenging the ban to the Supreme Court and the motion to approve the three anti-abortion intervenors.
According to Alexandra Ralph, judicial assistant to 9th Judicial District Judge Melissa Owens, “nothing substantive will be discussed.”
“This conference is to set other hearings and deadlines,” Ralph said in an email. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/anti-abortion-lawyer-defends-state-ban-seeks-to-join-suit/article_9f94fdf2-27a1-11ed-a065-b38984ed1d60.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:22Z |
Andrew Kruger, from left, tightly holds a rope as Tanner West, JC Forgey and Dustin Clayburn wrestle a calf to the ground as they prepare to vaccinate and brand one of Alvie and Billie Ann Manning’s calves at their Carbon County ranch in 2020.
POWELL — At the start of the growing season, commodity prices suggested that farmers were going to be sitting pretty when the crops were harvested, but the increased cost of fuel, fertilizer, and labor have since dampened those earlier hopes.
“It’s not the banner year it could have been if those [production costs] had been back where they were historically,” said David Northrup, who grows beets, corn, barley, oats and hay in Park County.
Northrup said he had expected that the invasion of Ukraine, which exports a lot of corn and wheat, would have spelled big profits, but as inflation drove up prices, it drove those hopes down.
“Now it looks like we’re just going to have a regular year,” he said.
Ric Rodriguez, owner of Rodriguez Farms Inc., grows barley and beets on Heart
Mountain. He said the commodity prices will offset those increased costs of production, but they’re not to the finish line yet.
“The margins are pretty slim right now, and if you have any kind of a weather wreck or yield loss, your net income is going to be short,” he said.
As the season approached last spring, drought conditions were hanging heavy over much of the state, but toward the end of May and through the middle of June, the Big Horn Basin saw quite a bit of cool weather and regular moisture.
The moisture was needed, but it would have been more beneficial if it had come later on or earlier.
Corn and beans got planted later, which means a later harvest.
“That cold spring set things up for a different kind of year than we’re used to,” Northrup said. “Timing, timing, timing.”
Up on Heart Mountain, which typically gets more moisture than surrounding areas, the drought earlier in the year was so bad, Rodriguez said, that they had to start irrigation earlier than normal. He said it was the first time in 40 years that his farm had to water barley that early.
The cool, wet weather that came in May and June was ultimately good for the barley, he said, but not so good for the beets.
There was also some high-wind weather in late July, which Rodriguez said wasn’t good for the people growing grass seed.
“They lost some yield there because it just thrashed out the seed. I’ve never seen that happen,” he said.
Jeremiah Vardiman, agriculture and horticulture educator for the University of Wyoming Extension, said the weather this year has generally been good for pastures, which will benefit the ranchers.
“It was very good for forage production,” he said.
Weather can be fickle, and so what happens in one area may be different just 20 miles away. Northrup said he’s heard that the barley farmers in Burlington and up in Montana got moisture earlier than he did on his farm, so they’ll see some benefits from that.
How this year’s ag season turns out, Vardiman explained, depends on the final yields the farmers get, as well as how the weather goes this fall.
“Nobody knows exactly where they stand until everything is harvested and in the bank,” he said.
Rodriguez said he’s watching how his crops bulk up in the next few months. If things stay dry and warm, without being too hot, they’ll see a better margin.
“It depends on what Mother Nature does from now until the end,” he said.
Northrup is crossing his fingers that the area won’t get hit with an early frost, which can really slim up margins. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/as-harvest-approaches-farmers-become-weather-watchers/article_f91d07d4-27a1-11ed-ab33-4bda07e6f180.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:28Z |
When the 67th Wyoming Legislature convenes in January, more than one-third of the House of Representatives will be brand new. The Senate will have five new members, two of whom came from the House.
But the degree to which the new faces bring an ideological shift remains to be seen — in part because of contested House races in the November general election.
Challengers who ran anti-RINO — Republican in name only — campaigns defeated seven incumbents last week in the Republican primary.
Among the fallen incumbents is former Senate President Drew Perkins (R-Casper). Most high-profile legislative targets of the party’s right wing survived, however. Rep. Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale) and Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower), both of whom serve in leadership roles, retained their seats.
With Democrats absent from 10 of 16 Senate contests and 43 of 62 House races, the Republican primary determined much of the Legislature’s make-up. Several Libertarian candidates are expected to appear on ballots in November, and independent candidates have until Aug. 29 to file — both factors could influence the body’s make-up. Meantime, other critical races will come down to a more traditional contest between a Republican and a Democrat.
Three members of the House Freedom Caucus — a coalition formed in 2020 to challenge what it described as moderate GOP legislative leadership — gambled their House seats for a shot at the Senate. Only one was successful.
Rep. Dan Laursen (R-Powell) beat incumbent Sen. R.J. Kost (R-Powell) and Kost’s predecessor, Ray Peterson, for Senate District 19.
Reps. Bob Wharff (R-Evanston) and Bill Fortner (R-Gillette), meanwhile, fell short. Wharff failed to oust Sen. Wendy Schuler (R-Powell) from Senate District 15. Fortner was unable to dislodge Senate Majority Floor Leader Ogden Driskill from District 1.
About one-third of Wharff’s fundraising came from Dan and Carleen Brophy. The wealthy Jackson couple have developed a reputation for funding anti-establishment candidates in Wyoming. So far this cycle, the pair has spent more than $152,000, mostly on legislative candidates.
Out of 51 Brophy-backed legislative candidates, 21 lost their races, including incumbent Sen. Tom James (R-Green River) and Roger Connett, former chair of the Crook County GOP Party. Connett joined Fortner in challenging Driskill, who won the three-way race with about 40% of the vote.
The Brophys did not respond to WyoFile requests for comment.
As majority floor leader, Driskill is in line to be Senate president. The anonymous website wyorino.com labeled Driskill the June, 2022 “RINO of the month.”
Speaker of the House Eric Barlow (R-Gillette) was the only other state representative to win a seat in the upper chamber. Senate District 23 was an open seat after Sen. Jeff Wasserburger (R-Gillette) — July’s “RINO of the Month” — did not seek re-election. Barlow won handily against a write-in campaign by Patricia Junek.
The biggest upset in the Senate came in District 29. Challenger Bob Ide unseated Sen. Drew Perkins (R-Casper) by 302 votes. The race was the costliest legislative contest in the state’s history with about $115,000 in contributions between the two candidates, according to campaign finance reports.
Perkins has served in the Senate since 2007, including as president of the body from 2019-2020 and more recently as co-chair of the powerful Joint Appropriations Committee. During his long tenure, he played a key role in crafting important legislation, said Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander).
“That’s where Perkins was a star,” Case said. “He was always a builder. He could understand where legislation had to go, and the nuances.”
Case is less confident in Ide, who has not held public office before. Ide challenged Perkins before, in 2014, but lost that race by about 300 votes. Videos and photographs show Ide — who ran on a pro-freedom, small-government platform — in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, and close to the Capitol during the insurrection. Ide did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment.
Case, a 29-year veteran of the Wyoming Legislature, fended off his own primary election challenger, retired Colorado law enforcement officer Shawn Olmstead, with about 55% of the vote. Olmstead had the financial backing of the Brophys and was among the candidates invited to the all-day Save Wyoming rally in July.
The Fremont County GOP censured Case earlier this year for supporting Medicaid expansion, among other things.
“I stand tall, and the people in my district are going to decide whether I need to be thrown out or not,” Case said at the time. He won by about 480 votes.
Despite his victory, Case is concerned about the quality of legislation that will come out of this new Senate, he said. He’s also uncertain the body will get much done.
“I guarantee it’s harder. It’s harder when it’s this polarized,” Case said.
Concerns over quality and effectiveness have bubbled in recent years, especially as the success rate of committee bills has declined. In 2022, only 59% of introduced committee bills survived to become law — a 23-year low, according to the Legislative Service Office.
House incumbents who lost to anti-RINO challengers were concentrated in central Wyoming. Reps. Aaron Clausen (R-Douglas), Joe MacGuire (R-Casper) and Pat Sweeney (R-Casper) all lost their races for reelection, as did Reps. JD Williams (R-Lusk) and Shelly Duncan (R-Lingle).
Two open House seats in northeast Wyoming also went to candidates expected to bolster the ranks of the Freedom Caucus — Abby Angelos and Ken Pendergraft.
A whistleblowers’ list obtained by WyoFile identified Pendergraft as a member of the far-right anti-government Oath Keepers group.
Angelos campaigned closely with Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), a vocal member of the House Freedom Caucus, who ran unopposed this year. Bear did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, Reps. Sandy Newsome (R-Cody), Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne), Bob Nicholas (R-Cheyenne), John Eklund (R-Cheyenne) and Steve Harshman (R-Casper) all fended off Brophy-backed challengers.
Notably, so did Rep. Albert Sommers, who defeated Mike Schmid. As House majority floor leader, Sommers would traditionally be expected to become speaker of the house. But given some of the losses by moderates, that may not be a slam dunk, according to Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne).
“I think it’ll be probably the closest leadership votes we’ve ever had in my 20 years,” said Zwonitzer, who also fended off primary challengers after his party targeted him during the last session. His father and former lawmaker, Dave Zwonitzer, also won his primary bid for House District 8, which redistricting left open.
While the House Freedom Caucus did not come out of the primary with a resounding sweep, Zwonitzer said, the group appears to have gained at least two more seats. The caucus does not disclose its membership, but Zwonitzer and others estimate its members occupy 20 seats, nearly a third of the 62-member House. Should it pick up more seats in the general election, Zwonitzer said, the bloc could wield significant power, especially during budget sessions, like 2024, when bills require a two-thirds majority vote for introduction.
Because the Freedom Caucus operates behind the scenes, Zwonitzer said it is difficult to suss out aligned candidates. Plus, candidates that run anti-RINO campaigns sometimes come to different realizations in Cheyenne, Zwonitzer said.
“When they really get to see what we’re like and [that] it’s not super, liberal RINO-ville, and that things are pretty conservative here … a number of new legislators realize that it’s not as bad as it was made out to be believed every term,” Zwonitzer said.
A handful of general-election contests will determine the final composition of the 67th Wyoming Legislature and with it the balance of power between traditional establishment Wyoming Republicans and the anti-establishment new wave.
In Albany County, Rep. Trey Sherwood (D-Laramie) will face Republican Bryan Shuster for House District 14. Recently considered one of the safest Democratic seats in the Legislature, HD 14 has been redistricted to include the small town of Rock River, making it more competitive.
Former Democratic lawmaker Sara Burlingame is running for her old seat, House District 44, in Cheyenne against Republican Tamara Trujillo. Trujillo defeated Burlingame’s successor John Romero-Martinez in the primary. Legislative leadership had investigated Romero-Martinez for making death threats against Burlingame and Rep. Andi LeBeau (D-Riverton).
LeBeau, whose district encompasses the Wind River Indian Reservation, will face Sarah Penn, who beat two other Republicans in the primary.
The Senate was already further to the right than the House, according to Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson).
“And they’ve gotten even more further to the right than they were before. So I think there’s a higher risk in the Senate than there is in the House for crazy power dynamics,” Yin said.
Despite what he sees as a shift to the right, Yin said he thinks there are still plenty of Republican lawmakers that have “shared goals” with Democrats, such as education, keeping young people in Wyoming and lowering healthcare costs.
“What that looks like moving forward I think is going to involve a long discussion with a lot of people and will depend for sure on how these general elections turnout,” Yin said.
The general election is Nov. 8. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/balance-of-political-power-on-the-line/article_21516496-279f-11ed-9f7a-83c186168812.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:35Z |
The owner of the Elk Mountain Ranch broke federal law by blocking four hunters’ access to public land and by harassing and intimidating them, the hunters’ attorney alleges in new court papers.
The filing in a civil case in U.S. District Court by attorney Ryan Semerad marks the first time the four Missouri hunters have explicitly charged the ranch owner with violating U.S. statute. In court action to date, including at a criminal trial in Rawlins where the four men were found not guilty of criminal trespass, attorneys only suggested that the ranch owner violated the Unlawful Inclosures Act of 1885.
“We have relied on this [UIA] argument to make other arguments throughout this [civil] case and the criminal case,” Semerad wrote in an email, “but this is the first time we have made this argument/defense directly.”
A court ruling on the matter could have implications for a decades-old BLM interpretation that prohibits corner-crossing.
Corner crossing involves stepping from one piece of public land to another at the four-corner intersection with two pieces of private land. The four hunters crossed at such corners, without setting foot on the Elk Mountain Ranch, where public U.S. Bureau of Land Management property and private lands lie in a checkerboard pattern in Carbon County.
It is uncertain whether the allegation might trigger a federal investigation or other action against the official ranch owner Iron Bar Holdings, LLC, the company’s wealthy North Carolina owner Fred Eshelman, ranch property manager Steve Grende or any other party.
Aside from the routine practice of not commenting on pending or ongoing investigations, U.S. Attorney Nick Vassallo’s office couldn’t immediately explain the investigative process and what or whose allegations it probes. Eshelman’s attorney, along with the BLM, also did not respond to inquiries.
In a July 29 filing, attorney Semerad defended his clients against Eshelman’s civil claim.
“Plaintiff [Iron Bar Holdings] is now violating and has, at all times relevant to its claims in the Complaint, violated existing federal law … by unlawfully enclosing public lands and/or by using force, threats, intimidation, and other unlawful means to prevent or obstruct Defendants, as members of the public, from peaceably entering upon, freely passing over or through, or freely traveling over or through the public lands,” the document reads.
With the UIA, Congress protected legal access to federal property, especially in the West, by restricting landowners’ actions and structures. How and whether the UIA applies in the civil case could have a bearing on public access to some 8.3 million acres in the West, 2.4 million acres in Wyoming alone.
That’s the amount of acreage considered by the digital mapping company onX to be “corner-locked” by any definition that corner crossing is illegal.
During their 2021 hunt, the four hunters found two T-posts chained together at one checkerboard corner. They used a stile — a fence ladder — to climb over the obstacle. They claimed they were harassed, intimidated and threatened by Grende while hunting on public BLM land they accessed by corner crossing near the ranch.
Iron Bar’s civil suit claims the hunters damaged Eshelman’s ranch, a property that extends across more than 20,000 acres on and around wildlife-rich Elk Mountain. The ranch’s checkerboard layout “corner-locks” hundreds of acres of public land.
Separately, the Carbon County attorney in 2021 charged the four hunters with criminal trespass, arguing in the trial that they violated the ranch’s airspace. A Rawlins jury in April found them not guilty of the misdemeanor charges but none of the six jurors explained their reasoning to reporters at the end of the circuit court trial.
Eshelman’s attorney Gregory Weisz filed Iron Bar’s separate civil suit in state court. But a federal judge moved that claim to his venue at the hunters’ request, agreeing that the issue involved federal statutes.
A section of the 1885 UIA titled “Obstruction of settlement on or transit over public lands” prohibits landowners from blocking “…any person from peaceably entering upon or establishing a settlement or residence on any tract of public land…” No person “shall prevent or obstruct free passage or transit over or through the public lands,” the UIA states.
But another clause appears to protect landowners, stating that the law “shall not be held to affect the right or title of persons, who have gone upon, improved, or occupied said lands under the land laws of the United States, claiming title thereto, in good faith.”
The federal law has teeth, if prosecutors choose to use them. Any “owner, part owner, or agent, or who shall aid, abet, counsel, advise, or assist in any violation” of the act who is found guilty can be fined up to $1,000, imprisoned for a year, or both.
From the BLM’s perspective, the UIA does not protect corner crossing as a means to access public land.
“There is no specific state or federal laws regarding corner crossings,” the agency states in a pamphlet that appears to have been updated in 2013. “Corner crossings in the checkerboard land pattern area or elsewhere are not considered legal public access.”
Courts could decide whether the BLM policy and the UIA are in conflict.
That pamphlet reflects a 1997 opinion by an Interior Department solicitor. In writing that, Lowell L. Madsen, assistant regional solicitor for the Rocky Mountain region, flatly stated that corner crossing was illegal because it cannot be done without violating private airspace.
“Under common law the one who owns the surface of the ground has the exclusive right to everything which is above it,” his opinion states. In Wyoming law, “[t]he ownership of the space above the lands and waters of this state is declared to be vested in the several owners of the surface beneath subject to the right of flight…” Madsen wrote.
The solicitor even addressed the possibility that a stile could preclude trespass if all four of its feet were on public land at a checkerboard corner.
“[T]he stile would invade the airspace of the owner of the cornering private lands [and] constitute a trespass,” his opinion reads.
That passage was prescient. The hunters — Phillip Yeomans, Bradly Cape, John Slowensky and Zachary Smith — used a portable stile to climb over an obstruction erected at the four-corner intersection in question.
In the hunters’ criminal trial in Rawlins, Semerad challenged the airspace argument, emphasizing that the Wyoming law states airspace ownership is vested “in the several owners” of the property below, including the public — owners of the federal BLM parcels.
The federal civil trial — as-yet unscheduled — may address the two metal T-posts driven into Elk Mountain property at the four-corner intersection. Photographs show the posts connected across the corner by a wire and chain. The two posts were connected to nothing else — no property-line fences — a photograph shows.
After the hunters left the area in 2021, the chain was removed, Elk Mountain Ranch property manager Grende testified at the Rawlins trial.
“It was removed because it had no purpose,” he said in court.
Courts have defined what constitutes an illegal enclosure, according to Madsen who quoted one ruling.
“[W]hen, under the guise of enclosing his own land, [a landowner] builds a fence which is useless for that purpose, and can only have been intended to enclose the land of the government, he is plainly within the (unlawful enclosures) statute, and is guilty of an unwarrantable appropriation of that which belongs to the public at large,” he wrote. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/corner-crossers-ranch-owner-broke-access-law/article_66b8d168-27a4-11ed-bfa8-93ecf6296cb0.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:41Z |
A federal judge in Montana issued a pair of decisions this month that threaten the future of federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin — where mining was already expected to continue a precipitous decline.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ordered the Bureau of Land Management to revise two resource management plans to more fully analyze the climate and human health implications of leasing federal coal, oil and natural gas in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.
The RMP revisions, administered by BLM field offices in Buffalo and in Miles City, Montana, are due by Aug. 3, 2023, according to the order.
The same federal judge, a President Barack Obama appointee, also issued a summary judgment this month to reinstate an Obama-era leasing moratorium for all federal coal reserves in the U.S. until the BLM revamps the program to make climate and public health among priority considerations in leasing decisions.
Taking into account coal’s contribution to planet-warming CO2 emissions, as well as its toll on public health, the decisions could curtail new coal leases or significantly cut back on the volume of coal offered for development in the Powder River Basin, according to a coalition of conservation groups.
“This is a significant victory for our climate and the communities across the country who are impacted by our continued reliance on this dirty and dangerous fuel [coal],” Earthjustice attorney Jenny Harbine said via a press release.
Wyoming intervened on behalf of the BLM in both cases. Gov. Mark Gordon criticized the moratorium ruling as “wrong-headed” and a “step backwards that doesn’t protect the environment and ensures consumers will pay more for energy.
“This decision is bad for Wyoming,” Gordon continued in a press statement. “It hurts our country’s ability to provide reliable, low-cost energy to Americans and hinders the abilities of companies to plan and invest in new technologies like carbon capture and utilization.”
The National Mining Association and other coal backers have promised to challenge the rulings.
A federal court ruling in 2018 instructed the BLM to include an analysis of climate implications when considering whether to lease more coal in the PRB. Judge Morris agreed the agency’s revision in response to the 2018 ruling gave only a cursory look and didn’t consider climate impacts as a reason to not lease. This month, Morris more explicitly ordered the BLM to consider a “no leasing” alternative.
The BLM must “consider no coal leasing and limited coal leasing alternatives and […] disclose the public health impacts, both climate and non-climate, of burning fossil fuels from the planning areas,” Morris wrote. “Coal mining represents a potentially allowable use of public lands, but BLM is not required to lease public lands.”
“That a federal judge ordered the [BLM] to consider a no-leasing alternative and disclose to the public how many people will be sickened and die as a result of the combustion of federal coal is groundbreaking,” Western Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Melissa Hornbein said in a press release. “The courts recognize the seriousness of the climate crisis and the impacts of fossil-fuel pollution. The BLM must now do likewise.”
The separate ruling that reinstates the coal-leasing moratorium adds another layer of assurance for a full analysis of climate and human health implications, according to Western Organization of Resource Councils and other groups, as well as an opportunity to update federal royalty rates and reclamation requirements.
Now, conservation groups want to press the federal government even further. Some want the Biden administration to “phase out” or buy back existing coal leases. “There is no room to continue producing coal in a climate emergency,” Earthjustice’s Harbine said.
“That’s troubling right there,” Wyoming Mining Association Executive Director Travis Deti said. “Every little effort to try to inhibit and stop [coal production], that’s tough and that’s troubling.”
Continued coal production and slowing the retirement of coal-fueled power plants are key to launching carbon capture and sequestration technologies, Deti said. Goals such as electrifying vehicles can’t happen without coal-based power and the opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions from those facilities, Deti said.
Regardless of whether the PRB coal industry continues to shrink due to the retirement of coal-burning power plants or if federal policies hasten the decline, Wyoming and its coal-reliant communities are in for an economic shock, according to some industry watchers. That’s not lost among conservationists who celebrate the potential demise of Wyoming coal.
“There isn’t a good answer or a ready replacement for Wyoming,” Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Director Connie Wilbert told WyoFile. But, she added, “if we don’t stop emitting carbon and methane pollution nothing else is going to matter. This is way bigger than the immediate hardship that we face here in Wyoming.”
Coal production in the Powder River Basin — the nation’s largest coal-supplying region — has declined 49% from 2008 to 2021, according to WyoFile’s analysis of U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration data. Even before Judge Morris’ rulings this month, the PRB mining industry may have already seen its last round of large federal coal leasing.
The most recent large federal coal leases sold in the basin went to Peabody Energy and Arch Coal (now Arch Resources) in 2012. Peabody paid $1.24 billion for the rights to mine 1.12 billion tons of coal to extend operations at its North Antelope Rochelle mine, according to the BLM. Arch paid more than $300 million for 222.67 million tons of federal coal for its flagship Black Thunder mine.
All told, some 2.5 billion tons of federal coal reserves were leased in the Powder River Basin under Obama prior to his administration issuing a coal leasing moratorium in 2016 to revamp the leasing program. But bad investments and shifting markets had already sent coal company finances into a nosedive, kicking off a series of coal company bankruptcies and mine layoffs in Wyoming.
Since 2016, PRB coal producers have withdrawn several federal lease applications, and some have even relinquished tracts of coal.
The basin’s second largest producer, Arch, for example, told investors last month it’s using its current cash windfall from PRB coal to close its operations in the state. The company, which has shifted its focus to mining coal in the eastern U.S. for steelmaking clients, intends to relinquish millions of tons of Powder River Basin coal already under federal lease.
Deti with the Mining Association pointed out that PRB coal producers are enjoying a surge in demand and pricing, and mine operators are in a good position — for “the short term.”
“We’ve got enough [PRB coal] leased for the next decade,” Deti said.
But that doesn’t mean the court rulings and more stringent leasing rules are inconsequential. “The issue is, when these [court rulings] come out, our utility customers see that and they’re looking down the line and saying, ‘Well, is this even going to be an option in the future?’” Deti said. “So that’s what’s really concerning about it.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/court-rulings-threaten-to-hasten-wyo-coal-s-demise/article_f52e5746-27a0-11ed-88e5-b38c1438d1fc.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:47Z |
ROCK SPRINGS — Every year, thousands of participants across America walk, climb and run to remember those who sacrificed their lives to save others on Sept. 11, 2001.
In Rock Springs, firefighters are hosting the 2022 Walk the Rock, 9/11 Memorial Climb.
According to Kelly Mathis, captain of the Rock Springs Fire Department, the twin towers at the World Trade Center each had 110 floors and 2071 steps.
“We want to keep doing this for community involvement,” said Mathis. “Members of the community will join firefighters to climb Grant Street in honor of the 343 firefighters from the Fire Department of New York City who gave their lives while trying to save others on that dark day.”
Mathis explained that Walk the Rock will consist of four lengths of Grant Street, starting and ending at the top of the street.
“This will show the participants in the walk what it was like to be in full gear as those brave people climbed 110 stories,” he said.
The first responders will have weight vests, hose bundles and tools for people to carry if they would like to experience the weight that firefighters had to carry while ascending the burning twin towers.
“It’s steep, challenging and it can accommodate a lot of people,” Mathis described. Mathis also mentioned that some participants and first responders may even go above and beyond by doing the equivalent of 343 flights of stairs in memory of the 343 emergency responders who lost their lives on 9/11.
Those who complete the 343 Challenge will receive a commemorative challenge chip. On the chip, the words “Never Forget” are inscribed.
Rock Springs Fire Department Chief Jim Wamsley said, “For us, in fire service, those aren’t just words. We will always remember those sacrifices and we don’t want to forget.”
“We want to remember their heroism – their attempt to save a few lives – maybe some of those lives were already lost but they climbed in and did what needed to be done anyway,” he added.
“I think that’s an example for our conduct for all walks of life; certainly, for those in fire service. It’s our job,” said Wamsley. “We get in there and do whatever we can to save lives. That’s what the fire service is all about. A lot of times we are fortunate to be able to prevent loss of life but bad things happen and we have a job to do.”
Mathis was working at Copier and Supply, a small business in downtown Rock Springs, with his brother, before becoming a firefighter.
“My brother heard about it before coming into the shop and told us what was happening in New York City,” Mathis explained. “My best friend was in the academy at West Point at the time. Back then, we had no way to track what was going on. We didn’t even have a TV in the shop.”
Mathis tried contacting him for about eight hours before he finally heard his voice.
“He wasn’t close to downtown, in fact, he was 43 miles away from where they got hit,” he shared. “I told him that the first thought I had when I heard the news was that the enemy would hit the military academy and wipe out all the future leaders of the United States.”
Wamsley noted that “the towers were a symbol of western culture.”
“They represented exuberance and power,” he said.
Wamsley was still working for Church and Dwight in 2001. He had just gotten home from a graveyard shift when the attack began.
“I listened to the radio on the way home and the news of the towers wasn’t mentioned,” Wamsley revealed. “I had to call the plant for something and whoever answered the phone was in a panic. He said, ‘Can’t talk now. A plane just hit one of the towers in New York City!’”
Wamsley turned his television on as a commercial aircraft flew into the second tower.
“I normally would have slept all day but I didn’t get a wink of sleep that day,” he said. “They were somber days. It’s one of those things where you hear people talk about those momentous events in their lives.
“It was truly the darkest day in the United States.”
“For my parents, it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy,” Wamsley said. “For me, it will always be 9/11. Before that, it was the first man landing on the moon when I was in the first grade.”
“There are a few things I can recall but with 9/11, I’ll always remember the feeling and just the way that day was so surreal,” he said. “It has fundamentally changed our philosophies in the United States. It created a whole new federal bureau – Homeland Security of the United States.”
The Walk the Rock 9/11 Memorial Climb opening ceremonies will begin at 6:46 a.m. sharp on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022.
“The first plane struck the twin towers at 6:46 a.m. mountain standard time,” Mathis said.
“Anyone at any fitness level is invited to join us,” said Wamsley. “This is definitely not a fitness competition. This is a memorial event and a personal challenge.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/firefighters-recall-the-darkest-day-in-america/article_d90fa938-27a1-11ed-a9a4-9be165e36c85.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:53Z |
BUFFALO — This fall is a great time to be an elk hunter, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s 2022 hunt forecast.
That’s especially true for those who are willing to hunt antlerless elk. Elk populations are thriving statewide, according to previous Bulletin reporting.
In most hunt areas, elk are at or above population objectives, leading officials to add more tags and change season limitations and opening dates to achieve desired harvest levels.
“We’re hoping for a better harvest this year,” Buffalo Game Warden Jim Seeman said. “The longer they stay up on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, the better chance we have for a better harvest. So far, it’s pretty good. Elk are staying up there so far.”
Elk are the outlier among other big game populations that are not reaching goals and therefore have had quotas reduced this year. Those reduced license quotas are due to persistent drought conditions and spread of disease, said Cheyenne Stewart, Sheridan region wildlife management coordinator.
But those reduced license quotas give those who drew tags in the region a better chance at harvesting an animal, according to the Game and Fish hunt forecast.
That includes pronghorn, a species that suffered population declines from disease-related mortalities in 2021, including epizootic hemorrhagic disease and bluetongue.
Antelope, in general, according to Seeman, are doing well near Buffalo, based on the agency’s late summer classifications.
“We did cut licenses from last fall. We’re down overall in population with antelope, so hunters should expect to see at least east of town fewer numbers,” he said. “You might see a lot more fawns, which doesn’t come into play until the following year.”
Mule deer in the region have been a population of concern for Game and Fish for a while.
The department wrapped up a study on the Upper Powder River mule deer herd in December that biologists hope will give them an idea of the biggest problems facing the herd.
Chronic wasting disease is another factor in mule deer mortality. The disease, a neurological illness that is often fatal, is most prominent in the region’s white-tailed deer populations.
That, epizootic hemorrhagic disease and the bluetongue outbreak in fall 2021 mean that hunters can expect population impacts.
This year’s precipitation, though, is good news for those populations, according to the forecast.
To date, the Powder River Basin has experienced precipitation that is 101% of normal, according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service. The water year ends Oct. 1. Seeman said that the rainfall the county received in the spring — at a time that’s best for fawns and chicks hoping to survive — would be useful now, too.
“We got good moisture, but it’s dry now,” Seeman said. “A lot of watering holes people had hunted five to 10 years ago that might not have water in them. A lot of people hunt near water usually in September, sometimes in October, at least east of town going toward the Powder River.”
Southern Johnson County near Kaycee, especially, has experienced above-average rainfall, clocking an additional nearly half an inch this year compared with last year, per the National Weather Service. Overall, the region experienced some much-needed moisture, which has reduced its ongoing drought intensity and, as a result, the agency expects doe-to-fawn ratios to improve.
That moisture this spring has been kind to upland bird habitats, the hunt forecast says.
The highly contagious avian flu, often fatal, has impacted bird populations this year, both wild and domestic, though the extent of its impact is unknown, according to the agency.
Pheasant production at the Sheridan Bird Farm has been impacted by the flu, and hunters can expect a slightly shorter release season. Areas that require a Pheasant Management Stamp in Sheridan and Johnson counties will now be open to harvest any pheasant, a new change for the 2022 season.
Most seasons begin Sept. 1, but Seeman advised that some regulations for certain areas have changed.
More information about this coming hunting season is available at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department website.
“There are subtle changes in some of the hunt areas,” he said. “We’ve had some issues already and a lot of phone calls. If (hunters) don’t understand or are confused about the change, they need to give us a call and clarify that.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/game-and-fish-predicts-good-season-for-elk-hunters/article_77b32dc2-27a1-11ed-9652-f7f4aff66878.html | 2022-08-31T12:08:59Z |
JACKSON — To its former owners, Wyoming’s priciest listing was far more than a cash gem.
“It was our home,” said Julie Givens, describing a 233-acre plot on the banks of the Snake River that has been in her family for almost 40 years. Earlier this summer, Jackson Hole Ranch was listed for $35 million — the highest priced offering in the state when it was listed in July.
When Givens’ parents saw a Wall Street Journal article calling their 233-acre ranch “Wyoming’s Priciest Listing,” they cried.
“That’s not what this was about for them,” Givens said. “It was about this very special piece of land and protecting it.”
The ranch came under contract in two days and sold a month later.
With 96% of the 233 acres barred from development under a conservation easement through the Jackson Hole Land Trust, the listing represents one of the highest valuations of protected land ever seen in Jackson, according to listing agency Live Water Properties.
It could also be one of the highest prices for non-developable land in the nation, though Live Water’s founding partner Alex Maher said it’s difficult to differentiate the value of the protected acres from the opportunities to build.
“I think people have become more tolerant or more willing to buy property under easement than they were 10 years ago, or 15 or 20 years ago, absolutely,” he said.
Many naturalists view conservation easements as a win for ecology. Jackson Hole Ranch, for instance, abuts Grand Teton National Park and serves as a migratory corridor for 600 elk.
Buyers often see the protection as a limitation.
“People are used to placing structures wherever they would like within the confines of the property. And that’s not the case in these conservation easements,” said listing agent Latham Jenkins, who tries to educate and inform buyers about the less-obvious virtues of protected land.
“You think you’re buying a property that has restrictions on it that, in essence, distract from the value,” he said. “I would argue no, it actually increases the value. Because it will never change.”
Jenkins said people interested in Jackson Hole Ranch asked about installing a dirt bike track and helicopter pad. Another potential buyer wanted to hunt.
There was some interest from so-called “conservation buyers” looking to carry on a stewardship legacy. But most people had no idea what a conservation easement meant.
Givens said that when her father first bought land next to the Snake River he was approached by several interested buyers, including the Anheuser-Busch family, which offered him $10 million. Instead they chose to work with the Land Trust to put a conservation easement on the ranch to benefit wildlife.
Bill Givens ran a tech company in the printing industry and came to the Tetons to climb and backpack. Until recently he held the record for being the oldest person to ever complete the Grand Traverse, his daughter said.
She hoped Jenkins would find a similarly outdoor-loving steward to take over the ranch, rather than someone looking to add a “jewel” to their crown.
“My parents saw it as an honor to protect it. And I feel the same way,” Givens said. “You’re doing something good for the world by maintaining this land that has restrictions on it.
“Really, we should all think like that. You’re the steward of your own little backyard,” she said.
Jenkins wouldn’t disclose the buyers out of respect for their privacy.
“It’s raising what people are willing to pay per acre for protected land,” he said of the sale. “But in my opinion the mindset has turned to seeing the value of it being protected versus historically thinking of it having been stripped of its development entitlements, and someone else already got the tax benefits.”
One third of Teton County’s limited private lands are already conserved in some way. When landowners choose to put their property under voluntary easement, they receive a tax break.
Those purchasing land already under easement — like the buyer of Jackson Hole Ranch — don’t receive the tax incentive of the donation, but they are generally able to buy acreage at a cheaper price.
A similar deal also applies to ranching land on the market.
The Mead family is currently asking $40 million for 257 acres of the ranch that has been in the family for more than a century. Of those acres, 193 are protected by an easement through the Jackson Hole Land Trust.
The easement was originally secured in the early 2000s by Brad Mead’s grandfather, Cliff Hansen, a Wyoming governor from 1963 to 1967 and the state’s two-time U.S. senator, from 1967 to 1978.
Mead previously told the News&Guide easements have helped protect the remaining ranches in the area from the pressure of subdivision.
“A lot of the credit goes to the Land Trust, and the community which supported it,” he said.
The national Land Trust Alliance defines a conservation buyer as “a real-estate purchaser whose interest in the natural, agricultural, scenic, or historic attributes of a property steers them toward working with a land trust to protect these values in perpetuity.”
In mountain towns like Bend, Oregon, local land trusts are working with Realtors to attract conservation buyers and explicitly promote conservation easements. At a national level, The Nature Conservancy is working to leverage “increasing interest of the private sector to take part in conservation.”
And with a third of Teton County’s limited private land already shielded from development, buyers have become more willing to purchase protected land — not because of stewardship interest, but just because it’s the only plot available.
The limited supply has effectively meant that “people are willing to pay the same price for an encumbered piece of ground as they are for an unencumbered piece of ground,” said Max Ludington, president of Jackson Hole Land Trust since 2020.
The nonprofit is continuing to pursue easements, and Ludington said there will probably come a time when every parcel in the valley that can be developed will have a plan for development and “every piece of ground that can be conserved will be conserved.”
The Land Trust secured three new conservation easements in Teton County last year.
At the same time, Maher, of Live Water Properties, said high prices are merely a reflection of Jackson’s overall popularity.
“It’s a function of property values in general,” he said. “It’s not that land under conservation easement is appreciating faster than land not under conservation easement.
“There’s just a high demand for a very small supply, and then you’ve got all of these scenic and wildlife characteristics and airport accessibility, etc. That’s the reason our land is worth more than other places.”
Last year the median home value was $850,800 in Teton County, according to the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division. Median household income was $87,053.
Ludington said one of the most common complaints the Land Trust hears is actually a misconception.
People assume that conservation easements limit the possibility of affordable housing developments, he said, when in reality that restriction comes from local land development regulations, or LDRs.
“The focus of our work is not the amount of development, it’s the location,” he said.
Taking the location concept a step further, listing agent Jenkins said it doesn’t make sense to build affordable housing on a place like Jackson Hole Ranch. Instead, he said, a community housing fund should look at “downtown” properties that are in the transportation network.
He pointed to a $38.5 million, 50-acre parcel on Highway 22, right next to the Stilson parking area where skiers park to catch shuttles to Teton Village, which is now on the market.
“I think its highest and best use is to partner with Stilson and the metro center and build community housing there,” Maher said.
Asked if the Stilson lot could be a candidate for workforce housing, listing agent Ted Dawson said “1000% but the county doesn’t want anything to do with that.”
Current single-family and rural zoning allows only one home per 35 acres. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/high-ranch-prices-show-interest-no-longer-limited-to-stewards/article_c20bb052-27a5-11ed-b1fc-0f6d3a188732.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:06Z |
State lawmakers spent Friday morning searching for ways to provide more affordable housing to Wyoming residents, including solutions such as a state housing trust fund and land banking.
Discussions were led by members of the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, state agencies and local nonprofits invested in breaking down barriers to housing development. It falls in line with the committee’s second-highest priority to address the lack of workforce housing, which they have studied throughout the interim.
“Because of housing, we can’t keep teachers, snowplow drivers, or doctors and nurses,” said Rep. Jim Roscoe, I-Wilson.
Despite stakeholders showing support for a state housing trust fund, legislators decided only to take action on land banking. There were concerns expressed that the state housing trust fund would be unconstitutional because legislative appropriations for charitable or industrial purposes are not allowed unless the recipient is under control of the state.
“Section 6 prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from loaning or giving credit to guarantee private obligations, and also prohibits these actors from making donations to private individuals or entities except for the necessary support of the poor,” said Legislative Service Office staff attorney Anna Johnson.
A state housing trust fund could be possible, but not by following the original recommendation based on Iowa’s model, which legislative staff attorneys said could be problematic because of the difference in how Wyoming’s trust funds are laid out. Wyoming is one of just three states in the nation without a housing trust fund.
Other housing programs in Wyoming already exist, but legislators hoped to find additional ways to manage the pressure on the market.
The Wyoming Business Ready Community Program doesn’t specifically address workforce housing, but Johnson outlined in a memo how it would be a helpful framework for a program, since it provides loans for infrastructure, economic or educational development projects.
There is the Wyoming Workforce Housing Infrastructure Program, which provides loans for the creation of workforce housing subdivisions or developments. However, the infrastructure must be publicly owned, and doesn’t include the building of actual houses in order to follow state statute.
The Wyoming Community Development Authority was also created for many of the same reasons as the infrastructure program, and provides low-interest mortgage loans and financial education. Opportunities are available for down payment assistance, but it is still a loan.
Land banking
Advocates for a direct approach to solving the affordable housing crisis pushed for land banking. The banks are state-enabled public entities with unique governmental powers “that are solely focused on converting problem properties into productive use according to local community goals.”
“It’s a device, in part, where a municipality can clean up that kind of problem and eventually wind up with a property that is sellable,” said Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper.
Brenda Birkle, executive director of the local nonprofit My Front Door and chair of Cheyenne’s Affordable Housing Taskforce, made her case for the land bank. She played an instrumental role along with Dan Dorsch, special coordinator for Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County, in identifying tools the Legislature could consider.
In her presentation to the committee, she described the land bank as having special powers, “including the ability to hold land tax-free, clear title, negotiate sales, convey property for other-than-monetary consideration and lease for interim uses.”
It acquires property through the expedited tax foreclosure process, lending institutions and the Department of Housing and Urban Development transferring low-value properties to the land bank, as well as private individuals and probate estates not wanting the burden of owning a property and giving it away. This, in return, can address community blights, increase the number of low- to moderate-income units, increase area property values and provide economic growth.
“Land banks are most commonly established in localities with relatively low or declining housing costs and a sizable inventory of tax-delinquent properties that the community wants to repurpose to support community goals,” according to Local Housing Solutions. “In high-cost localities, however, where there are few tax delinquent properties, land banks can serve as a vehicle for holding land purchased strategically for future affordable housing development.”
Based on the presentation and support from nonprofits, legislators passed a motion for the legislative staff to draft a bill based on Nebraska’s statutes. It would not require an appropriation from the Legislature, but rather develop legislation that enables local entities to develop interagency agreements to establish the land bank.
Housing trust fund
Although the housing trust fund that would have fallen under the Wyoming Community Development Authority’s responsibility was not supported by the majority of the committee, it did take up a significant portion of the discussion.
Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, was a supporter of the housing trust fund, even with the work required make it constitutional. She was unsure whether the bill would move forward, but she encouraged efforts to be made, nonetheless.
“I do think, in light of it being one of our priority topics that this committee has chosen to take up, and hearing the overwhelming testimony from May, which I know we have all forgotten that there is an attainable housing concern – then at least we will have something tangible to work on at some meeting,” she told her fellow Corporations Committee members. “And, unfortunately, it will be our last.”
The wariness among legislators to draft the bill started hours before her call to draft the bill, and not just regarding the legal barriers.
According to the Housing Trust Fund Project, they are distinct funds established by governments that receive ongoing sources of public funding to support the preservation of affordable housing.
“Housing trust funds systemically shift affordable housing funding from annual budget allocations to the commitment of dedicated public revenue,” the advocacy organization wrote. “While housing trust funds can also be a repository for private donations, they are not public/private partnerships, nor are they endowed funds operating from interest and other earnings.”
Birkle said money from a statewide trust fund could go into local housing trust funds to create local control, and millions could be used to address housing issues. She said it could be used as gap funding for projects, to acquire and redevelop properties or land, to teach financial literacy and housing counseling, or for down payment assistance for homebuyers that are of low to moderate income.
“The good news is it’s customizable,” she told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle days before she went before the committee.
In order to implement it in Wyoming, it could be placed under the authority of agencies such as the WCDA and the Wyoming Business Council.
However, the WBC didn’t want to take on the housing affordability tool, and leadership argued its focus should be in expanding the workforce.
“The Business Council’s job is to create a housing problem. And I say that, in all seriousness, and I don’t mean to be flippant about it, but it is actually our job to create an environment where businesses can thrive, where businesses can grow,” WBC CEO Josh Dorrell testified Friday. “Housing is one component of it, but, ultimately, it’s our job to create the pressure. That creates a housing problem. And if we stay focused on that, we can create enough pressure, we can create enough of a housing problem, that will make us attractive to developers.”
Dorrell was supported by staff from Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, who argued the agency should stay in line with its duties and not take on the housing trust fund. Policy advisor Ivy McGowan-Castleberry said the governor expressed that he feels very strongly that the Business Council has a mission, that they need to work on activating new economic opportunities, and that the framework and expertise for a housing trust fund don’t currently exist.
Some lawmakers questioned whether companies would be deterred from moving into the state if there wasn’t housing, or why the private sector was having difficulty developing enough properties. Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, stepped in to defend the private sector, and said his colleagues were forgetting how well it worked.
“I don’t think we should be so short and frustrated with what the private sector has accomplished and say, ‘Well, it’s not working right now, let’s create a program,’” he said. “I think there’s complementariness that we can pursue.”
Lawmakers will continue to try to find that balance at the next Corporations Committee Oct. 13-14. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/lawmakers-search-for-housing-solutions/article_5e339230-279f-11ed-a58d-439977553be1.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:12Z |
Beitel Elementary School third grade teachers Tami Whitton, left, and Crystal Graf work out instructions for students before the start of the 2021-22 school year in Albany County School District 1.
CASPER — The Wyoming Department of Education is offering a new coaching program to school districts that’s meant to “improve teacher morale and retention.”
The program uses “instructional coaching” to highlight teachers’ strengths with the idea to help them expand on their successes. It pays both teachers and coaches who participate.
Wyoming has a big teacher shortage problem. According to data from the Wyoming Department of Education, 12 school districts in Wyoming had a negative teacher count change in the 2019-2020 school year, meaning that they hired fewer teachers than the number who left the previous year.
In the same year, 17 districts had a negative count change for full-time educators.
What’s more, a recent statewide survey by the Wyoming Education Association and the University of Wyoming found that 65% of teachers who responded would quit right now if they could, and 12% said they planned to quit at the end of the school year.
Anxiety and depression, lack of professional support and too many student assessments correlated strongly with desire to quit, according to the report.
On top of all that, there aren’t enough new college graduates in Wyoming to fill the number of teacher departures each year.
There are several efforts around the state to address the problem.
The Wyoming Department of Education and the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board are launching a pilot teacher apprenticeship program in three school districts this fall with hopes that it will improve the situation.
The agencies plan to do a statewide rollout of the program, which is meant to reduce barriers for people who want to become teachers, in fall 2023.
The University of Wyoming is also working on a couple of projects to support teachers; the Wyoming Teacher-Mentor Corps, which connects emerging teachers with mentors, launched in June. And the university got a grant in March to explore making a rural teacher corps in Wyoming.
The newest teacher retention program is funded by a federal grant led by the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization. It will pay teachers to attend a two-hour orientation this fall, after which the teachers will participate in several coaching sessions during the school year.
The coaches will be school district staff or educators who have retired or temporarily left the classroom.
Those interested in the program can register for a Sept. 7 informational webinar at https://airtable. com/shrpr8wPdj3XqXxcW to learn more. The webinar will also be available as a recording. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/local/new-wde-program-targets-teacher-morale/article_431eb750-27a3-11ed-9d12-47ddc5224ac0.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:18Z |
Lawmakers have agreed to draft legislation that, if approved by the full Legislature next year, would distinctly change the format of elections across the state in 2024.
The approval came after more than two hours of testimony and discussion in the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee on Thursday. Members carefully weighed the benefits and shortcomings of instant runoff elections, ranked-choice voting and open primaries.
Legislative staff has been directed to draft two bills for the Corporations Committee to consider at its upcoming meeting in October. It took a second vote for both motions to pass, but either would closely align with election formats used by fellow “red” states.
“I’m just happy Alaska and Utah are our models, and not Massachusetts or New York,” said Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, chairman of the committee, following the votes.
The state now uses a closed primary and plurality voting system. Only voters registered with the Republican or Democratic Party can vote in their party’s primary, and the party affiliation is included in voter registration so there is an official record. Voters are allowed to switch their party affiliation at any time.
The plurality system refers to how a candidate is elected. The contender who receives the highest number of votes is elected, and it is not required that they receive more than 50% of the total votes cast.
This is a significant difference from the first proposed election format bill the Legislative Service Office is responsible for drafting. It will take after the initiative Alaskan voters approved in the 2020 general election to establish a nonpartisan primary and ranked-choice voting system.
However, the recommendation by Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, was for an open primary that would have the top four choices move forward to a ranked-choice voting system in the general election.
His second motion, which also was passed, was to keep a closed primary, but to implement a ranked-choice voting system similar to what is being tested by Utah at the municipal level. Both proposals will be considered in October.
Open primary, ranked-choice
FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform organization, defines an open primary as an election where “voters of any affiliation may vote in the primary of any party. They cannot vote in more than one party’s primary, although that prohibition can be difficult to enforce in the event a party has a primary runoff. In many open primaries, voters do not indicate partisan affiliation when they register to vote.”
Along with a ranked-choice voting system, the Wyoming election format would transform dramatically. Voters would rank candidates by preference on their ballots, and if a candidate wins more than half of first-preference votes, they are declared the winner. If no candidate wins based on first-preference, Ballotpedia explains that the candidate with the least first-preference votes are eliminated.
“All first-preference votes for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots,” according to the digital encyclopedia on American politics and elections. “A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won an outright majority of the adjusted voters. The process is repeated until a candidate wins a majority of votes cast.”
Case suggested the system after hearing testimony from stakeholders on its positive impacts. Many argued it would address concerns of crossover voting and the plurality system, as well as encourage candidates to communicate to a greater number of voters, rather than to the extremes of either party.
“With 94% of people voting on the same ballot last Tuesday, we essentially had an open primary here in Wyoming. Open primaries almost eliminate the need for crossover voting, though. There’s no need to switch parties when there’s no parties involved,” said Jennifer Lowe, executive director of the Equality State Policy Center. “The other wonderful thing about open primaries is it allows taxpayers – those who are funding these elections – to fully participate.”
The majority of votes Aug. 16 were in the Republican primary, which pitted U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., against challenger Harriet Hageman. Although many Democrats crossed over to vote for Cheney, Hageman easily ousted the incumbent and advanced to the Nov. 8 general election.
Despite significant support for the system voiced in testimony, there were those who criticized its consideration.
Wyoming GOP National Committeeman Corey Steinmetz said the political philosophy between the parties was very evident, and taking away a partisan primary would be a challenge. He said many voters trust the “R” behind a Republican candidate’s name when they’re running, and it assures that the contender represents their shared values and beliefs.
“What we’ve heard from Republicans all across the state is that we want to keep our primary,” he told lawmakers. “We want Republicans voting for Republican nominees, they want Democrats voting for Democratic nominees, and we would have competitive elections if the Democrats would have people run.”
Steinmetz said changing the voting system has been an ongoing discussion for years, but he didn’t know if “we need to reinvent the wheel.” He was concerned any major changes to the election statutes would also impact political organization makeup and elections for precinct committee persons.
“That’s a very dangerous territory,” he said.
Jacqueline McMann was a supporter of an open primary and ranked-choice voting, and argued against Steinmetz’s theory about Wyoming voters. She said the current system deters healthy participation, and the Republican Party has developed a monopoly on voting.
“We use a shorthand, the ‘R’ in front of a person’s name and the ‘D’ in front of a person’s name. The ‘L’ for libertarian. It’s a shorthand for trust,” she said. “And I think we have broken down that trust by our divisiveness, and people are no longer engaged.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/major-changes-to-state-elections-are-considered/article_51e7894a-27a0-11ed-8f8b-2b94825715f5.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:24Z |
The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee considered four draft bills Thursday that would modify the state’s liquor license statutes.
Only one was ultimately approved for the committee to sponsor for the 2023 general session, which would loosen population formulas for bar-and-grill liquor licenses.
Stakeholders from throughout the state have been pushing the Legislature to take action to make more liquor licenses available, saying the current laws are stifling economic growth and encumbering innovative business proposals. A recent example came from Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins, who had 11 local entrepreneurs apply for a sole retail liquor license.
“We have 38 people who own a retail liquor license. Some of them are good friends of mine, and I feel like our future growth has been held hostage because no one wants to do anything that will take the sale of even one beer from those 38 people,” Collins told committee members Thursday. “I’ve heard all of the reasons, you’ve heard them all, but it frustrates me. It’s hurting our ability to diversify our economy.”
Along with supporters of expanding the number of liquor licenses available or changing the population requirements come wary critics. Health care providers, as well as law enforcement and state liquor association members, shared their perspectives on more liquor distribution, such as rising alcoholism, increased crime and unsafe quantities of alcohol available to the public.
Lawmakers listened to the debate and conflicting positions on all four bills. They decided to indefinitely delay a piece of legislation that would have made any retail liquor licenses issued after July 1, 2023 non-transferable, and continue to draft changes to two others before the next meeting in mid-October.
The bills that the committee will reconvene to consider relate to the cost of retail liquor license fees, and creating a tavern and entertainment liquor license. There would have been no limit on the number of the latter licenses based on population, and many criticisms came from both sides of the argument due to the definition of “entertainment.”
April Brimmer-Kunz, one of the 11 applicants for the single retail liquor license in Cheyenne, was especially passionate regarding the development of a new type of liquor license. She and her son plan to open Ace’s Range in Cheyenne, a golf and laser-shooting simulator location, but were denied the license. She told committee members that she understood why they were denied, yet there wasn’t a license that fit the needs of their business.
“The world is changing,” she said. “And I think the liquor licenses need to change with it.”
Bar-and-grill liquor licenses
The one proposal that was supported by the committee relates to changes to bar-and-grill licenses. The committee’s fourth draft bill would change the population formula for bar-and-grill licenses starting July 1, 2023, and incrementally increase the number of licenses available. It would sunset on July 1, 2028, when another set of population formulas would be issued with even more licenses available per thousand.
The final sunset would be in 2033, when population would no longer be a factor in the issuance of bar-and-grill liquor licenses.
A similar system is laid out for county commissioners, and the cost of those licenses is adjusted, as well. The license fee assessed for bar-and-grill liquor licenses would not be less than $1,500, no more than $10,500. Those amounts would be changed in 2033, when each license would cost no less than $500 and no more than $3,000.
Applicants for a bar-and-grill liquor license would still have to satisfy the appropriate licensing authority that not less than 60% of revenue from the operation of the bar and grill would come from food service, not alcohol sales. This applies to all 12 months of operation, and an annual gross sales figures report would be required.
“It worries me sick to flood the market, because of the burden to our communities, law enforcement, etcetera. This does it in phases,” said Mike Moser, the executive director of the Wyoming State Liquor Association. “And I think that way we can gradually adopt it is, as Mick Jagger says, ‘You can’t always get what you want. But you find you always get what you need.’ And this gets what people need.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/more-liquor-license-changes-considered/article_79f70b36-27a0-11ed-91a2-8f24161ea566.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:31Z |
ABSAROKA RANGE — Andy Pils was silent as he scanned with his Vortex spotting scope, its lens focused on a steep, talus-covered mountainside some 2.5 miles away.
Two weeks before, 10 grizzly bears were clustered together in the same area flipping rocks and lapping up moths, but on this early August day, zero grizzlies were visible. Pils soon realized why.
“Oh, (crap),” Pils said. “I see a guy walking up there.”
The longtime Shoshone National Forest wildlife biologist continued scanning. Actually, he said, there were two guys and a dog. It was late morning, and the canine-human crew was headed for a summit.
“Those guys are in full view of that slope, so I’m sure all the bears moved off,” Pils said. “They’re right where we saw the bears two weeks ago.”
A little bit later, Pils saw the displacement in real time. At 9:53 a.m., the first two grizzlies of the day entered his view. But they were too concerned about the hikers to bother with their calorie-dense bug breakfast.
“They’re actually running from the people,” Pils said.
Within moments the two grizzlies trotted off in tandem and disappeared from sight. In Pils’ view, there was no question as to why. The peak-baggers and their canine companion had inadvertently spooked them off.
Weeks before Pils installed a sign to warn of the bears’ presence, and the hikers should have been able to see the fleeing grizzlies if they were looking in the right direction, but that was tough to ascertain from this distance.
While a rarity to witness, the scene the biologist observed in the Absaroka Range high country wasn’t unexpected. Despite a reputation for standing their ground or becoming aggressive with humans, grizzly bears often flee from people. Grizzlies walked or ran away from people 80% of the time when former Montana State University graduate student Erika Nunlist observed 43 human-bear interactions at two army cutworm moth congregation sites in 2017 and ‘18.
There’s no indication grizzly bears are altogether abandoning these nutrient-rich talus slopes — regionally, grizzly use of moths is actually increasing. But the Shoshone National Forest, which houses all the region’s known moth sites, has a management plan underway that sets out to keep the extraordinary alpine food source viable in the face of increasing human pressure. That’s partly as a result of more interest in peak bagging in the Absarokas. But it’s also because heaps of grizzlies gorging on thousands of insects a day out in the open draws spectators. Nearly 60% of the mountain travelers Nunlist surveyed at one high-use site for her study identified “photography” or “bear viewing” as a reason for being there. She understands the allure.
“It’s just totally crazy,” Nunlist said. “When there’s 22 bears on a slope that’s maybe a football field or two [in size] and you can just watch them, it’s just really amazing. It never got old.”
Wildlife managers are in a tricky position. They don’t want to lead the public to moth sites, but at the same time they want to make people aware of the potential hazard of traveling near high densities of grizzlies and how human presence could impact feeding bears.
“More people are figuring out ways to go in and take advantage of visible bears,” said Dan Thompson, large carnivore supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “We just don’t want bears to be harassed or anything to happen that can negatively impact the ecology of the bear.”
Pils is seeing similar trends that have him worried: “We’re getting more and more of these commercial filming requests.”
Those requests are being denied until the national forest wraps up its moth site management plan, which should be out sometime in the next year. The forthcoming plan emanates from the Shoshone Forest’s 2015 Land Management Plan, which demands it. First, however, there were years of research to better understand moth bear ecology: Nunlist’s study of human interaction, another about what else grizzlies are eating near moth sites and a third study on the moths themselves.
Army cutworm moths have been known as a grizzly food source in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since the 1980s, but the ecology has been poorly understood, in part because the insects congregate in remote, mountainous country between 11,000 and 13,000 feet in elevation where studies are difficult to pull off.
“So there’s still many unknowns about the ecology of the moths themselves, how bears are using these sights and how human use could affect these dynamics,” Pils told a crowd at the Draper Natural History Museum last winter.
Former Montana State University graduate student Clare Dittemore filled in some of the blanks about the moths, and she upended some traditional assumptions. It was conventionally believed the 1.5-inch-long moths — named for how they move as a fleet from one crop field to the next — migrated east to west, coming by the millions to the Rocky Mountains from the Great Plains.
“The work that we did illustrates that they’re traveling north to Southwest as well,” Dittemore
Cutworm moths are too small to track with GPS, and so she used stable isotope analysis, which pinpoints the origin of the nutrients that make up the moths, to determine where they traveled from. Most moths, she found, were actually coming from Alberta and British Columbia. Others flew in from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, while moths that came from the easternmost Great Plains were the least numerous.
“Moths are very capable of dispersing throughout the ecosystem,” Dittemore said. “Because they’re coming from such a wide variety of areas, this particular food source is probably protected against any regional declines of larval populations.”
That’s a good thing, because indications are that army cutworm moths are a vital grizzly food source. Up in the alpine where they feed on wildflower nectar at night, the moths pack on fat. Their body fat percentage can reach 83%, fuel for their own migration back to lower elevations and reproduction. It makes for great bear food.
“Just the energetic component of this is pretty interesting,” Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team leader Frank van Manen said. “They are little packets of lipids. There’s not a lot of weight in each insect, but on a per-gram basis, they are one of the highest calorie foods available that we’ve documented in the ecosystem.”
A typical grizzly might consume as many as 40,000 moths — good for 20,000 calories — per day, van Manen said. That’s equivalent to roughly 35 Big Macs, he said. They’re critical calories that grizzly bears need to gain weight and survive winter hibernation.
Whether it’s through their incredible sense of smell or their memory, the moth bears congregate around the highest-density patches of bugs.
Even from miles away, the bruins’ game trail travel paths were visible in the talus that August day.
“If you walk through that stuff, it’s amazing how excavated it is,” Pils said. “It’s like somebody went through it with a plow.”
More and more grizzlies are catching on.
During the study team’s last available survey of moth sites, it logged 324 grizzly observations at 27 of the 35 known moth sites — the second-highest tally to date. Over the decades, as grizzlies have recovered to in excess of 1,000 animals in the Yellowstone ecosystem, more and more bears have visited the alpine moth sites, which generally keeps them away from people and out of harm’s way. That could be because of the decline of whitebark pine — another high-elevation food source — but the precise reasoning is unknown, van Manen said.
Wildlife managers are also gathering new insights into how moth bears move about the landscape. In 2021, a Wyoming Game and Fish-contracted helicopter crew capitalized on grizzlies that dwell above the treeline. When bears were safely away from the steep, hazardous slopes, a number of them were tranquilized and fit with tracking collars.
“That’s a first for anyone in the Lower 48,” Thompson said of the aerial grizzly captures. “We caught 10 bears in three mornings. We didn’t know how well it would work, and it exceeded our expectations. In just over seven hours we caught the same amount of bears that we caught in almost a decade of [ground-based] backcountry trapping.”
Data from those GPS collars is pouring in, and adding to existing location data from GPS-equipped moth bears that have been incidentally caught in the lowlands over the years. That data has taught van Manen and others that the moth bears typically move up around the middle of July.
“They stay near those sites for the next two months,” van Manen said.
Grizzlies of the high Absarokas are mostly filling their guts with gobs of moths, but that’s not all they’re eating. Typically, moth feeding is most productive from daybreak until around 11 a.m., but as the air and talus heats up the insects lose their lethargy and become trickier to catch.
Kate Lozano, another former Montana State University grad student, investigated the moth bears’ summertime diets, finding through scat analyses that their primary alternative food source is a perennial flowering plant called biscuitroot. Her study also pinpointed where biscuitroot tends to grow: At the tops of ridgelines, which are often travel routes for people moving around the backcountry.
“A lot of those sites that had biscuitroot had [grizzly bear] day beds as well,” Lozano said.
The research, she said, suggests that the Shoshone Forest should cast a wider net over the landscape when it’s looking at addressing potential areas for human interaction at the most-visited moth sites.
Pils now has this data at his disposal as he’s pulling together a moth site management plan for the Shoshone Forest. It’s not likely to call for heavy-handed regulations. Where moths and grizzlies are aggregating deep in the North Absaroka and Washakie designated wilderness areas on seldom-visited slopes, there’s nothing to worry about, he said.
“Most of these moth sites, all indications are human use is very light and there’s really no issue,” Pils said.
There are a handful of exceptions.
“This one most prominently,” Pils said the morning of Aug. 8. “We’ll be trying to figure out some criteria, and what our options might be, should we feel compelled to start managing human use.”
Potential closures, he said, would be a “really big deal for us.”
“Seasonal restrictions on motorized vehicle use, that’s pretty well established,” Pils said. “But when you’re talking about restricting foot access into areas, that’s very different.”
The forthcoming plan could also include some regulations for commercial outfitting and guiding around moth sites, he said, as well as prescribe monitoring and information and education efforts. Whatever policies get proposed will be run by the Shoshone Forest’s partners, including Game and Fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and van Manen’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
“Ultimately, it’s district rangers and forest supervisors that make decisions,” Pils said. “And so it’s going to be a matter of figuring out what our leadership is comfortable with.”
The hikers spotted by Pils reached their summit shortly after he watched the two bears boogie. The men, Park County locals, according to their pickup truck’s plates, lingered up top for nearly an hour.
“There’s not many days when you can lounge on top like that,” Pils said.
It wasn’t until 11:15 a.m. that the Shoshone National Forest biologist observed his first undisturbed moth-eating grizzly. Even through a spotting scope the animal was just a bear-shaped speck in the distance, but its lack of movement told Pils it was lapping up those lipid-filled moths.
The desire to trek nearer and see the behavior in greater detail was tempered by already witnessing the unintended consequences of getting too close.
Though he had observed it before, even Pils was entranced by the phenomenon.
“It’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?” he said. When pressed about what he meant, the biologist clarified.
“Just that this whole thing happened.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/mysterious-moth-eating-grizzlies-have-a-people-problem/article_60ae833e-27a5-11ed-ab58-97299c5fa28d.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:37Z |
GILLETTE — Emily Nuzum and Madison Bracht were in the middle of a fall out.
The two childhood friends were in the thick of a teenage stalemate brought along by loss in the family and a growing up of sorts.
In other words, they weren’t talking at the time.
But as Bracht scrolled through her phone, nearly two years ago, something stood out. She paused and scrolled back up.
“(Nuzum) posted something and I found it pretty weird, since that’s not something she usually posted so I decided to leave a nice comment,” Bracht said. “Then she reached out to me.
“She reached out to me about being sexually assaulted and it was by the same person I was sexually assaulted by, so we decided we wanted to come forward not alone.”
“We needed each other,” Nuzum added. “We just didn’t know it.”
Although the two 16-year-olds recognize and are grateful that the moment reignited the bond of friendship they had years before, they also know that the shared traumatic experience is something that neither of them should have had to live through, especially not alone.
Now, almost two years later, they are sharing their stories so that people their age can know who to turn to if they experience the same situation. They are starting a group called “We Will Not Be Silenced” with the aim to support and promote healing and understanding.
The two have turned a traumatic situation into a new beginning, laying groundwork for more communication and visibility on a prevalent issue that oftentimes hides in the invisibility of a victim’s shame or guilt.
“The main goal is to spread awareness (of sexual assault) because it’s unspoken,” Nuzum said. “We’re trying to focus on our peers, people our ages, because no one talks about it and it’s something that’s super hard to do.”
Since the two started their campaign just a few months ago, they’ve already had local girls and girls from out-of-state reach out to them for help or just a shoulder to lean on. The two hope to provide support but also share their experience in coping and what to expect if a person chooses to report — because Nuzum said the process is not simple or easy by any means.
“Obviously, it’s up to everyone to choose whether or not to report,” Bracht said. “I won’t tell them they ever have to but I’ll tell them it’s an option.”
For a long time after Nuzum reached out to her, Bracht felt guilty because she hadn’t reported what happened to her to authorities. She felt as though, maybe if she told someone, something could have been done to take him off the streets.
But after it happened, she wasn’t in a place where she felt she could speak and it wasn’t until long after Nuzum came forward that she told her story.
“I saw how everyone was treating her (at school),” Bracht said. “And there was no way I wanted anyone to know after that.”
“People were telling me that I was a horrible person and that I ruined his life,” Nuzum said about going back to school after the student’s arrest.
But the two had each other and also their families, who they said were way more supportive than they initially thought they’d be, another thing they want to pass along to anyone who joins their group.
Right now, the two have set up a website and Instagram where people can see their stories and join to support. So far, the two said that everyone in the community has been gracious and supportive of their efforts.
“We know we’ll get kickback eventually,” Nuzum said. “But we’re ready for it.”
They’ve also reached out to other counseling services and organizations in Gillette to learn more about how to guide anyone who comes to them with questions.
And in a bake sale fundraiser at Pokey’s Bar and Grill earlier in August, the two raised more than $1,500, half of which they will donate to the Gillette Abuse and Refuge Foundation.
They will use the rest of the money raised to pay for things like items for the float they want to create for the homecoming parade and copying kits or coloring books that may help some in the group manage the hurt.
The group is something of a coping mechanism for the girls, as well.
“Yes, the group is all about helping others,” Nuzum said. “But it’s also helping us. Being able to help just one person is what I live for.”
They want people to see their faces and know their names so that they know exactly who they can go to without judgment, if they need to. Both said that having someone their own age to go to would have helped them tell their stories earlier.
“That’s who I would’ve reached out to first,” Bracht said.
But since the issue isn’t talked about, she didn’t know of anyone who could help. She had heard rumors of students who had possibly lived through a similar hurt but again, it’s not something she felt comfortable asking them about.
By stepping forward, the two hope to alleviate that stress from anyone else.
After the assaults, both of the girls had to learn how to come back to their new normal.
But somehow, they’ve also learned how to look at the situation in as positive a way as they can.
Bracht said that going through the experience pushed her to be better. She had been going through a dark time and after that night, she realized she wanted more. Since then, she’s applied herself in school and started working in the hospital — a job she’d always wanted.
Nuzum said that she has been able to look at and approach things with a wider mindset, accepting things as they come without judging others.
“It made me see that damn, this is life,” she said.
Every week, the two spend countless hours together putting together what they can to form their peer group so they can share their perspectives and experience with others in a thoughtful way. They admit that as 16 year olds, money is scarce and starting something new is intimidating, but so far, their enthusiasm has not been stymied.
And it doesn’t look like it will be anytime soon.
Nuzum and Bracht have experienced how people change from childhood into adolescence and then fully into adulthood, and they’ve realized firsthand that there will be some friends people cannot live without.
Those friends are the ones a person calls for the simple things, like help for a missed day of homework but also the harder times in life, when a friend loses a family member or struggles to get out of bed.
It’s on those days that friends reach out and give support, lifting the other and assuring them that although the life motto is overwhelmingly cheesy, everything will, at some point at least, be all right again.
Bracht and Nuzum are now at the moment where it is all right again, but their goal is to make sure that others are able to reach that same point with a group of friends there to support them. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/students-support-peers-affected-by-sexual-assault/article_72b63214-27a2-11ed-9af0-83f9a230779b.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:43Z |
Rock Springs mayor accused of misconduct, conflict
Rock Springs Mayor Timothy Kaumo is facing criminal charges alleging official misconduct and conflict of interest.
According to the court documents obtained by the Rocket Miner, the crimes Kaumo allegedly committed include five counts of official misconduct, which is defined as “intent to obtain a pecuniary benefit, or maliciously to cause harm to another, he knowingly committed an act relating to his official duties that he did not have the authority to undertake” in July 2020.
The mayor also is charged with one count of conflict of interest, which was stated as the “request or receive of pecuniary benefit, other than lawful compensation, on any contract, or for the letting of any contract, or making any appointment where the government employing or subject to the discretion or decisions of the public servant is concerned,” also in July 2020.
All charges are considered misdemeanors under Wyoming law and are punishable by a fine of not more than $5,000.
The charges were filed in the 3rd Circuit Court on Aug. 1.
Kaumo’s next court appearance is scheduled for 9 a.m. Aug. 31.
Barrasso, Lummis react to student loan forgiveness
Wyoming’s two U.S. senators were quick to criticize President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 worth of federal student loan debt for students who earn less than $125,000 a year.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a press release:
“Cancelling millions of dollars in student loan debt will make the pain of high prices even worse for Wyoming families. Today’s announcement is an insult to every American who played by the rules and worked hard to responsibly pay off their own debt. This decision is also a boon for Biden’s wealthy supporters. Once again, the Biden administration is selling out working families to appease the far-left wing of the Democrat party.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said in a Wednesday statement:
“People in Wyoming know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and cancelling student debt amidst record high inflation will only throw fuel on the fire. Any notion that there’s no cost to wiping out billions of dollars of debt is flat out wrong. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, this reckless decision will add an additional $300 billion to our national debt, thereby driving the cost of everyday goods even higher. This is incredibly unfair to the hardworking people of Wyoming who will be forced to foot the bill for the richest 40% of Americans who carry 60% of student loan debt.”
Tackle food insecurity at UW home opener
In what’s become an annual effort, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming is again partnering with Wyoming Hunger Initiative and University of Wyoming football to tackle hunger in the Cowboy State.
Fans are encouraged to bring nonperishable food items to to War Memorial Stadium for the Cowboys’ home opening against Tulsa on Sept. 3. Look for designated food drop-off sites at the indoor practice facility next to the stadium or near Gate 6 of the tailgate parking lot.
People also can buy a food bag to donate from Ridley’s Family Markets at the company’s booth in the practice facility.
Last year, nearly 4,000 meals were donated at the UW home opener, and the drive has expanded this year with more donation locations. In addition to the stadium sites, people can donate now through Sept. 2 at Ridley’s locations across Wyoming.
“With the cost of food increases, many families in Wyoming continue to struggle with food
insecurity,” said Diane Gore, BCBSWY president and CEO. “Thankfully, our partnership with Wyoming Hunger Initiative can impact where it matters most — in the pantries of homes across the state.”
Along with the food drive, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming also has pledged to donate $1 for every pound of food donated.
Since 2020, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, alongside its Caring Foundation, has donated more than $300,000 to Wyoming Hunger Initiative to help combat food insecurity in Wyoming.
Wyoming Game and Fish seeks info on elk poaching
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is seeking information about a bull elk that was poached along Highway 34 in Sybille Canyon in early August.
Sometime between the evening of Aug. 5 and the morning of Aug. 6, a mature bull elk was shot along Highway 34, approximately two-and-a-half miles west of the Thorne/Williams Wildlife Research Center. The elk’s head and antlers were removed between the evening of Aug. 6, and the morning of Aug. 7.
“It is unfortunate this elk was taken out of season and was left to waste. We are asking for the public’s assistance with bringing forward information with this investigation,” Matt Withroder, Laramie Regional wildlife supervisor, said in a news release.
A reward is being offered for information on this case, and informants are urged to call the Stop Poaching Tip Line at 1-877-WGFD-TIP (1-877-943-3847). Tips can also be made by texting keyword WGFD and message to 847-411, or can be made online at https://wgfapps.wyo.gov/StopPoaching/submitTIp.aspx. Informants can remain anonymous. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/news/worth-noting-aug-31-2022/article_692cdc9c-27a3-11ed-8ea8-437fb308ef16.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:49Z |
Until primary election night, when he won his party’s Wyoming secretary of state nomination, Rep. Chuck Gray, R-Casper, had a pretty dismal 2022. None of the five bills he sponsored in the budget session passed, including four that didn’t even come up for a vote.
The previous year hadn’t been so hot for Gray, either. In September 2021, when former President Donald Trump shopped for a GOP congressional candidate to send Rep. Liz Cheney packing, he bypassed Gray and endorsed Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman.
When Trump declared everyone else should get out of Hageman’s way, Gray dutifully dropped out.
Gray tried to win Trump’s favor with two bills to change the name of State Highway 258 to the “President Donald J. Trump Highway.” Trump may well be the most popular politician in Wyoming, but both bills failed.
In May, opportunity knocked when Republican Secretary of State Ed Buchanan decided to not run for re-election. Gray announced his bid.
Gray made Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen the centerpiece of his campaign. The candidate called the election “clearly rigged” against Trump, with ballot drop boxes like those in Wyoming serving as the tool Democrats used for the theft.
The idea Wyoming voters can’t trust that their ballots will be fairly counted should be a tough sell in a state where Trump trounced Joe Biden by 120,068 votes. If state Democrats are that inept at stuffing ballot boxes, they shouldn’t even be allowed to cross the street unassisted.
But Gray’s message that Wyoming’s elections are tainted by widespread voter fraud carried the day, and he defeated Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, 50% to 41%.
Gray cast himself as a voter fraud expert because he went to Arizona to watch the Cyber Ninjas firm conduct a partisan “forensic audit” of Maricopa County’s presidential election. “I support the audit 100%. It’s an incredible, very important operation,” he tweeted.
The audit, which took more than seven months as the ninjas hand-counted ballots, did find election errors. Their report concluded 360 more residents voted for Biden than previously reported.
Yet Gray contends Wyoming should automatically conduct the same type of audit statewide using paper ballots, even though only four state residents have been convicted of voter fraud since 2000. All four, by the way, were Republicans.
Gray sponsored free showings of Dinesh D’Souza’s film “2000 Mules” to justify his desire to ban ballot drop boxes in Wyoming. Gray said the discredited documentary shows “how the woke, big-tech left has stolen elections with ballot drop boxes.”
Fortunately, none of Gray’s proposed voter fraud remedies can be implemented without legislative approval.
Former Secretary of State Max Maxfield, who endorsed Nethercott, filed a federal complaint against Gray for allegedly violating campaign finance laws. Maxfield questioned how Gray managed to loan his congressional campaign $300,000 when he claimed to only earn $11,000 a year.
After calling the complaint “frivolous,” the work of “liberal insiders,” Gray eventually explained he inherited the $300,000 from his grandfather.
“This campaign, unfortunately, has gotten pretty nasty because when someone stands for the truth against the insiders, they will do anything to maintain their power,” Gray charged at a Casper forum.
I agree that the campaign turned nasty, and truth matters. That’s why what the “Committee to Elect Chuck Gray” did a few days before the primary was so egregious.
Unsolicited text messages were sent to many Wyomingites – including Nethercott! – that erroneously claimed she is “being sued for lying and slander,” investigated “for violating state campaign $$$ law” and voting to “give herself a $30k taxpayer-funded raise.”
There is no lawsuit or investigation. Nethercott voted to increase state officials’ pay, but that was months before Buchanan announced his position would be open.
I don’t know how much damage the phony texts did to Nethercott’s chances of winning. Her loss by nearly 13,000 votes can likely be attributed to her declaring the election wasn’t stolen from Trump and such baseless claims are “undermining our country.”
As expected, Trump endorsed Gray. What’s surprising is that Gray polled about 40,000 votes less than Hageman, even though he and other right-wing candidates tried to tie themselves to her coattails.
Hageman trounced Cheney, but Cheney’s post-election words ring true: “No American should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility, where their refusal to follow the rule of law will corrupt our future.”
Gray joins five Republican secretary of state nominees – in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and New Mexico – who are election deniers. Unlike them, he’s the first who is virtually assured of victory in November, because no Democratic, Constitution or Libertarian party nominees will be on the ballot.
It’s time to face the harsh reality that someone who has the gall to deny the legitimacy of Wyoming elections, without a shred of evidence, will be in charge of them.
To be fair, Gray isn’t the only one responsible for his radical election agenda. He’s a surrogate who took advantage of his politically expedient chance to deliver Trump’s lies to Wyoming. Just as culpable are voters who wholeheartedly bought them – hook, line and sinker.
The Drake’s Take is a weekly column by veteran Wyoming journalist Kerry Drake, and produced by WyoFile.com, a nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/opinion/guest_column/a-gray-day-dawns-for-wyoming-s-future-elections/article_92992802-27a2-11ed-a205-23bf8a3dbaa0.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:55Z |
I sat in a room filled with more than 900 people. We all had a sad story, the same story.
We had all lost a child.
The common thread was wrapped around each of our hearts tightly and safely never to be cut. The other end of the thread curled, waved and stretched into a web of interaction that connected everyone in the room. We all understood. We all shared a piece of the web. We all shared a piece of the pain.
Some parents had lost their only child. Some carried the loss of more than one. More than 900 stories of pain sat in a room where we gathered to share. Together our love and pain created an energy that was at moments thick and heavy and at times light and freeing.
The emotions were made bearable by a powerfully strong connectivity in the room. The stories varied in their telling, time frames and circumstances, but the same sad story connected all of us.
In a recent conversation, someone mentioned that there seems to be so many sad stories right now and that everyone you talk to has one. I believe that’s true. I believe that the more birthdays we are lucky enough to enjoy and the more candles we blow out, the more sad stories we will have. The longer we live we will hear more and more sad stories from others.
Is it possible that as we age the stories become sadder, or is it the accumulation of stories that becomes heavier with every layered story and every year that passes?
Over the years I have had my struggles. I have watched loved ones and friends struggle. I have said goodbye to people I love. I personally know the story of divorce, job loss, accidents and illness. I have laid battered, bruised and broken in a puddle of helpless hopelessness.
I have suffered. We have all suffered.
Could it be that there is a sensibility to this?
I believe so. We will all be wounded. The wound may be sharp and quick, but deep. The wound may be a slow, dragging pain that leaves a scar in a wide, jagged way. No amount of ointment, stitches or bandages will heal the puncture.
Wounds are meant to break an opening so a lesson, a message or a meaning can reach our hearts. Wounds are the marks of living. Sad stories give us a way to share our wounds.
I believe that it takes the darkest of times to open us up to learning the most. To live this life, we must endure and understand the difficult times, dark times, sad times. We must own our sad stories.
This is what connects us as humans. We can enjoy the beautiful days because we have felt suffering. We can enjoy health because we have felt illness. We appreciate success because we have struggled. We welcome joy because we have felt despair. Emotions are made bearable by the powerfully strong connectivity in the network of our family, friends, coworkers and neighbors.
We all have threads wrapped tightly and safely around our hearts while the other end of the thread reaches into a web we all share.
The longer we live the more sad stories we will hear, have and hold. The stories will vary in versions, time frames and circumstances, but sad stories connect all of us.
Pennie’s Life Lesson: The longer we live the more sad stories we will have. The darkest of times open us up to learning the most. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/rawlinstimes/opinion/guest_column/everyone-has-a-sad-story/article_5eea83c0-27b1-11ed-87df-b3d2d3fdcbe9.html | 2022-08-31T12:09:56Z |
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LARAMIE — The Laramie High cross-country teams didn’t waste any time proving they will be a force to be reckoned this season.
The Plainsmen and Lady Plainsmen ran their way to solid results to open new campaign last Friday at the large Kelly Walsh Beartrap Invitational. Five LHS boys placed in the top 10 as the Plainsmen were on top of the team standings with a low of 23 points. Natrona County was runner-up with 78. The Lady Plainsmen had two in the top 10 and another close behind for a runner-up tally of 55. The Natrona girls won with 29, and Buffalo was third at 65.
The LHS teams featured two student-athletes who were runner-up in their respective 5-kilometer races on the high-altitude course at Beartrap Meadow on Casper Mountain. Plainsman junior Dominic Eberle was second in 17 minutes, 13.81 seconds with Riverton’s Kaden Chatfield winning in 17:08.95. Lady Plainsman junior Addison Forry was runner-up in 21:19.63 with Rawlins’ Ryann Smith winning in 20:44.65.
Other Plainsmen in the top 10 included seniors Meyer Smith (fourth, 17:52.76), Cooper Kaligis (sixth, 18:09.21) and Nathan Martin (seventh, 18:14.90) and sophomore Gideon Moore (eighth, 18:23.64). Junior Eli Berryhill was just outside the top 10 in 12th place at 18:38.64.
Junior Leah Schabron also paced the Lady Plainsmen when she cracked the top 10, finishing fifth in 22:02.37. LHS’ Libbie Roesler was the highest-placing freshman in the field when she clocked in at 22:59.59 for 11th place.
SWIMMING AND DIVING
The Lady Plainsmen swimmers and divers — defending five-time state champions — proved they are still a deep team last weekend at the traditional season opening meets.
The Gillette Relays at the Campbell County Aquatic Center are a measuring stick for overall team depth, and the Lady Plainsmen won with 283 points. They were followed by Cheyenne Central with 271.
The Gillette Pentathlon is a gauge for individual student-athletes, and is when most early state qualification standards can be attained. Each swimmer competes in 100-yard freestyle, 100 backstroke, 100 breaststroke, 100 butterfly and 50 free races for a total time that determines overall placing.
The Lady Plainsmen won three events during the relays, starting with the 500 free. The team of senior Therese Richardson, sophomore Brooklyn Smith, junior Braley Smith and senior Ashlyn Mathes won in 5:10.37. The Thunder Basin team was second in 5:18.22.
The LHS 200 backstroke relay team of seniors Maya Peterson, Kenna Davis, junior Portia Mobley and senior Alexandra Lewis won in 2:03.09. Green River was runner-up in 2:03.73.
The Lady Plainsmen 400 free relay team capped the event with Peterson, Richardson, junior Michelle Shoales and Mathes clocking in at 3:52.61 for the win. Kelly Walsh was second in 3:56.05.
The LHS girls were second to Central in the team points for the pentathlon. Central had 171 points, and Laramie totaled 110.
Mathis and Peterson placed in the top 10 and Shoales in the top 20. Mathis had a combined time of 4:50.03 for fifth place, Peterson at 4:57.62 for ninth and Shoales 5:09.99 for 16th.
The top two LHS divers during the pentathlon were sophomore Rowyn Birdsley for third place with 215.90 points and senior Paige Emerson at 12th place with 160. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/high_school/laramie_high/lhs-cross-country-girls-swimming-open-seasons-strong/article_ade55ab8-28ba-11ed-8e65-a7cbd83f345f.html | 2022-08-31T12:10:08Z |
WyoSports
CHEYENNE – Izzy DeLay’s goal sheet for this season didn’t survive the first weekend of the girls swimming and diving season.
The Cheyenne Central junior blew her goals out of the water en route to winning the individual title at the Gillette Pentathlon on Saturday. She finished with a combined time of 4 minutes, 36.95 seconds, which was nearly three seconds faster than Green River freshman Tavia Arnell.
DeLay’s efforts helped the Indians win the team title at the meet, and also earned her Prep Athlete of the Week honors from WyoSports’ Cheyenne staff.
“My standards are going to have to be set higher than I thought,” DeLay said. “I didn’t sell myself short, but I had an idea of what range I wanted to be. Now I know where I’m at.
“I definitely surprised myself a little. I thought I would be closer to everyone else. I still have bigger goals and achievements I want to get.”
The pentathlon consisted of 100-yard races in the freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly, and a 50-yard freestyle. DeLay had the fastest times in the 100 freestyle (55.16 seconds) and 100 breaststroke (1 minutes, 7.98 seconds). She matched Kelly Walsh sophomore Chayse Schierkolk for the fastest 50 free time (25.30).
DeLay’s times in the 100 backstroke (1:04.44) and 100 fly (1:04.07) were both fourth.
Central coach Josh Bott said he gives meet organizers his athletes’ times from the previous year’s season-opening pentathlon for seeding purposes. DeLay was nearly nine seconds faster this past weekend than she was at last fall’s Laramie Pentathlon. She also won the 100 breaststroke at that meet. Her time in that event Saturday was nearly three seconds faster than 2021.
In fact, DeLay’s time in the 100 breaststroke was a hair more than a second faster than the time she recorded during last year’s state finals when she was tapered and rested.
“She was already a great all-around swimmer,” Bott said. “But I don’t think she has a weak link anymore. She’s right up there with all those girls in all those events because she’s worked really hard at all her strokes.
“She works year-round, does a lot in the weight room and has gone to big meets to get experience.”
Delay is a two-time state runner-up in the 100 breaststroke. She also placed second in the 200 individual medley last season and third in the 200 IM as a freshman.
DeLay prides herself on being strong in all events, which is why she spent so much time honing the backstroke during the off-season.
“That was my weakest stroke,” DeLay said. “I knew I needed to push myself harder than I was and focus on the little things I needed to work on. The biggest issue was tempo, and that showed in my races.
“I had a slow tempo, and I was grabbing water more than I was moving. I sped up the tempo and did a better job of getting through the water. I’m doing a better job of staying consistent with my power and matching my kick.”
DeLay was named the top swimmer in the 15- to 16-year-old women’s division at the Wyoming summer state club meet. There, she won the 100 breaststroke, 400 IM and 200 breaststroke. She finished second in the 200 IM and 100 backstroke, and third in the 100 free and 50 free. DeLay also captured fourth in the 100 butterfly.
Her efforts at summer state earned her a spot at Western Zones. DeLay also competed in USA Swimming Four Corners sectional meet in Austin, Texas. She said she enjoys those meets because it gives her the opportunity to test herself against higher level competition.
“It shows what I can do against more than people in my state,” she said. “It keeps me motivated.”
Motivation is rarely, if ever, a problem for DeLay, Bott said. That’s why he is so confident she can reach most goals she sets this season.
“We’re going to train hard, put our nose to the grindstone and make sure she’s getting challenged every night,” he said. “It’s good that we’re getting so many other strong swimmers on the team because they’re providing good competition for her in practice.”
Others recognized for their efforts include:
n Mike Ellison and Owen Black, boys tennis, Cheyenne Central: The Indians’ No. 1 doubles team went 2-0 on the week with wins over Laramie and Cheyenne East.
n Gracin Goff, Elysiana Fonseca, Boden Liljedahl, Janie Merritt and Bradie Schlabs, volleyball, Cheyenne East: Goff, a junior, dished out 47 assists to help the Lady Thunderbirds go 1-4 at the Cheyenne Invitational.
Fonseca posted 30 kills and 18 blocks. Liljedahl added 56 digs. Merritt notched 42 digs and 21 kills. Schlabs dished out 69 assists to go with 31 digs.
n Cam Hayes and Drew Jackson, football, East: Hayes, a junior, completed 13 of 19 passes for 272 yards and three touchdowns during the Thunderbirds’ 47-28 win over Campbell County.
Jackson, a junior, rushed for 100 yards and a touchdown on 10, and caught five passes for 109 yards. He also posted five solo tackles and snared an interception.
n Sydney Morrell, girls cross-country, Central: The senior won the Horizon Invitational title with a time of 18 minutes, 22.69 seconds to help the Lady Indians win the team title.
n Damien Pino and Matthew Rivera, football, Cheyenne South: Pino posted 13 tackles (11 solo) during the Bison’s 42-0 loss at Thunder Basin on Friday in Gillette.
Rivera added 13 tackles (12 solo) and an interception.
n Sydni Sawyer, girls swimming, East: The junior won two events at Friday’s Rawlins Invitational and placed second in the Rawlins Pentathlon on Saturday.
n Ashli Smedley and Hailey Mathis-Breitkopf, girls tennis, Central: Smedley, the No. 1 singles player, was 2-0. That included a three-set victory against Laramie.
Mathis-Breitkopf also went 2-0. Both of her wins were 6-0, 6-0 triumphs.
n Sylvia Thomas, volleyball, Central: Thomas dished out 62 assists to help the Lady Indians go 1-4 at the Cheyenne Invitational.
Jeremiah Johnke is the WyoSports editor. He can be reached at jjohnke@wyosports.net or 307-633-3137. Follow him on Twitter at @jjohnke. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/high_school/prep_athlete/success-has-centrals-izzy-delay-reassessing-her-goals/article_b9bb607a-28a2-11ed-ad1b-7f7d6894b71f.html | 2022-08-31T12:10:14Z |
Regional Overview
The weather for the rest of the week and into the Labor Day weekend holiday looks great for getting outdoors. Thunderstorms could crop up today, but then that potential decreases and the chance for rain is low on through the weekend. Winds might increase daily by mid-day, but will still remain light. Temperatures will be warm and even hot at the lower elevations. That means the angling is best early and late in the day. Overnight temperatures are feeling fall-like at the higher elevations. If camping is your plan this weekend, plan for cool temperatures in the evenings and mornings.
Ranking Categories
H (One fish): to ensure fish dinner go to the local grocery store
HHHHH (Five fish): toss a line and get a fish; the fish aren’t picky
Granite, Crystal and North Crow reservoirs
HHH
The buzz: The fishing is good and is expected to take off even more when cooler weather arrives. It’s an excellent time of year to enjoy some late season camping with more elbowroom. There is a cyanobacterial bloom advisory at the west causeway of Granite Reservoir.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Nightcrawlers
Salmon eggs
Panther martin spinners
Renegades
Adams
Halfbacks
Midges
Ants
Sloans and Absarraca lakes
HH½
The buzz: The fishing is good but remains best early and late. Anglers report having some nice action in the middle of the day when there’s cloud cover.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Worms
Powerbait
Salmon eggs
Marshmallows
Adams
Copper Johns
Renegades
Pole Mountain
HHH
The buzz: The fishing action is fairly lively for the ponds that have good water levels. Plan to hike to the more remote ponds for the best action. The aspen are just starting to turn with a few patches of gold and red appearing already.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Nightcrawlers
Orange scuds
Lightning bugs
Bead head prince nymphs
Elk hair caddis
Grasshoppers
Renegade
Adams
Laramie Plains lakes
HH½
The buzz: The fishing is good across the basin. The action is best at Meebour while it’s also doing quite well at Twin Buttes where the brown trout are getting frisky as they head into the spawning season. There are good reports from Lake Hattie, too, with the best action out on boats. It might be best to avoid Leazenby Lake due to the cyanobacterial bloom advisory there.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Bead head prince nymphs
Bead head hare’s ears
Hot head leeches
Snapping craw
Gisha girl
Circus peanut
Laramie River
HH
The buzz: The river is running quite low by the time it gets to Laramie, but hunt for the deeper pools for some brown trout action.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Bead head prince nymphs
Girdle bugs
Drake bombs
Sparkle worms
Griffith’s gnat
Elk hair caddis
Thin mints
Snowy Range
HHH½
The buzz: The fishing is good to very good all across the Medicine Bow Mountains. Both Lake Owen and Rob Roy Reservoir are fishing well. Expect the brook trout to start moving into the shallows as temperatures continue to drop.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Nightcrawlers
Panther martins
Elk hair caddis
Miracle mile peanut
Vanilla buggers
Bead head zug bugs
North Platte River and Encampment River – Saratoga Valley
HH½
The buzz: The North Platte River is running quite low, as is the Encampment River. The fishing is good in the mornings, but slows by mid-day. The tricos are starting to dwindle but the blue-winged olives are increasing. Get out early or late in the day for the best results.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Tricos
Grasshoppers
Drowned tricos
Mayhems
Possie buggers
Goldies
UV leech
Barr emergers
Bead-head prince nymphs
North Platte River – Grey Reef
HHH½
The buzz: The action at Grey Reef is very good. Grasshoppers are the hot ticket. The flow is steady around 2,500 cubic feet per second and is coming into prime shape for fall angling.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
San Juan worms
Copper Johns
Squirrel nymphs
Hare’s ears
Elk hair caddis
Parachute Adams
Trico spinners
Grasshoppers
North Platte River – Miracle Mile
HHH
The buzz: The Mile is fishing well, but is not as hot as Grey Reef. There is more elbowroom, though, so it is a great option to fish the North Platte with a little solitude. Flows are around 500 cubic feet per second, making for good wading conditions.
Suggested bait, lures and flies:
Pat’s rubber legs
Red and purple San Juan worms
Purple Q-tips
Flash bang midges
Hoppers
Tricos
Bread n’ butter buggers
Circus peanuts
Wheatland Reservoir No. 3
HH
The buzz: The fishing is on the slow side with the water level low. The boat ramp is still usable, though, and those out on boats are having the best luck. An algal bloom is reported at the reservoir and it is most prominent in protected areas. Just keep an eye out to avoid areas where the floating algae are present.
Suggest bait, lures and flies:
Nightcrawlers
Marshmallows
Woolly worms and buggers (brown, black or olive)
Adams
Halfbacks
Midges
Ants
Glendo
HH½
The buzz: The water level continues to drop at Glendo, as is typical this time of year. Usable boat ramps remain at Reno Cove low water, Whiskey Gulch low water, and the Marina ramps. An algal bloom advisory is still in place and is expected to remain until fall brings cooler temperatures. Be on the lookout, but if you don’t see any blooms the water is safe for people and pets.
Suggest bait, lures and flies:
Bottom bouncers
Nightcrawlers on worm harnesses
Shad raps in perch and shad
Crankbaits
Blood baits (for catfish in the liver and beef flavors)
Vertical jigging
Grayrocks Reservoir
HH½
The buzz: The walleye fishing is picking up, but remains on the slow side in the middle of the day. Those angling for catfish are having decent action using blood baits.
Suggest bait, lures and flies:
Worm harnesses with leeches
Nightcrawlers on worm harnesses (gold, silver, burnt orange blades)
Blood baits for catfish (chicken, liver, beef and cheese flavors)
Hawk Springs
HH½
The buzz: Both the walleye and catfish action continues to improve. Go early or late in the day for the best results.
Suggest bait, lures and flies:
Worm harnesses with leeches
Nightcrawlers with worm harnesses (gold, silver, burnt orange blades)
Blood baits (for catfish in the liver and beef flavors)
Cheese
Reservoir levels
Alcova: 98.0% full
Boysen: 90.3% full
Guernsey: 63.0% full
Glendo: 27.4% full
Grey Reef: 87.8% full
Keyhole: 64.6% full
Pathfinder: 33.4% full
Seminoe: 51.9% full
River flows
North Platte River at Northgate: 116 cubic feet per second
North Platte River above Seminoe Reservoir: 245 cfs
North Platte River near Miracle Mile: 542 cfs
North Platte River at Gray Reef: 2,499 cfs
Encampment River near town of Encampment: 28 cfs
Encampment River at Hog Park: 26 cfs
Laramie River near Laramie: 18 cfs
Boat ramp openings
Glendo Reservoir: The Marina, Reno Cove and Whiskey Gulch ramps are open.
Guernsey Reservoir: All ramps are open.
Boysen Reservoir: All ramps are open.
Seminoe Reservoir: All ramps are open. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/other_sports/community/fishing-report-for-aug-31-2022/article_a4cc463c-2881-11ed-a269-f32c3c3a33b3.html | 2022-08-31T12:10:16Z |
WyoSports
LARAMIE – Optimism that the University of Wyoming had turned a corner in the passing game was swiftly put to rest in last week’s season opener at Illinois.
The Cowboys’ inability to move the ball through the air was apparent in the numbers of junior signal-caller Andrew Peasley, who completed 5 of 20 passes for 30 yards, no touchdowns and an interception, while recording a passer rating of 27.6 during a 38-6 loss. For comparison, UConn’s team passer rating of 92.2 was the worst in the FBS last season.
As glaring as these struggles were, however, they certainly don’t fall solely on Peasley’s shoulders.
While Peasley had issues with accuracy, his receivers also struggled with getting separation against Illinois’ man-heavy coverage, with UW coach Craig Bohl noting Monday that “you would have had to have been Aaron Rodgers to throw a couple of those passes.” According to Pro Football Focus, the Cowboys dropped three on-target passes, while going 0 for 5 in contested catch opportunities.
Sophomore wideout Joshua Cobbs, who was UW’s leading receiver with two catches for 14 yards last week, says his position group can help Peasley by playing more instinctively and doing a better job of paying attention to what pre-snap looks the defense gives them. With the offensive line not allowing a sack all game, Cobbs is encouraged by the potential of the passing game, and knows that his position group must elevate its level of play.
“I’ll just come out and say it, we didn’t do our job as a receiving corps,” Cobbs said. “Me specifically, I’ll be the first to admit when we need to do some things better. It’s great to see our offensive line is doing a great job, and we have to do our job.”
With tight end being the most experienced position on the offense – all of the group’s 2021 contributors are back – the Cowboys hinted at the possibility of the tight ends playing a more pivotal role in the passing game. Through one game, though, this hasn’t been the case.
Treyton Welch accounted for the Pokes’ only two targets to the tight ends. One of these resulted in a four-yard reception, while the other came on a jump ball in the end zone that was ruled incomplete.
“It’s tough,” Welch said. “Our coaches have a game plan for us, and we follow it with our hearts. I know some guys want to be able to make plays. They gave me a shot in the end zone, and I didn’t end up with it, so it’s one of those things where I need to make those plays first before I ask for more. But I would love to get more opportunities to be able to make a play.”
While it’s possible last week’s woeful performance was a byproduct of an offensive unit that lost more than half of its starters having its first test come against a Big Ten defense, recent history doesn’t spur much optimism.
Ever since star quarterback Josh Allen left for the NFL draft after the 2017 season, the Cowboys’ passing production has been nothing short of abysmal.
Gaudy throwing numbers aren’t to be expected in a run-first offense, but few – if any – passing attacks have been less efficient than UW’s in recent years. The Pokes have completed less than half of their passes since Allen’s departure, and are now on their fourth starting quarterback in five seasons, with the previous three transferring out of the program.
From 2018-21, UW posted a season completion rate below 50% three times. Excluding service academies and Georgia Tech, which was still running the triple-option in 2018 and 2019, only 10 other programs finished a year under 50% passing – and none did so more than once – during this span.
Once considered the outlier, spread offenses have now become the norm in college football. This revolution has coincided with increased efficiency at the quarterback position.
According to ESPN, the top 50 quarterbacks in 1999 averaged a 132.6 passer rating and 59% completion rate. In 2019, the top 50 quarterbacks had increased their average passer rating to 154.1, while completing 65% of their attempts.
The Cowboys have incorporated more spread concepts in recent years, but the traditional running game is still the bread and butter of their pro-style attack. Regardless of ongoing struggles in the passing game, though, Bohl shot down the notion that UW’s style of play isn’t setting his quarterbacks up for success.
“I can tell you the elements of our passing game – the route trees and all those things – there’s a whole gamut there, and we try to pattern that to what we can do well,” Bohl said. “We do run a pro-style offense, so there’s more sets and shifts and motions. A lot of the reads (are similar), but some things are different. The production in the throwing game, has it been frustrating? Yeah, and we made a point to improve that.
“Quite frankly, going into this game, I was more excited to see us stay on the field and be more accurate and competent than what we were. First-game jitters or whatever. Am I concerned about the long-term trajectory? No, we’re on the right path, but we have a short week to get it corrected. I’m disappointed, I would say that.”
Josh Criswell{span} covers the University of Wyoming for WyoSports. He can be reached at jcriswell@wyosports.net or 307-755-3325. Follow him on Twitter at @criswell_sports.{/span} | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/university_of_wyoming/uw-s-passing-problems-about-more-than-qb-play/article_0c7f4b52-28a1-11ed-b118-abc006532fe0.html | 2022-08-31T12:10:22Z |
President Biden is trying to use his support for gun safety measures to counter Republican midterm election messaging that Democrats are soft on crime.
Copyright 2022 NPR
President Biden is trying to use his support for gun safety measures to counter Republican midterm election messaging that Democrats are soft on crime.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/biden-is-turning-the-tables-on-republicans-by-calling-them-soft-on-crime | 2022-08-31T12:28:40Z |
The Justice Department pushed back on claims from former President Donald Trump. And the DOJ provided new evidence about possible obstruction of the probe into top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The Justice Department pushed back on claims from former President Donald Trump. And the DOJ provided new evidence about possible obstruction of the probe into top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/doj-reveals-more-evidence-of-obstruction-in-mar-a-lago-probe | 2022-08-31T12:28:46Z |
Han Solo's Blaster from Star Wars Auctions for Over $1 Million Published August 31, 2022 at 6:05 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 0:28 The blaster gun used by Harrison Ford was sold at an auction for firearm collectors at The Rock Island Auction Company. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/han-solos-blaster-from-star-wars-auctions-for-over-1-million | 2022-08-31T12:28:52Z |
Wrestling in gravy is back! After being canceled due to the pandemic, dozens of amateur wrestlers can once again enter the pool of gravy for their two-minute bouts.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Wrestling in gravy is back! After being canceled due to the pandemic, dozens of amateur wrestlers can once again enter the pool of gravy for their two-minute bouts.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/the-world-gravy-wrestling-championship-in-england-returns | 2022-08-31T12:28:58Z |
NPR speaks with U.S. Special Envoy for Food Security Cary Fowler about the first shipments of Ukrainian grain to arrive in East Africa since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR speaks with U.S. Special Envoy for Food Security Cary Fowler about the first shipments of Ukrainian grain to arrive in East Africa since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/ukrainian-grain-is-arriving-in-east-africa-for-the-first-time-since-russia-invaded | 2022-08-31T12:29:04Z |
In romantic love, I've often wielded disillusionment as armor. This conditioning emerged after a series of breakups that followed a familiar pattern: An incorrigible partner, unwilling to open themselves to the vulnerability required for honest love, deserted me. They remained physically present, but emotionally recoiled. At first, I imagined that I could convince them to return, showering them with care and affection, my caretaking impulse activated. In this dance, I was pliant and obliging, fantasizing about the promise of reciprocated, full love. But when they eventually left me behind, I turned on my body. I learned how to harden and detach, cooling my blood to love. The longer I was callous, the more impenetrable I became. I believed that disaffection could protect me from the threat of abandonment.
When love has unraveled like this, I've often found comfort in boleros. I've come to understand that their anguish carries a clandestine knowledge about how to soothe the afterburns of heartbreak. That wisdom exists in many songs by La Lupe, the Afro-Cuban icon who was known for tearing at her hair, shrieking at the top of her lungs and kicking off her shoes during ecstatic performances. But it's especially present in the beloved "La Tirana." It's there in her serrated lyrics, in the heaving gasps, guttural grunts and tortured asides that punctuate the song. "Según tu punto de vista / Yo soy la mala / Vampiresa en tu novela," she sings in the first verse ("In your point of view / I'm the bad one / The vamp in your drama"). A moment passes and she snickers. It's a knowing laugh, the kind that restores power to its keeper. In it, there is a reminder: I am devastated now, but this heartbreak will one day grant me resolve. "El día en que te dejé / Fui yo quien salió ganando," she belts at the end of the song. The day I left you, I was the one who came out winning.
In the classic boleros of artists like La Lupe, Olga Guillot and Toña La Negra, sorrow becomes a cradle of power — a vessel for intimacy, compassion and trust. Their defiance has endured in a new wave of artists who are reimagining the form, such as Xenia Rubinos, Kali Uchis, Mon Laferte and dozens of others. In their reappraisal, there emerges a once camouflaged kind of gendered rebellion. The dissent of their forebears isn't just reanimated, it's sharpened for a new generation. They remind us that boleros can be insurgent: potent refusals to genuflect to the quotidian cruelties and deceptions of the patriarchy.
The bolero has circulated across both national and musical borders, but its story begins in the Caribbean. In the late 19th century, Afro-Cuban troubadours from Santiago de Cuba sang romantic lyrics over the strums of their guitars, eventually bringing their compositions to Havana. The genre later traveled to the nearby Yucatán peninsula, most likely via Cuban artists who traversed the 135-mile strait connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. In the late 1920s, it spread to the Mexican capital, and in the decades that followed expanded across Latin America. Novel iterations of the genre incorporated elements of modernist poetry and new instruments like the piano, and standardized formats such as the trio. By the 1950s, the bolero had exploded commercially, thanks in part to celebrated composers and groups like Agustín Lara, Los Panchos and Trio Matamoros.
This time around, most of the composers are women. Their messages of refusal are more apparent, finally unobscured from the enigmatic veil of generations past.
Predictably, the most well-known bolero composers were men. The lovelorn stories they penned replicated familiar tropes: women described as cruel seductresses hellbent on destruction, or unattainable objects of obsessive, violent romance. If the vocalists were women themselves, their legacies often intersected with the torment they felt and performed, blurring the line between mythos and historical record. They became vague, depressive personas, representing the quintessential image of a hysterical, tragic diva: a woman consumed by her heartbreak.
But these women didn't view sadness as self-definition. They were insisting to be seen and held in their suffering. Perhaps that's not immediately detectable — at least, not in the recognizable way acts of liberation usually manifest. But listening to any woman in music requires peeling the layers off the audible surface. When immersed in the textures of boleros, you can hear that this grief isn't just a bottomless abyss. Here, there is a sense of fortitude. These women are wading through the morass of their pain, seeking the fearlessness and dignity that the patriarchy denies them on the other side.
A new crop of artists have refreshed the architecture of boleros, magnifying their melancholy for the contemporary moment. Sometimes, there is psychedelic haze, as on Adrián Quesada's recent anthology Boleros Psicodélicos. Other times, there are echoes of R&B, like the La Lupe and Los Zafiros covers on Kali Uchis' 2020 album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)∞. Or maybe the genre is filtered through prismatic, translucent vocal effects, as on Xenia Rubinos' "Ay Hombre." Culled from a fountain of influences, these new boleros function like living historical documents. They are syncretic archives, collecting all the embedded insight and aesthetic power of the genres they draw from. And this time around, most of the composers are women. Their messages of refusal are more apparent, finally unobscured from the enigmatic veil of generations past.
On "Ay Hombre," from Rubinos' 2021 album Una Rosa, the bolero is draped in a creeping organ, gloomy synths and the bleeding-heart guitar of Dominican musician Yasser Tejeda. Rubinos meditates on the estrangement of a former partner: "No pudiste darme la única cosa que pedí / Fue tu querer, fue tu querer," she sings ("You couldn't give me the only thing that I asked for / It was your love, it was your love.")
When Rubinos repeats the phrase "fue tu querer," the dirge pierces the body. This is the kind of heartbreak that crawls up the lungs, threatening to expand in the ribcage and burst in the throat. It throbs in the forehead, knocking and begging to be let out. Before long, an avowal of Rubinos' power arrives, as if summoned from La Lupe herself: "Llegará el día en que te vas a arrepentir / Nunca te atrevas a buscarme otra vez," she sings. The day will come when you'll regret it, she says. Don't you ever dare seek me out again.
The scholar Diana Taylor once wrote that "performances function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory and a sense of identity." In cultures impacted by colonial violence and Eurocentric assumptions about the supremacy of the written word, performances hold embodied knowledge. On "Ay Hombre," I hear Rubinos vivify the lessons of her antecedents. I hear the bolero amplified and refined by icy, spiked synth stabs and gauzy vocals, producing a kind of retrofuturist acuity about the catharsis and potential that sorrow can offer. In speaking and feeling through the grief, Rubinos renews the power that classic boleros have: the gift of always returning to ourselves, and resuming our place as the masters of our own desire.
I hear this wisdom on Girl Ultra's "rosas (dímelo)" too. On this slow-burning track, the Mexican singer-songwriter cuts and pastes her influences: deconstructed trip-hop, '90s R&B and, of course, classic Mexican boleros. It's a song about the process of facing a lover who's spurned you after you put it all on the line, who's turned your back on you even after you've given them all your roses. Girl Ultra wonders how she'll tell him about her desolation, as if reciting a mantra:
"¿Pero cómo te digo?
¿Cómo te digo?
¿Cómo te digo?
¿Cómo te digo?"
How can I tell you?
Feeling rejected and disillusioned in love can be universal, but it can be acute for the women and femmes who love men. Too often in these relationships, romantic love can be a game of power, not a practice of mutuality. And in a patriarchal world, the suppression of emotion and sentimentality are tools of domination. Feelings are seen as excessive, inappropriate and intolerable. We are taught to weaponize emotional distance and withdrawal to cope — to submerge sorrow and keep its head under water.
In a world that demands women and femmes swallow their pain, boleros dive into it, inverting the patriarchy's request for capitulation. The hurt is no longer something to stifle. It is not a call for resilience either, a facile expectation that places the onus of repair on the wounded and overshadows the reality that healing is a collective endeavor. An emphasis on individual resilience masks the source of the affliction, too: the fact that the patriarchy also bankrupts men's capacity to feel.
Suffocating in sorrow, building an identity around it and dooming ourselves to bitterness does not have to be the standard by which we experience love. "Que Sufras," a song by the Chicana artist (and my close friend) Doris Anahí, illustrates a similar truth. The visceral llanto appears on her recent EP, Aprendiendo por Las Malas. Its foundation is the bolero, but produced with elements of norteño and mariachi: wistful strings, a syrupy accordion and an aching horn section. It opens with a command: "Te gusta el dolor / Que sufras, pues," she croons ("You like pain / Well suffer, then"). The singer said she derived the lyric from a saying her mom repeats: "A los hombres les encanta sufrir, so déjenlos sufrir." Men love to suffer, so let them suffer.
The phrase "que sufras pues" isn't intended as an act of revenge. It's not about retaliation, it's just observational: if you refuse to receive love, she seems to say to men, it will only usher you into more misery. And under the surface, there's a warning for both her lover and herself. "How many times will I write this line?" she wonders in the song's final verse. Romantic anguish is inevitable, but trapping yourself in it over and over leaves permanent damage.
The Black feminist thinker bell hooks once wrote, "To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending." She understood that accepting despair as part of a loving practice is one way "to begin again on love's journey." It frees us from disconnection and fear, and reveals the radical possibilities of intimacy. But the responsibility to eradicate patriarchal harm in love is a shared one. As she asked in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love: "What will motivate males in a patriarchal culture who have been taught that to love emasculates them to change, to choose love, when the choice means that they must stand against patriarchy, against the tyranny of the familiar?"
Boleros are not just chronicles of the lives of abject divas, or rudimentary genre fusions. The artists reinventing the form sustain the fragments of another generation's learned tenderness and empathy. They join a genealogy of refusal, one that repels the patriarchal demand to constrict and conceal suffering. They call us toward discomfort – toward living in the truth of turmoil. By writing their own songs and collaging new genres, these musicians embolden the lessons of the past. Grief isn't always subtractive — sometimes, it can be generative. It can grant the kind of autonomy and self-knowledge that shepherds us toward collective liberation.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-03/reimagined-for-a-new-era-boleros-become-songs-of-gendered-rebellion | 2022-08-31T12:29:10Z |
Many of the individuals recently charged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' new election crimes unit told investigators they had no idea that with their felony convictions, they were unable to vote when they cast ballots in the 2020 election.
Their experiences shed new light on Florida's controversial program for felons to restore their voting rights.
In a press conference last week, DeSantis announced to a crowd of supporters that the election crimes unit was charging 20 people across the state with voting illegally.
DeSantis described the arrests as the "opening salvo" from the new election and security unit. State lawmakers passed legislation earlier this year, known as Senate Bill 524, that created the policing force. The legislation followed pressure from DeSantis for the state to spend more resources on combating alleged voter fraud, which experts say remains very rare in American elections.
"People weren't getting prosecuted," he said last week. "Before we proposed this [unit] there were examples of this stuff seeming to fall through the cracks."
State law permits felons to try to gain back their voting rights, but not after convictions for certain crimes.
"They were disqualified from voting because they have been convicted of either murder or sexual assault and they do not have the right to vote," DeSantis said of the 20 people charged. "They have been disenfranchised under Florida law."
According to court documents, though, some of the 20 individuals told law enforcement officials that they thought they were able to vote when they cast ballots.
David Christopher Dana in Broward County, just north of Miami, told law enforcement agents in early August, according to an affidavit seeking his arrest, that he filled out a voter registration form "to see if his right to vote had been restored." The 58-year-old, who was convicted of a felony sex offense, later received a voter registration card, and then voted in person on Oct. 22, 2020.
Terry Hubbard, who was convicted in 1989 of sexual battery of a victim under 12 years old, told law enforcement that he registered to vote at the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office. Afterward, he was sent "a ballot and a letter in the mail stating he was eligible to vote," according to court documents. The 64-year-old then returned the mail ballot.
Advocates see a broken system
Florida voting rights advocates say these prosecutions are the result of the state's failure to create a system where individuals and election officials can easily verify whether someone has the right to vote after serving time for a felony conviction.
Some local election officials have told media outlets, including Politico, that counties forward voter registrations to the state, which is supposed to have statewide databases to cross-reference for eligibility.
In 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot measure so that the state would automatically restore the voting rights of people with prior felony convictions — except for people who committed murder or a felony sex offense. But during the following legislative session, the state legislature stepped in and passed legislation that required these returning citizens to fulfill every part of their sentence, including paying any fees or fines, in order to regain voting rights.
Nicholas Warren, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida, says state lawmakers essentially created a "pay to vote" system, but they never created a way for these individuals to figure out how much they owe or if they owe anything at all.
"There is no simple way for a person who is coming out of their felony sentence to check whether they are eligible to vote," he told NPR. "And the rules are very complicated in Florida."
Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, says his group has been asking state officials to solve this issue for years now.
"We need to make sure that our data management system on the front end works in a way that gives assurances and clarity around the eligibility," he said.
Volz says voters should also be able to trust the state when they are issued a voter registration card. "It leads to the question of, if you can't count on the government to tell you if you are eligible to vote, then who can you count on?"
Advocates also say the state shouldn't be prosecuting individuals who say they didn't know they were unable to vote, because, Volz said, Florida law requires "the state to prove that someone willfully, intentionally, knowingly registered or voted while knowing that they were ineligible."
In reality, though, the ACLU's Warren says these kinds of cases play out differently than what the law intends. Like with most criminal prosecutions, those charged face a lot of pressure to plead guilty in order to avoid a jury trial.
"That's why we have seen some of the recent prosecutions of folks who by all accounts really genuinely did not know that they were ineligible when they registered and voted," he said. "They were even registered to vote in registration drives conducted by election officials."
Volz says these prosecutions come with significant human costs. The 20 individuals face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. He says he hopes these charges become a catalyst for state officials to finally solve this problem.
"We need to focus on solving this problem together rather than turning this into a political punching bag and using the lives of real people — real citizens in Florida — to play politics," he said.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-27/20-were-charged-for-voter-fraud-in-florida-advocates-say-a-broken-system-is-to-blame | 2022-08-31T12:29:17Z |
Baby Hope celebrates first ‘birthday’, collecting donations for Valley families
HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - A year ago, Hope Distributed in Harrisonburg began the Baby Hope program. Since then, the Valley organization has helped around 30 babies per month and their families with essentials like diapers, bottles, and clothes.
Leaders with the organization said on the first day of the program staff received 47 requests from families in need.
Over the last year, a team of volunteers has coordinated pickup and delivery services for families.
“It’s great to know that we’re able to help these moms, grandmas, dads, even great aunts be able to have the necessities that they need to raise happy and healthy little ones,” Baby Hope Administrator Ellen Braun said.
Braun says along with the Baby Hope program, she and other staff are glad to provide a type of ‘one-stop-shop’ for everything they need, as there is also a food pantry and clothing closet on site.
To celebrate their first ‘birthday’, Baby Hope is asking for ‘gift’ donations through September 8th.
Braun says diapers for older ages like pull-ups, along with bath items like bubble bath and baby-safe soap are among the items they need the most.
If you’d like to volunteer or donate to Baby Hope or any other Hope Distributed programs, you can find more information here.
Copyright 2022 WHSV. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/baby-hope-celebrates-first-birthday-collecting-donations-valley-families/ | 2022-08-31T13:06:20Z |
Valley Program for Aging Services helping those with dementia through art
HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - After opening the class with a song, Kathy Guisewite, Caregivers Community Network Coordinator with Valley Program for Aging Services instructs participants to put on their aprons.
“This is an arts program designed specifically for people who are living with some type of cognitive concern or dementia, and the goal is to not only have fun creating art together but to build rapport between the volunteer and the artist,” Guisewite said.
Opening Minds Through Art is a program used around the country, and was founded in 2007 at Miami University (Ohio) by Dr. Elizabeth Lokon.
Volunteers, like family members or caregivers, pair up with artists to create abstract pieces during the hour-long sessions.
“We have husband and wife teams participating this go-round as well as a friend who’s participating. The volunteer is just simply a guide, and allows the process to unfold,” Guisewite explained.
Teams like 93-year-old Margaret Horn and her friend of nearly 30 years, Ada, who have spent once a week over the last month making abstract art which she says she has grown to love.
“The being here, the opportunity to be together. And to create and the challenges that are here,” Horn said.
Guisewite says the program also can provide a time for caregivers to relax and have fun.
“Sometimes they come in and I can tell they’ve had a busy morning getting ready to try and come here and you can see shoulders dropping and joy rising,” she explained.
Though the four-week session was only a ‘pilot’ session, Guisewite hopes to continue Opening Minds Through Art and expand the groups to different organizations in the near future.
“Like I say we’re building rapport between the artist and the volunteer and it’s a beautiful experience for everyone who participates,” Guisewite said.
Copyright 2022 WHSV. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/valley-program-aging-services-helping-those-with-dementia-through-art/ | 2022-08-31T13:06:27Z |
Bed Bath & Beyond announces layoffs, store closures
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond plunged in premarket trading after the struggling home goods retailer announced a restructuring that includes store closures, layoffs and a stock offering.
The company said it has obtained more than $500 million of new financing and was reducing 20% of its workforce. It also plans to close about 150 namesake stores but will keep its buybuy Baby chain.
The retailer said Wednesday in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it may offer, issue and sell shares of its common stock from time to time. It plans to use the proceeds to pay down its debt, among other uses.
Bed Bath & Beyond, based in Union, New Jersey, has been facing lots of turbulence recently. In mid-August, shareholder activist Ryan Cohen, the billionaire co-founder of online pet-products retailer Chewy Inc., sold his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond after buying a big stake just months before and pledging to make big changes.
In June, Bed Bath & Beyond’s CEO was ousted amid slumping sales and supply chain issues.
Board member Sue Gove took over as interim CEO, replacing Mark Tritton. Bed Bath & Beyond hired Tritton in late 2019. He’d previously been the chief merchandising officer at Target where the more than 30 new brands he introduced were key in that company’s revitalization.
The company said that it is still searching for a permanent CEO. Chief Operating Office John Hartmann is leaving the company, and it’s eliminating that position.
Shares fell more than 19%, or $2.37 to $9.74 in premarket trading on Wednesday, after closing down more than 9%, or $1.24 to $12.11 in regular markets Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/bed-bath-beyond-announces-layoffs-store-closures/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:07Z |
Ford recalls pickups, cars to fix cloudy rear camera lens
Published: Aug. 31, 2022 at 7:57 AM EDT|Updated: 2 hours ago
DETROIT (AP) — Ford is recalling more than 277,000 pickup trucks and cars in the U.S. because the rear view camera lens can get cloudy and reduce visibility for the driver.
The recall covers certain F-250, 350 and 450 trucks as well as the Lincoln Continental, all from the 2017 through 2020 model years. The recalled vehicles have a 360-degree camera system.
Ford says the anti-reflective lens on the cameras can degrade, causing a cloudy image. The company says it has more than 8,800 warranty reports in the U.S. due to the problem.
Dealers will replace the camera at no cost to owners. Ford will notify owners by letter starting Sept. 12.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/ford-recalls-pickups-cars-fix-cloudy-rear-camera-lens/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:10Z |
Jackson, Miss., residents travel to find clean water amid system problems
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT/Gray News) - The city has been under a boil water notice for more than a month. During that time, residents have had to boil their water before using it.
As a result, cases of bottled water have become hot commodities in Jackson. Residents lined up one by one at distribution sites trying to get their hands on a case.
“I’ve been in line maybe for almost an hour there are other things I could be doing,” said Patricia Watkins, who lives in Jackson.
Watkins was one of the hundreds in line. She said the water woes have caused a big inconvenience in her day-to-day routine.
She’s currently seeing low water pressure inside her South Jackson home.
“It’s been hard, especially when you have a family,” Watkins expressed. “Like right now, we just got one case. I mean, I am thankful, but you could have three or four or five people in your family,” Watkins said.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said Jackson’s water system is troubled by short staffing and “decades of deferred maintenance,” the Associated Press reported.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration request for the state of Mississippi on Tuesday, directing federal resources to the area.
Residents have been told their water isn’t safe to drink or give to their pets.
They’re also being told to only use bottled or boiled water just to brush their teeth.
However, some residents said they’ve been dealing with water woes in Jackson for decades.
“This has been an issue for me since I came down here to Tougaloo College in 1991, I was always told not to drink that water,” said Danyelle Holmes, who’s a national social justice organizer and a Jackson resident.
Holmes spent the day lending a hand at the different water giveaways, helping residents get safe drinkable water during the ongoing crisis.
She said she believes politics are being placed over people, which is contributing to this current problem.
She also said she believes Gov.Tate Reeves should’ve acted sooner to help fix this issue.
“If we were talking about Madison County or if we were talking about Rankin County, we would not see these issues,” Holmes said. “The extreme racist politics that are being played, placing politics before people, it has to stop, and it has to stop today. We have 175,000 residents or more who are impacted and lives are at jeopardy.”
There were two common sights at the bottled water giveaways: the first was hundreds of cars lining up to get the water, the second was many residents leaving empty-handed because the demand is so high that the cases of water ran out.
The water giveaways will take place all week.
Copyright 2022 WLBT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/jackson-miss-residents-travel-find-clean-water-amid-system-problems/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:11Z |
Paleontologists find remains of one of the largest dinosaurs
(CNN) - One of Europe’s largest dinosaurs has been discovered in Portugal.
According to researchers from the University of Lisbon, the owner of some private property in Pombal first discovered part of the fossil in 2017. That person contacted paleontologists at the University of Lisbon.
A team from the school began excavating the land, and earlier this month, the researchers recovered remains of hips that were 6.5 feet long.
Based on the size of the hips, paleontologists say the dinosaur was nearly 40 feet tall and more than 80 feet long.
The animal was a sauropod – a group of herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by having a long neck and tail.
Paleontologists say the dinosaur lived around 135 million years ago during the upper Jurassic period.
The researchers plan to continue excavating the property to look for more parts of the skeleton.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/paleontologists-find-remains-one-largest-dinosaurs/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:12Z |
Survey: Most Black Americans say focus on racial inequality hasn’t brought about improvements
(CNN) - Two-thirds of Black Americans said increased focus on race and racial inequality in the U.S. has not led to changes that are improving the lives of Black people, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
It comes after a 2020 survey found that 56% of Black adults felt the added attention following protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd would lead to positive changes.
But in the new survey, 65% of Black adults said such changes haven’t materialized.
Just 13% see it as extremely or very likely that Black people in the U.S. will achieve equality, which many say will require systemic changes.
There was little variation in that figure by age, gender, region or education level.
The Pew Research Center’s survey was conducted last fall and included more than 3,900 Black Americans.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/survey-most-black-americans-say-focus-racial-inequality-hasnt-brought-about-improvements/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:13Z |
Bed Bath & Beyond announces layoffs, store closures
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond plunged in premarket trading after the struggling home goods retailer announced a restructuring that includes store closures, layoffs and a stock offering.
The company said it has obtained more than $500 million of new financing and was reducing 20% of its workforce. It also plans to close about 150 namesake stores but will keep its buybuy Baby chain.
The retailer said Wednesday in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it may offer, issue and sell shares of its common stock from time to time. It plans to use the proceeds to pay down its debt, among other uses.
Bed Bath & Beyond, based in Union, New Jersey, has been facing lots of turbulence recently. In mid-August, shareholder activist Ryan Cohen, the billionaire co-founder of online pet-products retailer Chewy Inc., sold his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond after buying a big stake just months before and pledging to make big changes.
In June, Bed Bath & Beyond’s CEO was ousted amid slumping sales and supply chain issues.
Board member Sue Gove took over as interim CEO, replacing Mark Tritton. Bed Bath & Beyond hired Tritton in late 2019. He’d previously been the chief merchandising officer at Target where the more than 30 new brands he introduced were key in that company’s revitalization.
The company said that it is still searching for a permanent CEO. Chief Operating Office John Hartmann is leaving the company, and it’s eliminating that position.
Shares fell more than 19%, or $2.37 to $9.74 in premarket trading on Wednesday, after closing down more than 9%, or $1.24 to $12.11 in regular markets Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/bed-bath-beyond-announces-layoffs-store-closures/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:17Z |
Jackson, Miss., residents travel to find clean water amid system problems
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT/Gray News) - The city has been under a boil water notice for more than a month. During that time, residents have had to boil their water before using it.
As a result, cases of bottled water have become hot commodities in Jackson. Residents lined up one by one at distribution sites trying to get their hands on a case.
“I’ve been in line maybe for almost an hour there are other things I could be doing,” said Patricia Watkins, who lives in Jackson.
Watkins was one of the hundreds in line. She said the water woes have caused a big inconvenience in her day-to-day routine.
She’s currently seeing low water pressure inside her South Jackson home.
“It’s been hard, especially when you have a family,” Watkins expressed. “Like right now, we just got one case. I mean, I am thankful, but you could have three or four or five people in your family,” Watkins said.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said Jackson’s water system is troubled by short staffing and “decades of deferred maintenance,” the Associated Press reported.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration request for the state of Mississippi on Tuesday, directing federal resources to the area.
Residents have been told their water isn’t safe to drink or give to their pets.
They’re also being told to only use bottled or boiled water just to brush their teeth.
However, some residents said they’ve been dealing with water woes in Jackson for decades.
“This has been an issue for me since I came down here to Tougaloo College in 1991, I was always told not to drink that water,” said Danyelle Holmes, who’s a national social justice organizer and a Jackson resident.
Holmes spent the day lending a hand at the different water giveaways, helping residents get safe drinkable water during the ongoing crisis.
She said she believes politics are being placed over people, which is contributing to this current problem.
She also said she believes Gov.Tate Reeves should’ve acted sooner to help fix this issue.
“If we were talking about Madison County or if we were talking about Rankin County, we would not see these issues,” Holmes said. “The extreme racist politics that are being played, placing politics before people, it has to stop, and it has to stop today. We have 175,000 residents or more who are impacted and lives are at jeopardy.”
There were two common sights at the bottled water giveaways: the first was hundreds of cars lining up to get the water, the second was many residents leaving empty-handed because the demand is so high that the cases of water ran out.
The water giveaways will take place all week.
Copyright 2022 WLBT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/jackson-miss-residents-travel-find-clean-water-amid-system-problems/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:24Z |
UN weather agency predicts rare ‘triple-dip’ La Nina in 2022
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency is predicting that the phenomenon known as La Nina is poised to last through the end of this year, a mysterious “triple dip” — the first this century — caused by three straight years of its effect on climate patterns like drought and flooding worldwide.
The World Meteorological Organization on Wednesday said La Nina conditions, which involve a large-scale cooling of ocean surface temperatures, have strengthened in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific with an increase in trade winds in recent weeks.
The agency’s top official was quick to caution that the “triple dip” doesn’t mean global warming is easing.
“It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a La Nina event. Its cooling influence is temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures, but it will not halt or reverse the long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said.
La Nina is a natural and cyclical cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, as opposed to warming caused by the better-known El Nino — an opposite phenomenon. La Nina often leads to more Atlantic hurricanes, less rain and more wildfires in the western United States, and agricultural losses in the central U.S.
Studies have shown La Nina is more expensive to the United States than the El Nino.
Together El Nino, La Nina and the neutral condition are called ENSO, which stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation, and they have one of the largest natural effects on climate, at times augmenting and other times dampening the big effects of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, scientists say.
___
Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/un-weather-agency-predicts-rare-triple-dip-la-nina-2022/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:27Z |
Paleontologists find remains of one of the largest dinosaurs
(CNN) - One of Europe’s largest dinosaurs has been discovered in Portugal.
According to researchers from the University of Lisbon, the owner of some private property in Pombal first discovered part of the fossil in 2017. That person contacted paleontologists at the University of Lisbon.
A team from the school began excavating the land, and earlier this month, the researchers recovered remains of hips that were 6.5 feet long.
Based on the size of the hips, paleontologists say the dinosaur was nearly 40 feet tall and more than 80 feet long.
The animal was a sauropod – a group of herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by having a long neck and tail.
Paleontologists say the dinosaur lived around 135 million years ago during the upper Jurassic period.
The researchers plan to continue excavating the property to look for more parts of the skeleton.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/paleontologists-find-remains-one-largest-dinosaurs/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:31Z |
US: Prison chaplain used faith and fear to abuse inmates
(AP) - Behind a closed chapel office door inside a federal women’s prison in California, a chaplain forced inmates seeking his spiritual guidance to have sex with him — exploiting their faith and their powerlessness behind bars for his own gratification, prosecutors said.
James Theodore Highhouse, who pleaded guilty in February and is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday, would tell women he abused at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, that everyone in the Bible had sex and that God wanted them to be together, prosecutors said.
Highhouse, an Army veteran, pressured one inmate into having intercourse with him on Veterans Day by telling her she needed to serve her country and on Thanksgiving by telling her she needed to show her gratitude for him, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors are seeking a 10-year prison sentence for Highhouse, who’s among five workers at the Bay Area lockup charged in the last 14 months with sexually abusing inmates.
In a sentencing memorandum, they implored a judge to deviate from federal guidelines, which call for less than three years in prison, and deliver “a just punishment for this particularly vile conduct.”
While Highhouse, 49, was charged only with abusing one inmate, prosecutors say he engaged in predatory conduct with at least six women from 2014 to 2019 — including one he counseled at a veterans hospital where he worked before joining the federal Bureau of Prisons, where allegations were routinely ignored.
“Highhouse ruined my life — he truly did,” one inmate said in a victim impact statement. “I don’t even go to Church anymore because of him. I have no trust in the Church and really, I don’t trust anyone because of what he did.”
Highhouse, enabled by a toxic culture of abuse and coverups at the prison — known to many as the “rape club” — warned victims not to report him, telling one of them “no one will believe you because you’re an inmate, and I’m a chaplain,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
At the same time, prosecutors wrote, a prison counselor would rail about inmates “snitching” on employees, suggesting they instead “tell Trump about it,” referring to then-President Donald Trump.
Highhouse’s lawyers are seeking a two-year prison sentence, the low end of the 24 months to 30 months recommended in federal guidelines.
In their sentencing memorandum, Highhouse’s lawyers noted that he served as an Army chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan, is seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder and spends time caring for his elderly mother after his father’s death earlier this year. He has no prior criminal history and accepts responsibility for his crimes, they wrote.
“He fully regrets the pain he caused the victim in this case, as well as the other people in his life,” Highhouse’s lawyers wrote, calling his actions “a grave mistake.”
Federal probation officers who conducted a pre-sentence investigation and interviewed Highhouse recommended a seven-year prison sentence, writing that Highhouse characterized his abuse as an “inappropriate relationship” and blamed his conduct on marital problems.
All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.
Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation revealed years of sexual misconduct at FCI Dublin, including allegations against the prison’s former warden. The AP also detailed steps that were taken to keep abuse secret, such as ignoring allegations, retaliating against whistleblowers and sending prisoners to solitary confinement or other prisons for reporting abuse.
After the AP’s reporting, a task force of senior federal prison officials descended on Dublin, meeting with staff and inmates and pledging to fix problems and change the culture. On Wednesday, as Highhouse is being sentenced in federal court in Oakland, new federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters is scheduled to visit Dublin for a status update.
Highhouse is the first of the five charged Dublin employees to reach the sentencing phase.
Enrique Chavez, a food service foreman, is expected to plead guilty on Sept. 14. Ross Klinger, a recycling technician, pleaded guilty in February but has yet to be sentenced.
The former warden, Ray J. Garcia, was recently charged with abusing two additional inmates, for a total of seven counts involving three victims. He pleaded not guilty to the initial charges against him and is scheduled to go on trial in November.
John Russell Bellhouse, a prison safety administrator, is scheduled to stand trial next June.
Highhouse pleaded guilty on Feb. 23 to two counts of sexual abuse of a ward, two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of making false statements to federal agents.
All of the charges stem from allegations Highhouse repeatedly abused a female prisoner over a nine-month span in 2018 and 2019.
That woman said in a victim impact statement that she cried herself to sleep after testifying before a grand jury about Highhouse’s abuse.
“I felt so lost, hopeless, worthless, and betrayal and truly do not know what to do or who to talk to about my problems,” the woman wrote.
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.
Other allegations against Highhouse, previously kept quiet by Dublin officials, came to light during the investigation, prosecutors said.
Two inmates said Highhouse claimed to them that he was a sex therapist, asked graphic questions about their sex lives and offered to let them have sex in his office, prosecutors said. One of them said Highhouse leered at her when she got out of the shower and had a reputation as a “predator.”
Another inmate told investigators that she avoided Highhouse after he made suggestive remarks during a counseling session, such as suggesting that the commissary sell sex toys.
In May, an inmate now incarcerated at another federal prison facility reported that Highhouse raped her multiple times in his chapel office after she sought him out for counseling, prosecutors said.
“He took my ability to sleep at night and he took my ability to trust in the Church,” the inmate wrote in a victim impact statement. “I would never go back to Church. I’m constantly on alert. He played on my vulnerability and took advantage of me — I have nightmares.”
The inmate said that she attempted to report the abuse but that when she did, a prison officer shrugged and reminded her that she would soon be transferring out of Dublin.
“To me the BOP is an epic fail in terms of the way they handle PREA,” the inmate wrote, referring to the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. “The system is flawed and broken.” ___
On Twitter, follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak and Balsamo at twitter.com/mikebalsamo1. Send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/us-rape-club-chaplain-used-faith-fear-abuse-inmates/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:33Z |
Survey: Most Black Americans say focus on racial inequality hasn’t brought about improvements
(CNN) - Two-thirds of Black Americans said increased focus on race and racial inequality in the U.S. has not led to changes that are improving the lives of Black people, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
It comes after a 2020 survey found that 56% of Black adults felt the added attention following protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd would lead to positive changes.
But in the new survey, 65% of Black adults said such changes haven’t materialized.
Just 13% see it as extremely or very likely that Black people in the U.S. will achieve equality, which many say will require systemic changes.
There was little variation in that figure by age, gender, region or education level.
The Pew Research Center’s survey was conducted last fall and included more than 3,900 Black Americans.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/survey-most-black-americans-say-focus-racial-inequality-hasnt-brought-about-improvements/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:37Z |
UN weather agency predicts rare ‘triple-dip’ La Nina in 2022
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency is predicting that the phenomenon known as La Nina is poised to last through the end of this year, a mysterious “triple dip” — the first this century — caused by three straight years of its effect on climate patterns like drought and flooding worldwide.
The World Meteorological Organization on Wednesday said La Nina conditions, which involve a large-scale cooling of ocean surface temperatures, have strengthened in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific with an increase in trade winds in recent weeks.
The agency’s top official was quick to caution that the “triple dip” doesn’t mean global warming is easing.
“It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a La Nina event. Its cooling influence is temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures, but it will not halt or reverse the long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said.
La Nina is a natural and cyclical cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, as opposed to warming caused by the better-known El Nino — an opposite phenomenon. La Nina often leads to more Atlantic hurricanes, less rain and more wildfires in the western United States, and agricultural losses in the central U.S.
Studies have shown La Nina is more expensive to the United States than the El Nino.
Together El Nino, La Nina and the neutral condition are called ENSO, which stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation, and they have one of the largest natural effects on climate, at times augmenting and other times dampening the big effects of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, scientists say.
___
Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/un-weather-agency-predicts-rare-triple-dip-la-nina-2022/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:44Z |
US: Prison chaplain used faith and fear to abuse inmates
(AP) - Behind a closed chapel office door inside a federal women’s prison in California, a chaplain forced inmates seeking his spiritual guidance to have sex with him — exploiting their faith and their powerlessness behind bars for his own gratification, prosecutors said.
James Theodore Highhouse, who pleaded guilty in February and is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday, would tell women he abused at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, that everyone in the Bible had sex and that God wanted them to be together, prosecutors said.
Highhouse, an Army veteran, pressured one inmate into having intercourse with him on Veterans Day by telling her she needed to serve her country and on Thanksgiving by telling her she needed to show her gratitude for him, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors are seeking a 10-year prison sentence for Highhouse, who’s among five workers at the Bay Area lockup charged in the last 14 months with sexually abusing inmates.
In a sentencing memorandum, they implored a judge to deviate from federal guidelines, which call for less than three years in prison, and deliver “a just punishment for this particularly vile conduct.”
While Highhouse, 49, was charged only with abusing one inmate, prosecutors say he engaged in predatory conduct with at least six women from 2014 to 2019 — including one he counseled at a veterans hospital where he worked before joining the federal Bureau of Prisons, where allegations were routinely ignored.
“Highhouse ruined my life — he truly did,” one inmate said in a victim impact statement. “I don’t even go to Church anymore because of him. I have no trust in the Church and really, I don’t trust anyone because of what he did.”
Highhouse, enabled by a toxic culture of abuse and coverups at the prison — known to many as the “rape club” — warned victims not to report him, telling one of them “no one will believe you because you’re an inmate, and I’m a chaplain,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
At the same time, prosecutors wrote, a prison counselor would rail about inmates “snitching” on employees, suggesting they instead “tell Trump about it,” referring to then-President Donald Trump.
Highhouse’s lawyers are seeking a two-year prison sentence, the low end of the 24 months to 30 months recommended in federal guidelines.
In their sentencing memorandum, Highhouse’s lawyers noted that he served as an Army chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan, is seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder and spends time caring for his elderly mother after his father’s death earlier this year. He has no prior criminal history and accepts responsibility for his crimes, they wrote.
“He fully regrets the pain he caused the victim in this case, as well as the other people in his life,” Highhouse’s lawyers wrote, calling his actions “a grave mistake.”
Federal probation officers who conducted a pre-sentence investigation and interviewed Highhouse recommended a seven-year prison sentence, writing that Highhouse characterized his abuse as an “inappropriate relationship” and blamed his conduct on marital problems.
All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.
Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation revealed years of sexual misconduct at FCI Dublin, including allegations against the prison’s former warden. The AP also detailed steps that were taken to keep abuse secret, such as ignoring allegations, retaliating against whistleblowers and sending prisoners to solitary confinement or other prisons for reporting abuse.
After the AP’s reporting, a task force of senior federal prison officials descended on Dublin, meeting with staff and inmates and pledging to fix problems and change the culture. On Wednesday, as Highhouse is being sentenced in federal court in Oakland, new federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters is scheduled to visit Dublin for a status update.
Highhouse is the first of the five charged Dublin employees to reach the sentencing phase.
Enrique Chavez, a food service foreman, is expected to plead guilty on Sept. 14. Ross Klinger, a recycling technician, pleaded guilty in February but has yet to be sentenced.
The former warden, Ray J. Garcia, was recently charged with abusing two additional inmates, for a total of seven counts involving three victims. He pleaded not guilty to the initial charges against him and is scheduled to go on trial in November.
John Russell Bellhouse, a prison safety administrator, is scheduled to stand trial next June.
Highhouse pleaded guilty on Feb. 23 to two counts of sexual abuse of a ward, two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of making false statements to federal agents.
All of the charges stem from allegations Highhouse repeatedly abused a female prisoner over a nine-month span in 2018 and 2019.
That woman said in a victim impact statement that she cried herself to sleep after testifying before a grand jury about Highhouse’s abuse.
“I felt so lost, hopeless, worthless, and betrayal and truly do not know what to do or who to talk to about my problems,” the woman wrote.
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.
Other allegations against Highhouse, previously kept quiet by Dublin officials, came to light during the investigation, prosecutors said.
Two inmates said Highhouse claimed to them that he was a sex therapist, asked graphic questions about their sex lives and offered to let them have sex in his office, prosecutors said. One of them said Highhouse leered at her when she got out of the shower and had a reputation as a “predator.”
Another inmate told investigators that she avoided Highhouse after he made suggestive remarks during a counseling session, such as suggesting that the commissary sell sex toys.
In May, an inmate now incarcerated at another federal prison facility reported that Highhouse raped her multiple times in his chapel office after she sought him out for counseling, prosecutors said.
“He took my ability to sleep at night and he took my ability to trust in the Church,” the inmate wrote in a victim impact statement. “I would never go back to Church. I’m constantly on alert. He played on my vulnerability and took advantage of me — I have nightmares.”
The inmate said that she attempted to report the abuse but that when she did, a prison officer shrugged and reminded her that she would soon be transferring out of Dublin.
“To me the BOP is an epic fail in terms of the way they handle PREA,” the inmate wrote, referring to the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. “The system is flawed and broken.” ___
On Twitter, follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak and Balsamo at twitter.com/mikebalsamo1. Send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/us-rape-club-chaplain-used-faith-fear-abuse-inmates/ | 2022-08-31T13:34:51Z |
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UniWyo Credit Union and Reliant Federal Credit Union are seeking to merge operations by early 2023. An industry association executive said this is the latest in such credit union marriages within the state.
The combined operation will operate under the UniWyo brand and become the No. 2 credit union in Wyoming, with combined assets of almost $700 million. Their total staff will number more than 100.
The merger would combine UniWyo’s 36,000 members with Reliant’s 13,500 members. CEOs of both credit unions made a joint announcement of the intent to merge in July.
“Long-term growth and the ability to best serve the state of Wyoming has always been and will continue to be our goal,” said Steve Higginson, CEO of Reliant, in the written statement. “This merger will benefit our membership and employees, and will allow us to continue our long history of community involvement.”
Currently, UniWyo serves its members from three branches in Laramie and Cheyenne. Reliant has five branches in Casper, Cody, Glenrock and Douglas.
As a result of the merger, UniWyo will continue to seek additional locations and expansion of services to benefit their employees, members and communities of Wyoming, said CEO Dave Krause. Representatives of both organizations did not answer Wyoming Business Report’s questions but they did provide photos to accompany this story.
NCUA
The transaction will require regulatory approval from the federal National Credit Union Administration, as well as Reliant members, the CEOs said.
The NCAU has guidelines that federal credit unions (FCUs) must meet for combinations to be finalized.
The NCUA was designated by the Federal Credit Union Act of 1934 to oversee the national credit union system. The NCUA provides chartering for U.S. credit unions similar to the chartering process by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for national banks. As a credit union, FCUs are mutual companies owned by members, rather than external shareholders.
Individual members of credit unions involved in a merger can submit comments to the NCAU at ncua.gov before it makes a final decision. More information about the merger process can be found on the website.
The proposed tie-up between UniWyo and Reliant would be the largest since 2016.
Trends
That year is when Wyoming-based Warren Federal Credit Union and Community Financial Credit Union, headquartered in Colorado, became Blue Federal Credit Union. Blue currently reports it has 115,000 members worldwide and more than $1.8 billion in assets.
Nationwide, federal credit union mergers are common. NCAU reports it reviewed more than 80 mergers in the last two quarters.
Wyoming, with its small population, has fewer than 25 credit unions headquartered here. In the past decade, Wyoming has had eight credit union mergers, said Lynn Heider, vice president of public affairs and communications for GoWest Credit Union Association. The group itself serves six states and more than 300 credit unions.
In an email to WBR, Heider said the UniWyo-Reliant is happening in a good economic environment.
“Banks and credit unions, and many other industries’ merger trends are tracking almost identically in at least the past decade,” Heider said. “What makes credit union mergers unique is their not-for-profit, cooperative structure. So, mergers aren’t profit-driven; they are driven by the value of expanded services that become possible with the merger, for the members.”
Heider said a GoWest colleague examined the financial and membership climate for credit unions in Wyoming and across the West for the first quarter of 2022. The resulting report said “that credit unions across the country continue to have strong growth trends.”
“Western state credit unions are seeing stronger growth than the national average, and Wyoming credit unions have done particularly well,” Heider said. “For example, Wyoming credit unions saw 7.6% asset growth, compared to 5.2% nationally.”
She added that deposits for Wyoming credit unions grew by 8.2%, and membership grew by 3.3% (ranking third in the nation), while at the national level, membership was declining at credit unions.
“The reason for this is Wyoming’s strong economy,” she said. “These are the conditions that are driving the Wyoming growth trends, and based on early indicators, the second-quarter growth for Wyoming credit unions will also be strong.”
She said that access to rural capital is a priority focus for credit unions in this region.
Credit union mergers, like the proposed one involving UniWyo and Reliant, are the result of their mission as nonprofit cooperatives owned by their members, said Troy Stang, CEO of GoWest.
“Decisions are ultimately made to benefit those members,” he said.
Credit unions’ cooperative structure drives the tangible value they deliver to their memberships, and the impact they make in their communities, Stang said.
“If the boards and leadership of two financially strong credit unions determine a merger is in the members’ best interests, they are leveraging their abilities to offer even more to their members,” he said. “This can be in the form of more branch locations, investment in technology and increased staffing expertise to meet members’ needs.”
Additional information and updates on the Wyoming combo can be found at reliantfcu.com/merger and at uniwyo.com/Connect/About/Merger. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyomingbusinessreport/current_edition/uniwyo-reliant-combination-part-of-a-trend-in-wyoming/article_027edb2f-5007-566c-9879-2e58a345bb95.html | 2022-08-31T14:20:50Z |
The signs had the right message, as required by law. One stated "In God We Trust" over a rainbow background. Another was in Arabic. But the Carroll school district in North Texas rejected the signs, saying it already has enough for its buildings.
"Why is more God not good?" came the retort from Srivan Krishna, a local resident who sought to donate the colorful signs at a school board meeting in Southlake, a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, earlier this week.
Board president Cameron Bryan did not take up that question, saying only that by accepting an earlier donation at its Aug. 15 meeting, the school district had enough signs for all 11 campuses and its office building.
The signs are part of pushback on a new Texas law
Krishna and others are testing the limits, and the logic, of SB 797, a recently adopted Texas law that requires public schools to display a poster bearing the U.S. motto, "In God We Trust." The law's main requirements are that the posters include the state and U.S. flags, and that schools don't pay for them.
"The statute does not contemplate requiring the district to display more than one copy at a time," Bryan said in a video recording of the meeting. But Krishna disagreed, saying the law doesn't refer to how many posters should be displayed.
"It doesn't say you have to stop at one," he said. "So that is your decision to stop at one."
"I think it's kind of un-American to reject posters of our national motto," Krishna told the board members.
That remark went unanswered, as the board didn't hold an open debate over whether to accept the signs. Instead, Bryan delivered a "statement of factual information" in which the board told Krishna and his allies that it wouldn't be accepting their signs.
Krishna and others who oppose the state law were only able to speak during the meeting's open comment section, since the signs weren't included on the board's official agenda.
Bryan twice sought to call for the next speaker before Krishna's three minutes had expired. But Krishna stood his ground, and in the end he stood in silence, displaying the four signs he brought.
Another speaker, Jennifer Schutter, later said the posters had been designed by current and former students in Southlake, adding that she was "very disappointed" the board didn't accept the signs.
"Additionally, I think it's important to know publicly that there was an attempt made to get onto the agenda tonight to present those with pomp and circumstance," Schutter said, "and this was refused."
Opponents will keep testing the new law
Efforts to test the new Texas law are being led in part by Florida activist Chaz Stevens, who says he's irked that the law requires inserting an overt religious message into schools.
"That should be irritating for you, regardless of what God or not-God you believe in," Stevens recently told NPR.
Stevens' fundraising campaign to pay for posters and signs putting "In God We Trust" in various languages, including Vulcan, and submit them to school districts in Texas has now raised more than $42,000.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/a-texas-school-board-rejects-in-god-we-trust-signs-in-arabic | 2022-08-31T15:01:53Z |
SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — When you enter this small city in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, a metal sign above the road greets you saying, "Slovyansk is Ukraine." After more than six months of Russia's invasion, it still is.
The front line of Russian-held territory in the east — where fierce fighting has reached a stalemate in recent weeks — is just about 10 miles away. Ukrainian officials have ordered evacuations, saying resources are too scarce and it's just too dangerous to stay. Three residential areas of Slovyansk are without electricity, which won't be able to be repaired in the near future. There is a dire shortage of fuel and constant shelling most nights.
Despite all this, and a mostly shuttered city center, nearly 20% of residents — about 20,000 people — remain, according to Svitlana Viunychenko, the mayor's spokesperson.
Among them are Oksana Morgun and her longtime friend Oleksandr Olaiarov. They're biking home together, for safety; a habit they started when the war began.
"We sleep separately [as couples] but everything else is together," says Morgun, who, along with her husband, is neighbors with Olaiarov and his family. She has a bag of grapes tied to her bright orange bike. Many people here travel by bike since electricity is spotty and there's no public transit anymore.
The two friends are constantly in touch, especially at night, when the city is shelled.
"When night comes and the thunder from the missiles begins, we are on the phones: 'Everything is fine? Everything is fine? Everything is fine?' we ask each other," says Morgun. "It's really difficult. We survive, we don't live."
Most shops in the city center are boarded up, the public gardens and parks are overgrown and buildings are damaged from recent shelling. A few coffee shops remain open, mostly fueled by the groups of Ukrainian soldiers stopping in for a coffee and to relax before heading back out to the front.
"We are stationed nearby," explains a soldier who goes by the call sign Petrovich. He doesn't want to use his full name for safety reasons. He says the lines haven't moved much in recent weeks, and a stalemate for troops means you're constantly on edge without much happening.
A recent missile strike here left a crater along a residential boulevard, and damaged eight residential buildings and a school, according to the mayor. The damage drew several onlookers, mostly older residents who live in the buildings nearby.
Liudmyla Fakhrutdinova and her neighbor stopped by to look on their way home from picking up humanitarian aid at a local church. Their bags are filled with food and clothes, thanks to Ukrainian and international donors. She says she had just finished watching a movie the night before when she heard the blast. She and her neighbors have been spending nights in the hallway of their building since their bedrooms have windows.
For Viktoria Batychenko, looking at the damage is painful.
"I feel total despair," says Batychenko, as she sobs. "I think about the people who lost their homes."
Her grief is deepened, she says, because of the history here. Slovyansk was the first city to be seized by Russia-backed fighters in 2014. Ukraine claimed it back soon after and Batychenko says they worked hard to rebuild.
"We're Ukrainians," she says, "we've always been part of Ukraine. I want to live in Ukraine."
Nearby Liubov Mahlii, 75, with an orange kerchief tied around her head, is listening to the conversation. She points to a building just beyond the missile's crater. "This is my house," she says. "I saw the missile last night. But we're used to it by now."
She lives in the fifth-floor apartment by herself. Her husband passed away and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have all left Slovyansk for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and other parts of Europe.
For months, water was out in the city, so Mahlii had to carry jugs up five flights of stairs. About two weeks ago, officials reestablished the water supply, so she finally has water back in her apartment, though, she says, it's finicky.
Still, she's not planning on leaving anytime soon. Who would watch her home, keep her apartment safe? she asks.
"I can't leave," she says. "I don't want strangers in my home."
She passes the days writing and reciting poetry.
She shares one with NPR, about bringing peace to her home:
"I'm looking forward to peace
Although it makes us wait so long
Our patience has not run out yet
Peace is near, we eagerly await
Let there be peace
That is so hoped-for
And let the storms go too
Long live Donbas and Slovyansk!"
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/along-the-front-lines-in-ukraine-cut-off-from-resources-a-resilient-city-holds-on | 2022-08-31T15:01:59Z |
It's a new school year and Jake Miller is not setting up his classroom in central Pennsylvania. He's not getting to know a new group of eighth-graders in his social studies class. After 15 years of teaching, he quit.
"I was accused of teaching critical race theory when I taught about how the Civil War was fought over racism and slavery," he said.
A couple of parents complained but weren't satisfied with the school board's answer.
"So they took it to a state representative who has used this as a dog whistle," he said.
It was all just too much, Miller said. He can't teach the Civil War without teaching about racism and slavery. But that incident wasn't the only thing that pushed him to leave.
"There were other moments prior to that," he said. "That just seemed to be the cherry on top."
There was the shortage of substitute teachers that made it hard to take time off to be there when his kids were sick. The low pay. The lack of respect from parents and politicians; a lack of resources; and, of course, the pandemic.
"There's been an attack on education for quite some time," Miller said. "The pandemic was just a weight too heavy. That was the albatross that pulled me under. And I knew that I needed to pivot."
Now he's a business consultant making 50% more than he did as a teacher.
Pennsylvania's Department of Education says the shortage is real as teachers like Miller leave. The spokesman has said they need thousands of new teachers and educators in other roles in the next three years or the problem could become chronic.
Other districts in states around the country are also scrambling to find and keep enough teachers to lead their classrooms as educators deal with burnout.
Teachers are also facing some unprecedented challenges: school board meetings that devolve into chaos over COVID policies; battles stemming from a politicized and misinformed panic over critical race theory; book banning; and a call to arm teachers in the face of gun violence.
Educators are on the front line of these societal fractures that can feel scary.
Miller said he's not sure he'll ever go back to education.
"To be honest, it's going to take teachers being treated like professionals, to have their dignity back, and for the public to rally behind them for folks like myself to consider it," he said.
Expected to do more, without support
Teachers across the country are making similar calculations as Miller.
Last year, Alexander Calderon's colleague quit suddenly. Overnight, he went from being a seventh-grade English language arts teacher to also being the social studies teacher.
"I felt like there was little to no support in terms of understanding this new curriculum," Calderon said. "I was really at my breaking point to the point where I was thinking about just leaving."
So he opened up the notes app on his phone and started writing a list.
Pros of the job: pay wasn't bad comparatively; his colleagues were supportive; he wanted to be there for his students.
Cons: very little support from the administration; he was doing the job of two teachers; school morale was terrible; and he was watching one teacher after the next leave.
Even though his cons list was slightly longer, this week Calderon started a new school year teaching both English language arts and social studies. His list is still saved on his phone.
"The kids are my No. 1 priority," he said. "Seeing what the kids' interests are and getting to know them as people is what ultimately drove me to stay."
He also said he's the only Spanish speaker on staff at his middle school. He recalls when a student — originally from Nicaragua — enrolled. He watched the boy's mother struggle to understand the system and to communicate.
"It made me think of my own mom struggling through the American education system," he said.
Calderon stepped in to help. It's another reason he won't quit.
"I felt that I was kind of morally obligated to stay," he said.
Teaching angry, but with love
Then there are the teachers who plan to stick it out no matter what, like Eric Hale. He's a first-grade teacher in the Dallas Independent School District.
In 2021, he was named teacher of the year for the entire state of Texas, the first African American man to win the honor.
"I got to meet these phenomenal educators that represented their state and we got to meet the president. It was a whole yearlong bonding experience," he said. "Out of my crew, only me and the state teacher of Illinois are still actively in the classroom."
He said he knows why they left.
"A lot of them, especially the teachers of color, got tired of fighting a system that necessarily wasn't designed for people that look like me and the kids that I serve to be successful," he said. "They got tired of the disrespect of the profession and most importantly, they got tired of the lack of compensation."
But when asked if he would ever leave, Hale said no.
"Because, I'm in a position and I've been blessed that I'm changing the face of education," he said.
Growing up as a Black student from a poorer neighborhood who didn't have a support system, Hale didn't have any teachers who looked like him — no teachers who truly understood his needs.
"So I teach angry. I'm chasing the ghost of the teacher that I wish I had when I was a child," he said.
He remembers having to go to churches for meals because his family couldn't always afford food. He didn't have a support system at home, and he couldn't find it at school either.
"I grew up being abused and in trauma in a neighborhood that was generationally underserved," he said. "So, sadly, I didn't have any great teachers. I just had one who made a difference."
Now, he is that teacher every day in his classroom of first-graders, where many of his students live in poverty and the school just doesn't get the books and equipment that public schools in richer areas get.
"I teach in the same type of neighborhood that I grew up in, and so I fight for these kids because I know the potential," he said. "I'm a firm believer of some of the brightest minds come from the darkest places."
Meanwhile, he said, he's been watching this uproar over critical race theory around the country. Teachers can barely afford the resources for their own curriculum, he said, so it's laughable that they'd shell out money for a college curriculum.
"They're trying to criminalize good teaching," he said.
It's a political weapon, he said, to stop teachers like him. Teachers who think about the race, ethnicity and circumstances of each student they have and how to help them connect.
"I teach every child that I serve the Texas state curriculum. I add to that curriculum images in literature and in person to inspire them that they can be a doctor, a lawyer, a novelist, an author," he said. "By bringing people that come from the same areas that they come from."
"So because I'm African American, I have to do my research and find great leaders of Hispanic descent, because the population that I serve is mostly Hispanic. I wish that somebody would have brought a judge to the school. I wish that somebody would have brought a current congressman, a senator, the mayor. ... Representation matters."
Hale is a dapper dresser: an emerald green tie, a navy blazer, complete with a bright orange pocket square. In his classroom he has a DJ booth where he plays songs he's made. Each one is named for a student, the beats and melodies tailored to their personalities.
"Each song is special and unique, just like the kids," he said. "Because I sit at home and I say, 'Oh, man, Jaime is very active. His feet are always moving. So I like these drums. They have a little pitter patter.' So I'm able to describe the songs to them and it makes them feel so special and it makes them feel so loved."
It's what he would've wanted when he was a child. It's why Eric Hale teaches.
Jake Miller, who left teaching, said he taught because of one teacher who inspired him to be the first in his family to go to college.
Alexander Calderon teaches to be the bridge builder for students who need him in the public school system.
And all of them, whether they stay or leave, look to the future of education with hope.
"I have two young sons," Miller said. "So you better believe I'm darn hopeful that the education that they get is going to be as good, if not better, than the education that I received."
"I know there's always going to be teachers in the classroom that stick it out for the long run," Calderon said.
And Hale leaves very little to chance: "I pray and I write a plan. How am I going to fix this? Why wait for Superman when you've got a cape in the closet?"
They said the future is in these students. But what that future looks like depends, they said, on whether the educators at the front of the room feel valued enough to stay.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/americas-kids-are-going-back-to-school-not-all-of-their-teachers-will-join-them | 2022-08-31T15:02:05Z |
Eight years ago, a meteor believed to have been 2 feet long entered Earth's atmosphere at more than 100,000 miles an hour before exploding into tiny, hot fragments and falling into the South Pacific Ocean.
Some scientists believe it came from another star system, which would make it the first known interstellar object of its size to impact Earth.
Now, professor Avi Loeb, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is planning an expedition to retrieve fragments of the meteor from the ocean floor. By analyzing the debris, he is hoping to determine the object's origins — even going so far as to make the extraordinary suggestion that it could be a technological object created by aliens.
Yet astronomers are wary of his claims, citing a lack of data on the object and insufficient evidence to support his bold conjectures about alien life.
What is he looking for?
The object that Loeb is searching for, designated CNEOS 2014-01-08, was detected in 2014 by a network of satellites used to monitor the skies for potentially dangerous asteroids. Using data published by NASA, Loeb and Amir Siraj, then a Harvard University undergraduate studying astrophysics, first suggested the object came from outside our solar system in 2019.
"It moved very fast, roughly 40 kilometers per second when it exploded in the lower atmosphere," Loeb said. "And from that, we can infer that it was moving much too fast to be bound to the sun."
Loeb and Siraj submitted a paper making their case to a peer-reviewed astronomy journal. The paper was rejected because their data was incomplete. Some of the data relied on observations from classified missile detection systems, making Loeb and Siraj's estimates of the object's velocity impossible for reviewers to verify.
But in April, a memo published by U.S. Space Command seemed to confirm that the object came from another star system.
6/ “I had the pleasure of signing a memo with @ussfspoc’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Mozer, to confirm that a previously-detected interstellar object was indeed an interstellar object, a confirmation that assisted the broader astronomical community.” pic.twitter.com/PGlIOnCSrW
— U.S. Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) April 7, 2022
Now, Loeb is launching a $1.5 million expedition to retrieve pieces of the meteor from the ocean floor. Based on data from the Defense Department, Loeb has focused his search to an area of nearly 40 square miles.
"It's just like mowing the lawn," Loeb said. "We are planning to use a sled with a magnet that will scoop a very thin layer off the top of the muck."
He says that testing the composition of the object could determine if it resembles those found in our solar system.
"There is also the possibility that it will be made of some alloy that nature doesn't put together, and that would imply the object is technological," Loeb said. "If you ask what my wish is, if it's indeed of artificial origin, and there was some component of the object that survived, and if it has any buttons on it, I would love to press them."
Other astronomers are very skeptical
Many astronomers dismiss the idea of the object being technological, saying there are far simpler and far more likely natural explanations. And some are hesitant to conclude the meteor even came from outside our solar system.
The biggest problem is the data itself. It's difficult to actually observe small, fast objects in the atmosphere.
"If you're a satellite and you're looking at a meteor ... you can get the left-to-right motion, but it's hard to tell if it's coming towards you or moving away from you," said Steve Desch, an astrophysics professor at Arizona State University. He said this would make estimates of the object's velocity prone to error, making it hard to confirm if it were interstellar.
The data is also "sanitized," Desch said. Because some of the data comes from a network that includes classified military satellites, the available data is stripped of information that could reveal U.S. defense capabilities, such as error bars that indicate precision of measurements.
Astronomer Robert Weryk studies near-Earth objects detected by the Pan-STARRS telescope, and he said the Space Command memo wasn't enough to draw firm conclusions about the object's origins.
"I kind of have to take it with a grain of salt," he said. "I understand why they won't release more information, but I think that would be essential ... to actually come to a conclusion about this object being interstellar."
"I think there's a case to be made that this could be interstellar in origin," Meenakshi Wadhwa, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, said. "[But I would] add the caveat that none of the work so far on this is in the peer-reviewed literature. ... The science has not really been vetted to the extent that I would like to see it vetted."
Finally, Loeb's critics point to difficulties with the expedition itself.
"This is what I would generously call a dubious plan," said Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and science communicator who has vocally criticized Loeb's past claims about aliens.
Siegel and Desch agree there are too many variables — atmospheric winds and ocean currents, for example — to confidently pinpoint a search location. The search team would be looking for "only grams of material" after it had been "swirling around on the ocean floor for years," Desch said.
"If you want to invest in renting a submarine and going down to the bottom of the ocean on ... a wild-goose chase, you can do it," Siegel said. "If you want to take all of your money and dump it into the middle of the ocean, you can do that too."
Loeb is undeterred. To him, the expedition is a chance at making history. If Loeb finds pieces of the meteor and it is of interstellar origin, it could be the first time humans get their hands on an interstellar object of its size.
In response to his critics, Loeb describes his work as "interstellar archaeology."
"My point is if a cave dweller were to find a cellphone, the cave dweller would argue the cellphone is a rock of a type that we've never seen before," he said.
"And the only way to find out is to press some buttons on this cellphone and realize that it records your voice, it records your image. Then it will be clear that it is not rock."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/an-astronomer-thinks-alien-tech-could-be-on-the-ocean-floor-not-everyone-agrees | 2022-08-31T15:02:11Z |
The Food and Drug Administation authorized reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that aim to protect against the omicron variant.
The new shots target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants that most people are catching now. This double-barreled vaccine is called a bivalent vaccine.
"The FDA has been planning for the possibility that the composition of the COVID-19 vaccines would need to be modified to address circulating variants. ... We have worked closely with the vaccine manufacturers to ensure the development of these updated boosters was done safely and efficiently," said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, in an agency statement. "The FDA has extensive experience with strain changes for annual influenza vaccines. We are confident in the evidence supporting these authorizations."
The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use as a single booster dose in people 18 and older. The Pfizer-BioNTech booster is authorized for people 12 years and up. People are eligible for the new boosters two months after completing their initial vaccination or their last booster shot.
The federal government plans to make the boosters available starting next week. In advance of the FDA's decision, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator told NPR that the new boosters represented "a really important moment in this pandemic."
Public health officials hope they will help contain a possible fall and winter surge.
But there is also skepticism about how big a difference the boosters can make. "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," John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told NPR.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/fda-authorizes-first-revamp-of-covid-vaccines-to-target-omicron | 2022-08-31T15:02:17Z |
The Justice Department has responded to former President Donald Trump's request for a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from his Florida home earlier this month during a court-authorized search.
A hearing is slated for Thursday at 1 p.m. ET to consider Trump's request. The DOJ's filing Tuesday provides new details that point to possible obstruction of their probe into highly classified documents the FBI gathered at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Read the document here:
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/read-dojs-response-to-trumps-special-master-request | 2022-08-31T15:02:23Z |
Consider the unremarkable city park. A postage stamp of green amid the concrete. Trees, swings, grass, a basketball hoop.
Maybe your park has a public pool. Maybe it has a walking path or a barbecue grill or a leafy spot that's good for watching birds. Yosemite it is not. Your park is not a vacation destination. Instead, it's something much more valuable: a little piece of nature, right where you live.
City parks are crucial precisely because they are mundane. Their accessibility is what gives them their power. There are about 2 million acres of public parkland in the 100 largest cities in the United States, according to the Trust for Public Land.
All that parkland helps protect millions of Americans from the effects of global warming. Pools and splash pads offer a place to cool off on dangerously hot days. Trees provide shade, pull carbon dioxide out of the air and even lower the temperature in nearby neighborhoods. Marshes, ponds and meadows soak up water when it rains to help keep roads and homes dry.
But climate change is threatening the very spaces that help us cope with it. As the Earth heats up, the effects of global warming are on display in urban parks across the country.
Global warming means more-severe floods and hurricanes, which damage park buildings, courts, playgrounds, walking paths and other infrastructure. Heat waves put stress on animals and plants and threaten native species. In the most extreme cases, the effects of global climate change temporarily make some parks in the U.S. downright dangerous for humans.
"[Parks] are part of the solution, but they themselves are vulnerable to some of the same threats," says Michelle Mueller Gamez, the manager of climate change research at the Central Park Conservancy in New York City.
But, like all urban environments, parks can adapt to a changing climate, at least to an extent. Scientists and local governments are working together to study how climate change is unfolding in urban green spaces and to figure out how to make parks more resilient.
Parks departments are on the front lines
Managing a city's worth of parks is a lot of work. There are ballfields to mow, trails to maintain, playground equipment to repair and swimming pools to staff. And there is rarely enough money to go around. Funding for parks has been stagnant or falling in most cities in the last decade.
At the same time, climate change demands ever more attention from parks departments, and dozens of cities have added new positions to meet those demands.
That includes resilience officers and risk managers, who are explicitly focused on global warming, as well as a small army of arborists, botanists, hydrologists, restoration ecologists and conservation biologists who think more broadly about how humans interact with nature.
The challenges they face are not always obvious. Take wildfires, for example. Climate change is exacerbating drought across the country, not just in the Western U.S. where the megadrought makes daily headlines. A hotter planet also means more wildfire risk in places like the Southeastern U.S., New England and the Midwest.
One of the best ways to reduce wildfire risk is to do controlled burns, where fire experts burn a section of grass or trees on purpose to keep the ecosystem healthy and reduce the amount of fuel available for a future, unplanned fire.
Cities in the Western U.S. have been doing controlled burns in city parks for decades. Now, parks departments in Austin, Detroit, Charlotte, Des Moines, Jacksonville, Houston and New York City are doing the same: setting fire to portions of parks on purpose to stave off more destructive blazes.
Matt McCaw manages such fires for the city of Austin. He says setting up a successful controlled burn requires a lot of expertise: You need to choose where and when to set it, and you need to understand exactly how it will behave so it doesn't get out of control. He brings two decades of fire experience to his job managing land for the Austin Parks and Recreation department.
In many cases, climate change requires cities to rethink what parks look like. After major floods damaged city parks in Des Moines, Iowa; Atlanta, Ga.; and Houston, Texas, local leaders in all three places redesigned parks so they would be able to withstand future floods.
Things that could be damaged by water, such as playgrounds and restrooms, are located on higher ground, and bike paths and grassy areas are relegated to the places most likely to be underwater after a storm. The parks are also designed to absorb and control water, in order to reduce flooding in nearby neighborhoods. Resilience and protection, all rolled into one park renovation.
"It's harder than it sounds. It's a science."
It takes a lot of work to keep plants and animals healthy in city parks, especially as the weather gets hotter. Heat waves put stress on trees that already have to live with soot in the air, polluted water and lesser indignities like humans carving initials into their trunks.
But keeping trees healthy is a huge part of protecting parks and people from climate change. Stands of diverse and native trees absorb and trap more carbon dioxide than other types of greenery. The carbon stored in the forests of New York City is equal to the carbon released by more than 400,000 cars driving for a year, according to a 2020 study.
Studies like that one are few and far between, however. We really do not know much about exactly how parks are reacting to, and helping to address, climate change. Enter the Central Park Climate Lab, which was launched this spring. The idea is for scientists, park employees and conservation groups to pool their money and labor and gather data about how climate change is affecting Central Park in Manhattan.
They're starting relatively small, by installing temperature sensors and mapping tree cover in the park. "We're learning a lot about challenges in measuring air temperature. It's harder than it sounds. It's a science," says Gamez, who helps lead research in the park.
But it's crucial information. In general, large green parks cool off the neighborhoods around them, but how much? And what happens if you replace native trees with other trees, or bushes, or a grassy soccer field? The answers could help cities make important climate-related decisions.
"We know houses adjacent to parks might need less air conditioning if they have green space that's keeping it cooler," explains Gamez. "As we're trying to reduce our carbon emissions, that's great."
The goal is to use Central Park, the grandfather of American city parks, as a testing ground that eventually helps inform park management across the country.
Protecting parks and people facing a hotter future
In some places, climate change is already making some city parks dangerous for humans.
Phoenix is known for its extensive and mountainous city parks.
But in the summer, many of those parks are not safe. It's simply too hot, and even seasoned hikers have collapsed from heat exhaustion. Minor injuries, like a sprained ankle or twisted knee, often become life-threatening emergencies when people are stranded in the sun.
Rescuing people from city parks does not fall to parks employees, but to the fire department. Special mountain rescue squads are made up of firefighters who train all year round so they can carry stretchers and first aid equipment up steep and rocky trails, and carry injured people down.
But it's become clear that no amount of training is sufficient on the hottest days. Last year, two city firefighters from an elite mountain rescue squad ended up in the hospital after doing back-to-back rescues from city park trails on a day when temperatures lingered near 115 degrees.
After that, the fire department asked the parks department for help. Some of the hiking trails should close on the hottest days, they argued. It was just too dangerous for residents and firefighters alike.
It was a sobering moment for firefighters, who like to think they're prepared for anything. "This is what I was made to do," says Tommy Reeve, a member of one of the mountain rescue squads. "I was made for being on the mountains and running in the heat."
But the weather is changing. "Sometimes when we're on the mountain when it's hot, it does worry me a little bit because I know we're in danger as well, of being overheated," he says.
Ultimately, the city decided to limit access to some of the most popular and exposed city park trails on the hottest days.
At the same time, the parks department is trying to encourage Phoenix residents to get outside safely. City park rangers are posted near popular trailheads in the summer, asking people if they have water and cellphones. And some city parks stay open late into the evening to encourage people to hike when temperatures are in the 90s instead of 110 degrees or more.
On a warm summer night, people flock to South Mountain Park, a sprawling and wild line of hills and valleys near the Phoenix airport. The parking lot is open until 9 p.m. in the summer — a particularly important adaptation in a city of cars — but many people also show up on foot, wandering up from cul-de-sacs that abut the park's trails.
It's peaceful, but not quiet. Planes and cars rumble in the distance. Crickets hum. A coyote calls out.
Matthias Kawski sits at the top of a hill, drinking a beer and looking at the stars and the bobbing headlights of mountain bikers deep in the park. Kawski loves the outdoors. He's drawn to epic landscapes. He says he has hiked large portions of the Grand Canyon.
But this little hill, behind his house, is the place he comes to most often. He's here every night. And it feels grand, in its own way. "I own this place," he says, gesturing broadly at the park laid out below him. "That's all for me." His little piece of nature, in the city.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/your-local-park-has-a-hidden-talent-helping-fight-climate-change | 2022-08-31T15:02:29Z |
‘I watched her take her last breath’: Mother of teen killed by downed electrical line shares final moments
MONROE, Mich. (WTVG/Gray News) – Elizabeth Jacobsen, 14, was set to start her freshman year, but now her family is making plans to honor her memory after she was electrocuted by touching a downed power line.
According to Monroe police detectives, Jacobsen was walking with a friend in her backyard when they believed they could “smell a bonfire.”
“My daughter thought that it was a twig on the ground and went to go pick it up and 13,800 volts went through her body. It was a wire no smaller than a charger cord,” Elizabeth’s mother, Marthajean Hunter told WTVG.
The teen was still touching the wire when emergency crews arrived, but rescue workers couldn’t help her until the power was disconnected. By then, it was too late.
“I watched her take her last breath, which was not easy. I just wanted to rip that wire off of her,” Hunter said, adding that she feels numb.
Hunter said her daughter wanted to be a police officer. Elizabeth like to give to others and will continue to do so by donating some of her organs.
“I’m wishing this was just a very horrific nightmare, but I know it’s not,” Hunter said while clutching one of the last things her daughter touched – Elizabeth’s beloved “Sofia the First” blanket.
DTE Energy is covering the costs of Elizabeth’s funeral.
Copyright 2022 WTVG via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/i-watched-her-take-her-last-breath-mother-teen-killed-by-downed-electrical-line-shares-final-moments/ | 2022-08-31T15:05:35Z |
Leaky battleship in Texas begins trip for $35M repairs
LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — It’s the only surviving battleship that served in both world wars, having fought Nazis and the Japanese Army during World War II. But the greatest challenge in recent years for the USS Texas has been a leaky, rusty hull that at times forced workers to pump out about 2,000 gallons (7,570 liters) of water per minute from the 110-year-old ship.
To ensure the historic vessel doesn’t sink and can continue hosting visitors, the foundation in charge of its care is towing the ship Wednesday from its longtime home along the Houston Ship Channel to a shipyard in Galveston for much-needed repairs.
Tony Gregory, the president of the Battleship Texas Foundation, said Wednesday the pulling of the ship by tugboats and getting it on its way was perfect. He said any problems would have happened in the first 15 minutes of pulling the ship but there were no issues.
“It went smoother than we thought and quicker than we thought … and she’s gone, down the channel,” he said.
Gregory said he expects the ship to arrive in Galveston by 4 p.m.
The journey from its longtime berth at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in the Houston suburb of La Porte is part of a $35 million project to repair the hull and ultimately restore the ship to its former glory.
The ship’s repairs are part of the foundation’s plans to eventually resettle it in a new location in Texas, possibly in one of three nearby cities, including Galveston, in order to attract more visitors and increase revenue.
Moving the ship for repairs is “the major step in getting the ship back to tip-top shape,” Gregory said Tuesday as he stood on the vessel while workers made final preparations.
The battleship will be pulled by four tugboats at a pace of about 5 knots per hour. The 40-mile (64 kilometer) journey to Galveston was expected to take about nine hours and won’t be without risk as the ship’s hull could leak enough to sink it.
“Once we get going, I anticipate it being pretty smooth... We feel like we’re prepared,” Gregory said.
Since 1948, the USS Texas has been located at the state historic site where the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution was fought. There, it’s served as a museum and tourist attraction. The battleship was previously taken to the same shipyard in Galveston for repairs in 1988.
For the last three years, the ship has been closed to the public as the foundation has been preparing for the repairs. In 2019, the Texas Legislature approved the $35 million to fix the hull. The foundation is planning to make other fixes which it’s paying for. All the repairs are expected to take up to a year to complete.
The foundation expected many people to gather along the ship channel to watch the ship go by.
Tricia Thomas, 50, who was one of the people invited to watch as the ship was unmoored, said she became emotional and teared up as she saw the ship move and heard its whistle sound as it began its journey. As the ship began moving, Thomas said, people clapped and cheered.
“It’s amazing to see a ship that’s 100 years old out on the water again, moving like she did for so many years. It was exciting,” said Thomas, who lives in the Houston suburb of Kingwood.
Thomas said she believes it’s important to preserve the ship so future generations can learn its history and it can remind people how they can come together for a common cause that’s greater than them.
“I think that’s probably the biggest story she can tell,” Thomas said.
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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/leaky-battleship-texas-begins-trip-35m-repairs/ | 2022-08-31T15:05:42Z |
Missing country singer found dead in Arizona
Published: Aug. 31, 2022 at 10:28 AM EDT|Updated: 37 minutes ago
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD/Gray News) – Country artist Luke Bell was found dead in Arizona, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
Police said Bell was found in Tucson Monday, KOLD reports. His cause of death has not been reported.
The 32-year-old country artist went missing Saturday, Aug. 20, according to Saving Country Music.
According to the singer-songwriter’s verified Facebook page, he’s from Cody, Wy.
Bell released his self-titled album debut in 2012 and another in 2014 called “Don’t Mind If I Do.”
Police say the investigation into his disappearance and death is ongoing.
Copyright 2022 KOLD via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/missing-country-singer-found-dead-arizona/ | 2022-08-31T15:05:48Z |
Obstruction emerges as key focus in Trump documents probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says classified documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into the discovery of the government records.
The FBI also seized boxes and containers holding more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found classified documents stashed in Trump’s office, according to a filing late Tuesday that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of months of strained interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the discovery of government secrets.
The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of the top secret documents.
The timeline laid out by the Justice Department made clear that the extraordinary search of Mar-a-Lago came only after other efforts to retrieve the records had failed and that it resulted from law enforcement suspicion that additional documents remained inside the property despite assurances by Trump representatives that a “diligent search” had accounted for all of the material.
It also included a picture of some of the seized documents with colored cover sheets indicating their classified status, perhaps as a way to rebut suggestions that whoever packed them or handled them at Mar-a-Lago could have easily failed to appreciate their sensitive nature.
The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover.
Though it contains significant new details on the investigation, the Justice Department filing does not resolve a core question that has driven public fascination with the investigation — why Trump held onto the documents after he left the White House and why he and his team resisted repeated efforts to give them back. In fact, it suggests officials may not have received an answer.
During a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago by FBI and Justice Department officials, the document states, “Counsel for the former President offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 documents with classification markings, remained at the Premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly one-and-a-half years after the end of the Administration.”
That visit, which came weeks after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records, receives substantial attention in the document and appears to be a key investigative focus.
Though Trump insisted again Wednesday that he had declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers did not suggest that during the visit and instead “handled them in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified,” the Justice Department said.
FBI agents who went there to receive additional materials were given “a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents,” the filing states.
That envelope, according to the FBI, contained 38 unique documents with classification markings, including 16 documents marked secret and 17 marked top secret.
The investigators were permitted to visit the storage room but were not allowed to open or look inside any of the boxes, “giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained,” the Justice Department says.
During that visit, the document says, Trump’s lawyers told investigators that all the records that had come from the White House were stored in one location — a Mar-a-Lago storage room — and that “there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.”
After that, though, the department, which had subpoenaed video footage for the property, “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” The filing does not identify the individuals who may have relocated the boxes.
In their August search, agents found classified documents both in the storage room as well as in the former president’s office — including three classified documents found not in boxes, but in office desks.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the document states.
It says, “In some instances, even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents.”
The investigation began from a referral from the National Archives and Records Administration, which recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January that were found to contain 184 documents with classified markings, including top secret information.
The purpose of the Tuesday night filing was to oppose a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during this month’s search and to return to him certain seized property. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter on Thursday.
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.” It said Tuesday that a special master was therefore “unnecessary” and that the presidential records that were taken from the home do not belong to Trump.
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Colvin and Balsamo reported from New York.
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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/obstruction-emerges-key-focus-trump-documents-probe/ | 2022-08-31T15:05:55Z |
Trump’s Truth Social still unavailable on Google Play
Published: Aug. 31, 2022 at 9:43 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - Truth Social, the social network supported by former President Donald Trump, is still unavailable on Google’s Android app store.
The Twitter-like app is preferred by many Trump supporters, but Google said it doesn’t reach the company’s Play store standards.
Although Truth Social has been available for preorder on the Google Play store for nearly a month, it hasn’t been officially released, though it is available from Apple’s app store.
Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes said in a recent interview that they’re still waiting for approval from Google Play.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/trumps-truth-social-still-unavailable-google-play/ | 2022-08-31T15:06:02Z |
US clears updated COVID boosters targeting newest variants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to COVID-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days.
The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved millions of lives. The hope is that the modified boosters will blunt yet another winter surge.
“You’ll see me at the front of the line,” FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press shortly before his agency cleared the new doses.
Until now, COVID-19 vaccines have targeted the original coronavirus strain, even as wildly different mutants emerged. The new U.S. boosters are combination, or “bivalent,” shots. They contain half that original vaccine recipe and half protection against the newest omicron versions, called BA.4 and BA.5, that are considered the most contagious yet.
The combination aims to increase cross-protection against multiple variants.
“It really provides the broadest opportunity for protection,” Pfizer vaccine chief Annaliesa Anderson told the AP.
The updated boosters are only for people who have already had their primary vaccinations, using the original vaccines. Doses made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech are for anyone 12 and older while Moderna’s updated shots are for adults — if it has been at least two months since their last primary vaccination or their latest booster. They’re not to be used for initial vaccinations.
There’s one more step before a fall booster campaign begins: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend who should get the additional shot. An influential CDC advisory panel will debate the evidence Thursday — including whether people at high risk from COVID-19 should go first.
“As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.
The U.S. has purchased more than 170 million doses from the two companies. Pfizer said it could ship up to 15 million of those doses by the end of next week.
The big question is whether people weary of vaccinations will roll up their sleeves again. Just half of vaccinated Americans got the first recommended booster dose, and only a third of those 50 and older who were urged to get a second booster did so.
It’s time for U.S. authorities to better explain that the public should expect an updated COVID-19 vaccination every so often, just like getting a fall flu shot or a tetanus booster after stepping on a rusty nail, said University of Pennsylvania immunologist E. John Wherry.
“We need to rebrand it in a societally normal-looking way,” rather than a panicked response to new mutants, Wherry said. “Give a clear, forward-looking set of expectations.”
Here’s the rub: The original vaccines still offer strong protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19 for most generally healthy people, especially if they got that important first booster dose. It’s not clear just how much more benefit an updated booster will bring — beyond a temporary jump in antibodies capable of fending off an omicron infection.
One reason: The FDA cleared the modifications ahead of studies in people, a step toward eventually handling COVID-19 vaccine updates more like yearly flu shots.
First, FDA checked human studies of earlier Pfizer and Moderna attempts to update their vaccines — shots matching the omicron strain that struck last winter. That recipe change was safe, and substantially boosted antibodies targeting the earlier variant — better than another dose of the original vaccine — while adding a little protection against today’s genetically distinct BA.4 and BA.5 omicron versions.
But FDA ordered the companies to brew even more up-to-date doses that target those newest omicron mutants instead, sparking a race to roll out shots in less than three months. Rather than waiting a few more months for additional human studies of that recipe tweak, Marks said animal tests showed the latest update spurs “a very good immune response.”
The hope, he said, is that a vaccine matched to currently spreading variants might do a better job fighting infection, not just serious illness, at least for a while.
What’s next? Even as modified shots roll out, Moderna and Pfizer are conducting human studies to help assess their value, including how they hold up if a new mutant comes along.
And for children, Pfizer plans to ask FDA to allow updated boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds in early October.
It’s the first U.S. update to the COVID-19 vaccine recipe, an important but expected next step -- like how flu vaccines get updated every year.
And the U.S. isn’t alone. Britain recently decided to offer adults over 50 a different booster option from Moderna, a combo shot targeting that initial BA.1 omicron strain. European regulators are considering whether to authorize one or both of the updated formulas.
___
AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/us-clears-updated-covid-boosters-targeting-newest-variants/ | 2022-08-31T15:06:08Z |
‘I watched her take her last breath’: Mother of teen killed by downed electrical line shares final moments
MONROE, Mich. (WTVG/Gray News) – Elizabeth Jacobsen, 14, was set to start her freshman year, but now her family is making plans to honor her memory after she was electrocuted by touching a downed power line.
According to Monroe police detectives, Jacobsen was walking with a friend in her backyard when they believed they could “smell a bonfire.”
“My daughter thought that it was a twig on the ground and went to go pick it up and 13,800 volts went through her body. It was a wire no smaller than a charger cord,” Elizabeth’s mother, Marthajean Hunter told WTVG.
The teen was still touching the wire when emergency crews arrived, but rescue workers couldn’t help her until the power was disconnected. By then, it was too late.
“I watched her take her last breath, which was not easy. I just wanted to rip that wire off of her,” Hunter said, adding that she feels numb.
Hunter said her daughter wanted to be a police officer. Elizabeth like to give to others and will continue to do so by donating some of her organs.
“I’m wishing this was just a very horrific nightmare, but I know it’s not,” Hunter said while clutching one of the last things her daughter touched – Elizabeth’s beloved “Sofia the First” blanket.
DTE Energy is covering the costs of Elizabeth’s funeral.
Copyright 2022 WTVG via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/i-watched-her-take-her-last-breath-mother-teen-killed-by-downed-electrical-line-shares-final-moments/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:09Z |
Leaky battleship in Texas begins trip for $35M repairs
LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — It’s the only surviving battleship that served in both world wars, having fought Nazis and the Japanese Army during World War II. But the greatest challenge in recent years for the USS Texas has been a leaky, rusty hull that at times forced workers to pump out about 2,000 gallons (7,570 liters) of water per minute from the 110-year-old ship.
To ensure the historic vessel doesn’t sink and can continue hosting visitors, the foundation in charge of its care is towing the ship Wednesday from its longtime home along the Houston Ship Channel to a shipyard in Galveston for much-needed repairs.
Tony Gregory, the president of the Battleship Texas Foundation, said Wednesday the pulling of the ship by tugboats and getting it on its way was perfect. He said any problems would have happened in the first 15 minutes of pulling the ship but there were no issues.
“It went smoother than we thought and quicker than we thought … and she’s gone, down the channel,” he said.
Gregory said he expects the ship to arrive in Galveston by 4 p.m.
The journey from its longtime berth at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in the Houston suburb of La Porte is part of a $35 million project to repair the hull and ultimately restore the ship to its former glory.
The ship’s repairs are part of the foundation’s plans to eventually resettle it in a new location in Texas, possibly in one of three nearby cities, including Galveston, in order to attract more visitors and increase revenue.
Moving the ship for repairs is “the major step in getting the ship back to tip-top shape,” Gregory said Tuesday as he stood on the vessel while workers made final preparations.
The battleship will be pulled by four tugboats at a pace of about 5 knots per hour. The 40-mile (64 kilometer) journey to Galveston was expected to take about nine hours and won’t be without risk as the ship’s hull could leak enough to sink it.
“Once we get going, I anticipate it being pretty smooth... We feel like we’re prepared,” Gregory said.
Since 1948, the USS Texas has been located at the state historic site where the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution was fought. There, it’s served as a museum and tourist attraction. The battleship was previously taken to the same shipyard in Galveston for repairs in 1988.
For the last three years, the ship has been closed to the public as the foundation has been preparing for the repairs. In 2019, the Texas Legislature approved the $35 million to fix the hull. The foundation is planning to make other fixes which it’s paying for. All the repairs are expected to take up to a year to complete.
The foundation expected many people to gather along the ship channel to watch the ship go by.
Tricia Thomas, 50, who was one of the people invited to watch as the ship was unmoored, said she became emotional and teared up as she saw the ship move and heard its whistle sound as it began its journey. As the ship began moving, Thomas said, people clapped and cheered.
“It’s amazing to see a ship that’s 100 years old out on the water again, moving like she did for so many years. It was exciting,” said Thomas, who lives in the Houston suburb of Kingwood.
Thomas said she believes it’s important to preserve the ship so future generations can learn its history and it can remind people how they can come together for a common cause that’s greater than them.
“I think that’s probably the biggest story she can tell,” Thomas said.
___
Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/leaky-battleship-texas-begins-trip-35m-repairs/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:10Z |
Missing country singer found dead in Arizona
Published: Aug. 31, 2022 at 10:28 AM EDT|Updated: 39 minutes ago
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD/Gray News) – Country artist Luke Bell was found dead in Arizona, authorities confirmed Tuesday.
Police said Bell was found in Tucson Monday, KOLD reports. His cause of death has not been reported.
The 32-year-old country artist went missing Saturday, Aug. 20, according to Saving Country Music.
According to the singer-songwriter’s verified Facebook page, he’s from Cody, Wy.
Bell released his self-titled album debut in 2012 and another in 2014 called “Don’t Mind If I Do.”
Police say the investigation into his disappearance and death is ongoing.
Copyright 2022 KOLD via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/missing-country-singer-found-dead-arizona/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:14Z |
Obstruction emerges as key focus in Trump documents probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says classified documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into the discovery of the government records.
The FBI also seized boxes and containers holding more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found classified documents stashed in Trump’s office, according to a filing late Tuesday that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of months of strained interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the discovery of government secrets.
The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of the top secret documents.
The timeline laid out by the Justice Department made clear that the extraordinary search of Mar-a-Lago came only after other efforts to retrieve the records had failed and that it resulted from law enforcement suspicion that additional documents remained inside the property despite assurances by Trump representatives that a “diligent search” had accounted for all of the material.
It also included a picture of some of the seized documents with colored cover sheets indicating their classified status, perhaps as a way to rebut suggestions that whoever packed them or handled them at Mar-a-Lago could have easily failed to appreciate their sensitive nature.
The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover.
Though it contains significant new details on the investigation, the Justice Department filing does not resolve a core question that has driven public fascination with the investigation — why Trump held onto the documents after he left the White House and why he and his team resisted repeated efforts to give them back. In fact, it suggests officials may not have received an answer.
During a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago by FBI and Justice Department officials, the document states, “Counsel for the former President offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 documents with classification markings, remained at the Premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly one-and-a-half years after the end of the Administration.”
That visit, which came weeks after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records, receives substantial attention in the document and appears to be a key investigative focus.
Though Trump insisted again Wednesday that he had declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers did not suggest that during the visit and instead “handled them in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified,” the Justice Department said.
FBI agents who went there to receive additional materials were given “a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents,” the filing states.
That envelope, according to the FBI, contained 38 unique documents with classification markings, including 16 documents marked secret and 17 marked top secret.
The investigators were permitted to visit the storage room but were not allowed to open or look inside any of the boxes, “giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained,” the Justice Department says.
During that visit, the document says, Trump’s lawyers told investigators that all the records that had come from the White House were stored in one location — a Mar-a-Lago storage room — and that “there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.”
After that, though, the department, which had subpoenaed video footage for the property, “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” The filing does not identify the individuals who may have relocated the boxes.
In their August search, agents found classified documents both in the storage room as well as in the former president’s office — including three classified documents found not in boxes, but in office desks.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the document states.
It says, “In some instances, even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents.”
The investigation began from a referral from the National Archives and Records Administration, which recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January that were found to contain 184 documents with classified markings, including top secret information.
The purpose of the Tuesday night filing was to oppose a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during this month’s search and to return to him certain seized property. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter on Thursday.
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.” It said Tuesday that a special master was therefore “unnecessary” and that the presidential records that were taken from the home do not belong to Trump.
___
Colvin and Balsamo reported from New York.
___
More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/obstruction-emerges-key-focus-trump-documents-probe/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:20Z |
Trump’s Truth Social still unavailable on Google Play
Published: Aug. 31, 2022 at 9:43 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - Truth Social, the social network supported by former President Donald Trump, is still unavailable on Google’s Android app store.
The Twitter-like app is preferred by many Trump supporters, but Google said it doesn’t reach the company’s Play store standards.
Although Truth Social has been available for preorder on the Google Play store for nearly a month, it hasn’t been officially released, though it is available from Apple’s app store.
Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes said in a recent interview that they’re still waiting for approval from Google Play.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/trumps-truth-social-still-unavailable-google-play/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:26Z |
US clears updated COVID boosters targeting newest variants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to COVID-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days.
The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved millions of lives. The hope is that the modified boosters will blunt yet another winter surge.
“You’ll see me at the front of the line,” FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press shortly before his agency cleared the new doses.
Until now, COVID-19 vaccines have targeted the original coronavirus strain, even as wildly different mutants emerged. The new U.S. boosters are combination, or “bivalent,” shots. They contain half that original vaccine recipe and half protection against the newest omicron versions, called BA.4 and BA.5, that are considered the most contagious yet.
The combination aims to increase cross-protection against multiple variants.
“It really provides the broadest opportunity for protection,” Pfizer vaccine chief Annaliesa Anderson told the AP.
The updated boosters are only for people who have already had their primary vaccinations, using the original vaccines. Doses made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech are for anyone 12 and older while Moderna’s updated shots are for adults — if it has been at least two months since their last primary vaccination or their latest booster. They’re not to be used for initial vaccinations.
There’s one more step before a fall booster campaign begins: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend who should get the additional shot. An influential CDC advisory panel will debate the evidence Thursday — including whether people at high risk from COVID-19 should go first.
“As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.
The U.S. has purchased more than 170 million doses from the two companies. Pfizer said it could ship up to 15 million of those doses by the end of next week.
The big question is whether people weary of vaccinations will roll up their sleeves again. Just half of vaccinated Americans got the first recommended booster dose, and only a third of those 50 and older who were urged to get a second booster did so.
It’s time for U.S. authorities to better explain that the public should expect an updated COVID-19 vaccination every so often, just like getting a fall flu shot or a tetanus booster after stepping on a rusty nail, said University of Pennsylvania immunologist E. John Wherry.
“We need to rebrand it in a societally normal-looking way,” rather than a panicked response to new mutants, Wherry said. “Give a clear, forward-looking set of expectations.”
Here’s the rub: The original vaccines still offer strong protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19 for most generally healthy people, especially if they got that important first booster dose. It’s not clear just how much more benefit an updated booster will bring — beyond a temporary jump in antibodies capable of fending off an omicron infection.
One reason: The FDA cleared the modifications ahead of studies in people, a step toward eventually handling COVID-19 vaccine updates more like yearly flu shots.
First, FDA checked human studies of earlier Pfizer and Moderna attempts to update their vaccines — shots matching the omicron strain that struck last winter. That recipe change was safe, and substantially boosted antibodies targeting the earlier variant — better than another dose of the original vaccine — while adding a little protection against today’s genetically distinct BA.4 and BA.5 omicron versions.
But FDA ordered the companies to brew even more up-to-date doses that target those newest omicron mutants instead, sparking a race to roll out shots in less than three months. Rather than waiting a few more months for additional human studies of that recipe tweak, Marks said animal tests showed the latest update spurs “a very good immune response.”
The hope, he said, is that a vaccine matched to currently spreading variants might do a better job fighting infection, not just serious illness, at least for a while.
What’s next? Even as modified shots roll out, Moderna and Pfizer are conducting human studies to help assess their value, including how they hold up if a new mutant comes along.
And for children, Pfizer plans to ask FDA to allow updated boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds in early October.
It’s the first U.S. update to the COVID-19 vaccine recipe, an important but expected next step -- like how flu vaccines get updated every year.
And the U.S. isn’t alone. Britain recently decided to offer adults over 50 a different booster option from Moderna, a combo shot targeting that initial BA.1 omicron strain. European regulators are considering whether to authorize one or both of the updated formulas.
___
AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/us-clears-updated-covid-boosters-targeting-newest-variants/ | 2022-08-31T15:08:29Z |
The Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education plans to push back a revision of social studies curriculum standards to 2025 after facing criticism from conservative advocates and groups. Board members were originally scheduled to vote on the new guidelines this November, updating them for the first time in over a decade. They'll take a final vote this Friday on whether to delay the overhaul of the standards.
If the delay is approved, it will mean the state's social studies curriculum will not be revised until after the November election. All 15 seats on the board will be on the ballot and more conservative members could be elected to the board. Nine are currently held by Republicans.
The board’s decision on Tuesday came after it heard hours of public testimony on the proposed guidelines, also known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. A number of parents and conservative activists urged the board to hold off on approving the social studies standards that would shape what 5.5 million Texas public school students learn in class.
Among them was Mary Elizabeth Castle, a senior policy advisor with the conservative group Texas Values. She said more time was needed to address issues in the proposed standards.
“So far, the drafts that have been presented have not been sufficient, and it is recommended that you slow the process down until we get it right,” she said.
Castle told board members information about the LGBTQ pride movement should be removed from the curriculum guidelines. That prompted board member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a San Marcos Democrat representing District 5, to ask Castle whether students should learn about the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
“I don’t believe the topic is appropriate for the subject at all,” Castle said. “So, I don’t think it should be addressed.”
Another outspoken critic of the proposed state standards was Jolyn Potenza from Southlake. Schools in that North Texas suburb are facing federal civil rights investigations over allegations of discrimination. Potenza told the board that hundreds of people in her hometown signed onto a petition that argued the proposed social studies standards failed to teach “Texas heritage” and “American exceptionalism.”
The petition read: “It reduces the mention of America’s resilience, trust in God, and celebration of our Declaration of Independence.”
Potenza also argued the process of updating the social studies standards was rushed.
“Who was rushed? We’re rushed,” she said. “History, the past, what happened yesterday, that doesn’t change. What changes is when you rewrite it, you dilute it, you change the focus. And that is exactly what has happened here.”
But people directly involved in developing the new guidelines disputed claims the process was rushed. Lily Trieu, who was part of two workgroups, said most members were educators, content experts and community leaders who poured time into developing the proposed standards.
“Over the last several weeks, fringe political players and special interest groups have been playing politics with this very important work in efforts to distract and delay the process,” she said.
Trieu added that while the current drafts are not perfect, they are “very good” and must replace the current, “outdated” standards.
Mohit Mehta, who was a member of the workgroup on Asian American studies, encouraged the board to approve the standards. He also criticized efforts to label any culturally responsive curriculum as an example of critical race theory — which has become a flashpoint for conservatives.
“This is falsely misleading," he said. "There is not one single mention of critical race theory."
Mehta added the proposed standards do not violate Senate Bill 3, a Republican-backed law the state legislature passed in 2021 to prevent critical race theory from being taught in public schools. The academic concept — which is taught at the university level, not in K-12 — looks at how racism is embedded in the American legal system and other institutions.
Mehta pointed out social studies often fails to reflect the diversity of Texas public school students.
“Texas history is much more than the Alamo," Mehta said. "It’s a history of all of us in this room."
The senior political director for the Texas Freedom Network, a progressive group, echoed Mehta’s point.
“We believe that all students deserve to see themselves represented in the curriculum,” Carisa Lopez told KUT.
She added her group supported the proposed social studies standards.
“There are always tweaks that can be made," she said. "The board always goes in and makes lots of amendments to those drafts, but as a starting document it’s really good.”
Lopez was concerned the process of approving the revisions would be delayed. When public testimony concluded, Republican members of the board moved to do just that.
The push to go back to the drawing board drew criticism from Democratic board members. Aicha Davis, a Dallas area Democrat who represents District 13, wondered if some of her Republican colleagues resisted the revisions because they were representative of diverse experiences. She asked her colleagues what it would take for them to support the proposed guidelines.
“If we’ve had all [these] months of work, all of this testimony from both sides, all of this and it’s still unacceptable, I’m trying to figure out what is acceptable to you,” she said. “And it feels like for the majority of people it’s more acceptable when it doesn’t include discussion on LGBTQ+ social movements, when it doesn’t include discussions on the truth of chattel slavery in America, when it doesn’t include a lot of world religions."
Bell-Metereau also said delaying a decision on the new social studies standards was a waste.
“To throw out a draft seems to me like such a wasteful process," she said. "I always tell my students, ‘Keep your drafts, don't crumple them up and throw them away.'"
Whether or not the State Board of Education decides to delay its overhaul of social studies standards, it is still expected to make a few curriculum changes this year to comply with new state laws, including SB 3.
Copyright 2022 KUT 90.5. To see more, visit KUT 90.5. | https://www.keranews.org/education/2022-08-31/texas-state-board-of-education-to-delay-revisions-to-social-studies-standards | 2022-08-31T15:34:19Z |
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/news/2022-08-30/fda-expected-to-authorize-new-omicron-specific-covid-boosters-this-week | 2022-08-31T15:34:20Z |
The Battleship Texas is on the move.
The ship, which was constructed in 1910 and served in both world wars, was decommissioned in 1948 and became a floating museum, docked at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site in La Porte, near Houston. Today it will be towed to Galveston Bay to undergo $35 million in hull repairs that will take between nine and 12 months to complete.
The ship is expected to get going between 5:30 and 6 a.m. to start making its way through the Houston Ship Channel, which will be closed for the move. It's expected to arrive in Galveston about 3 or 4 p.m.
Following the repairs, Battleship Texas will have a new, yet-to-be-determined home that will hopefully be more visible and accessible to more visitors, Bruce Bramlett, chief operating officer for the Battleship Texas Foundation, told the Texas Standard.
"I love [San Jacinto State Park] ... it’s beautiful. But the ship’s history doesn’t have anything to do with San Jacinto," he said. "We’re going to take our history with us. It was made thousands of miles from here, and it’ll go wherever the ship goes."
Tune in to a livestream of the ship's journey below or by clicking here:
Copyright 2022 KUT 90.5. To see more, visit KUT 90.5. | https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-08-31/watch-live-the-battleship-texas-journeys-to-galveston-for-repairs | 2022-08-31T15:34:22Z |
Congressman visits Robotic Welding Center
Guests at the ribbon-cutting saw the robotic arm in action
TAZEWELL, Va. (WVVA) - Congressman Morgan Griffith visited Tazewell Monday for the ribbon cutting of the brand new Robotic Welding Center that was paid for by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. This center hopes to train skilled workers in high-tech jobs by using arm-like welding robots. These robots require skill to operate but not a college education. Griffith says the Center will help prove that you don’t necessarily need to go to college to get a get a good job.
“We have lots of people think that you have to go to college to get a good job. That’s just not true. And this- working this machinery takes brain power, but you don’t have to go to college. You have to be trained, and you have to learn a lot, but it’s a different skill set, and everybody has a different skill set,” said Griffith
He also added that this project is in response to a “brain drain” of skilled workers leaving the area to find jobs. He hopes companies will recognize the skill set of the community and bring jobs to the area.
“We want to make sure that we are preparing for the future and for jobs of the future, not today, but next week, next month, next year, a decade from now, because that’s important. And so, as the economy changes, we need to make sure we are changing to keep up with the times,” said Griffith
Students interested in this program should ask their school about availability.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/congressman-visits-robotic-welding-center/ | 2022-08-31T15:49:04Z |
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Queen Elizabeth II will receive the UK's next prime minister at Balmoral rather than Buckingham Palace -- a historic first for her 70-year reign.
A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said the 96-year-old monarch will not be making the 1,000-mile round trip from Scotland and instead the outgoing leader Boris Johnson will travel north from London on September 6, followed by an audience with his successor.
The decision was taken for the audiences to take place at Balmoral in order to provide certainty for the Prime Minister's diary, a royal source told CNN.
The source added that if the monarch were to be experiencing an episodic mobility issue next week and the plan had been to travel to London or Windsor, it would have meant alternative arrangements being made at the last minute.
Johnson was left with little choice but to step down as Conservative Party leader in early July after months of scandals that rocked his government and led to dozens of ministerial resignations. His announcement triggered a leadership contest that saw a broad field of contenders whittled down to two: Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
The pair have spent the summer trying to curry favor with 160,000 rank-and-file members of the party. The result of that vote will be announced on Monday.
As the leader of the largest party in Parliament, the winner will be invited by the Queen to form the next government and become her 15th prime minister.
Appointing a new prime minister is one of the Queen's core ceremonial responsibilities as Head of State -- with others being the State Opening of Parliament and the signing of parliamentary bills into law. In May, Princes Charles and William took center stage at the grand set-piece event, with the heir to the throne reading the government's legislative agenda for the year ahead on his mother's behalf.
It was the first time the Queen had missed the event in 59 years. The palace cited the monarch's "episodic mobility problems" but declined to divulge further details citing patient confidentiality. These ongoing issues, which she has faced for nearly a year since a brief hospital stay last October, have also hampered other occasions including her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June.
The ceremony next week will be the first time a prime minister has officially tendered their resignation or been appointed outside of Buckingham Palace during the Queen's seven decades on the throne.
Several events over the last 12 months have been modified for the Queen's "comfort" with one of the most recent examples being her arrival at Balmoral Castle earlier this month. The moment is traditionally marked by an honor guard at the gates of the 50,000-acre estate but this year's inspection of the troops was held privately.
Sign up to CNN's Royal News, a weekly dispatch bringing you the inside track on the royal family, what they are up to in public and what's happening behind palace walls. | https://www.kitv.com/news/national/queen-wont-return-to-london-to-appoint-new-british-pm-for-first-time-in-her/article_9bbef62f-51e0-5b9d-877e-753eb863e48b.html | 2022-08-31T15:49:39Z |
CASPER – People in school districts across Wyoming “overwhelmingly” emphasized that addressing mental health among students and staff is crucial to school safety, according to a memo from Wyoming Department of Education Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Chad Auer.
“I think mental health is a huge component of safe schools,” Chad Blakely, a Cheyenne-based teacher, said. “It’s the basis of everything.”
The Wyoming Department of Education said that it would host school safety talks across the state following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 kids and two adults in May.
“School safety is at the top of everyone’s mind now, and it has been for many years,” Auer said in a statement announcing the talks. “The modern reality is we, as educators and communities, must prepare for the possibility that evil might show up at our local school on any given day.”
Auer hosted the talks over the summer. The Wyoming Department of Education shared his update on the talks Monday.
Mental health has been a challenge across the board in Wyoming.
The state has the highest suicide rate in the nation, according to 2020 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the pandemic has made the situation even more challenging; suspected suicide attempts among adolescents across the country went up 31% in 2020 compared with the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Especially adolescents in middle school and high school, over the years, we’re continuing to see a larger number suffering from mental health issues,” said Andi Sommerville, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Center.
Student behavior has been more of an issue during the pandemic, too.
Natrona County School District reported 17,000 recorded instances of bad student behavior district-wide this past school year, up from 12,000 instances in the 2018 school year. Expulsions also increased from 37 in the 2018 school year to 48 this past year. Since the pandemic, teachers have observed more incidents of aggression, according to a joint report from the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Education Association.
“When the kids came back to school after lockdown and isolation, it was like they forgot how to act in civilized society,” Blakely said. “There were a lot more fights, turning in homework seemed more challenging.”
Not all behavioral problems among students are necessarily related to mental health, but it’s a contributing factor, Somerville said.
In a state that’s so rural, providing access to mental health resources isn’t easy. Auer said in his memo that some districts are trying to connect with local professionals to meet the mental health needs of students and staff. Not all have access to such resources, and many of them reported a shortage of counselors, social workers and mental health professionals.
“It’s absolutely the case that school districts are caught up in the provider shortage right now,” Sommerville said.
Part of the problem may be that these professionals don’t get enough compensation; the Wyoming Education Association argues in a lawsuit it brought against the state earlier this month over school funding that school personnel – including counselors – aren’t paid enough to compete with surrounding states.
There has been a lot of discussion in Wyoming, particularly since the pandemic, around providing more mental health care via telehealth. That could be especially helpful for rural communities.
Somerville said mental health care through telehealth should be balanced with in-person services, particularly for school-aged kids.
“We really need to look toward a longer-term plan that uses both telehealth and in-person services,” she said.
There are some potential solutions to address mental health in Wyoming schools that seem promising.
The Wyoming Department of Education got two Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grants to start Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education) in 2021. The program, which serves six Wyoming school districts right now, provides school-based mental health services that are meant to supplement existing mental health services in communities.
The project is showing positive outcomes so far; of the 380 kids who have used the program’s services so far, about 46.3% of them have reported higher levels of social connectedness, according to Dustin Brown, the project’s director. It has helped reduce wait times for students in need of mental health services. The program is also open to school staff, although there isn’t any data to show outcomes for staff who take advantage of the services. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/in_our_schools/participants-in-safety-talks-stress-connection-between-mental-health-and-school-safety/article_331200ba-28b1-11ed-8c58-77c40155a5f1.html | 2022-08-31T16:22:30Z |
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Today/tomorrow Aug 31, 2022 1 hr 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 1939, the Dome Lake station in Sheridan County reported 11 inches of snow for the month of August.Tomorrow in Wyoming history: In 1927, Charles Lindbergh landed his famous plan, Spirit of St. Louis, in Cheyenne.(Thanks Wyoming Historical Society) Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Tags Wyoming Cheyenne Plan Society Charles Lindbergh St. Louis 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 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 Police blotter 8-24-22 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_d290b428-2939-11ed-8af1-43d67f7e5008.html | 2022-08-31T16:22:48Z |
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Two executive producers of the FX drama series "The Americans" have re-teamed to create and write a new 10-part drama premiering today on Hulu. It's called "The Patient" and stars Steve Carell as a therapist who's abducted by a serial killer. The killer, played by Domhnall Gleeson, orders the therapist to cure him of his deadly tendencies or else. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: If you had to describe "The Patient," this new 10-episode series from writers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, in 10 words or less, it might be something like this - "In Treatment" meets "Dexter." In the HBO series "In Treatment," you had intimate one-on-one conversations between a therapist and their patients. In Showtime's "Dexter," you had a serial killer who tried to channel his murderous impulses and kill other serial killers. In Hulu's "The Patient," you sort of have both.
In "The Patient," we have a murderer who abducts a therapist, Alan Strauss, whose books on psychology he's read and liked. After attending a few sessions in Alan's office to feel him out, pretending to be a patient named Gene, the murderer whose real name is Sam makes Alan his captive. He knocks him out, and Alan regains consciousness chained by the ankle to the floor of the basement in Sam's secluded home. Sam's idea is that the two of them will undergo some intense and intensive therapy sessions quickly curing Sam of his homicidal tendencies. Sam is played by Domhnall Gleeson, who played Bill Weasley in the "Harry Potter" films. Steve Carell from "The Office," in a totally dramatic role, plays the therapist Alan, who understandably recoils at this extremely unusual arrangement.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PATIENT")
STEVE CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Gene. Sam. You have to listen to me.
DOMHNALL GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I am listening. I am listening. I know how to listen. I understand. This is upsetting for you. I get that. It's a little scary, but this is the only way that I could - I need help. I want help. I'm asking you for help. You said therapy can't work if I'm not truthful. I know that you're right. So...
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) No, no. You don't understand. I don't think you know what you're doing to me.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I realize it might take you a little time to get used to what's happening here.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Whatever is troubling you, we can address it. But not here, not like this.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) Mr. Strauss, I have much bigger problems than your other patients. I have a compulsion to kill people.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) A compulsion.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) Yeah, I do it.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Sam.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I don't mean just once or twice. Every once in a while, I just do it.
BIANCULLI: They do, of course, begin a series of sessions or else there's no TV series. But it's the way this story unfolds and expands that makes it noteworthy. What sounds like a two-person drama becomes, little by little, more than that. This very contained universe with so much of it set in one finished basement opens up a lot thanks to flashbacks and dream sequences that give us insight not only into Sam's life, but into Alan's.
Both of them, it turns out, have family issues to unravel. Sam, the killer, has a father who abused him as a boy. And Alan, the therapist, has a son who rebelled against his parents by following a different religious path. And added to all that are real-life characters who occasionally intrude upon Sam's homemade basement prison or are shown interacting with him outside.
As "The Patient" unfolds, it gets more intense. The stakes rise, and so does the body count. And because this is a one-season limited series, there's no guarantee that even the main characters will survive, adding measurably to the sense of jeopardy. That unpredictability is a crucial ingredient here, and so is the constant reexamination of motives and the past. For Alan to literally talk his way out of his potentially deadly circumstances, he has to probe deeply into Sam's head but also his own.
By the time the series is over, the very title of "The Patient" has a multiple meaning. The patient easily could refer to more than one person and arguably more than two. How that happens and why is what makes "The Patient" so watchable throughout. Sam, the killer, is the one seeking treatment, but by the time this drama is over, nearly everyone in this drama reflects upon past actions and decisions or dies trying.
GROSS: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey. He reviewed the new FX series "The Patient."
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll continue our weeklong series featuring some of our favorite music interviews from the archive. We'll hear interviews with Jay-Z and Lizzo. I hope you'll join us.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HADEN QUARTET WEST'S "MARABLES'S PARABLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/in-treatment-meets-dexter-in-hulus-psychological-thriller-the-patient | 2022-08-31T16:32:12Z |
Updated August 31, 2022 at 11:01 AM ET
When the U.S. attorney general appeared before television cameras this month to discuss the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, Merrick Garland said his Justice Department "will speak through its court filings and its work."
The careful former judge, whose voice sometimes fails to rise above the din in Washington, is speaking loudly this time--in legal briefs spurred by former President Donald Trump's demands.
In a late-night filing this week, prosecutors blasted what they called "wide ranging meritless accusations leveled against the government." And then, in 36 pages, they proceeded to set the record straight on the unprecedented search of the home of a former president.
Countering Trump's claims
Trump and his political allies have been claiming he declassified government secrets uncovered in an office, storage room, and desk at the Mar-a-Lago resort. But government lawyers said at no time in the months-long tug of war to retrieve the papers, had Trump's lawyers made the argument he declassified the documents.
Rather, at a hand-off in June 2021, an unnamed Trump lawyer gave the visitors from the Justice Department a batch of papers in "a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape," suggesting the attorney believed they were classified, the Justice Department filing said.
Another Trump ally, described in the court papers as the custodian of the records, signed a letter to authorities certifying that Trump had conducted a "diligent search" for other materials sought by the National Archives and prosecutors. The letter said "all responsive documents" were included and that Trump had kept "no copy, written notation or reproduction."
Based on the boxes of top secret and even more highly classified papers the FBI extracted during its search Aug. 8, that too, proved false. The Justice Department said during its June visit, Trump's representatives barred them from looking through boxes in the storage room, giving them no chance to substantiate the claims. By August, they were armed with a court-approved search warrant.
"That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the 'diligent search' that the former President's counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter," authorities wrote.
Possible obstruction of Justice
The most striking new details about the investigation involve possible obstruction of justice. Prosecutors said they developed evidence, perhaps through a combination of civilian witnesses and video footage they subpoenaed from Mar-a-Lago, that government records "were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation."
Ultimately, the FBI seized 33 boxes of evidence during its August search, including papers with colored cover sheets clearly indicating their levels of classification to anyone who looked--important evidence if prosecutors ultimately proceed with a criminal case over obstruction or unlawful retention of information related to the national defense.
Some of the materials were so highly classified that FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers involved in the investigation required additional clearances before they could review the papers.
The Justice Department said in its new filing that agents also found top secret documents commingled in a desk drawer along with Trump's passports, which they decided to return, batting back public statements by Trump on social media that the FBI "stole" them.
Near the end of his concise, on-camera statement about the Mar-a-Lago search this month, the attorney general pledged that "more information will be made available in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time."
The Justice Department is due back in court Thursday, to discuss Trump's bid for an independent special master.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/in-filings-justice-department-rebuts-trumps-claims-on-mar-a-lago-search | 2022-08-31T16:32:18Z |
Updated August 31, 2022 at 11:41 AM ET
It's been exactly 25 years since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. But her legacy of activism and charity (not to mention the bike shorts) lives on.
Diana died at age 36 on August 31, 1997, of injuries sustained in a car crash in Paris, which also killed her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. About a decade later, a jury attributed her death to the reckless driving of both her chauffeur and the paparazzi who were pursuing them (her sons also blame the BBC for the role its bombshell 1995 interview — obtained through a scheme of forgery and deceit — played in her death).
The so-called "people's princess" wasn't just beloved by the public. She also entirely changed how people view celebrity, according to British journalist Bidisha Mamata.
"In the 21st century we completely take it for granted that famous people will also be a U.N. special envoy or that they'll use their privilege to do good," she explains. "Princess Diana invented the idea of the famous person who does good, and she was extremely radical."
Diana used her fame to draw attention to a number of humanitarian issues and philanthropic causes, and at one point was linked to more than 100 charities.
She traversed minefields in Bosnia and Angola to advocate for landmine clearance, visited people with leprosy in Nepal, India and Zimbabwe and opened Britain's first AIDS ward in London — where she famously shook ungloved hands with a patient, challenging the false and once-prevalent assumption that HIV/AIDS could be spread by casual touch.
Diana also made headlines for hugging a young patient while visiting a pediatric AIDS unit in Harlem, New York.
"She was an activist at a time when there was so much stigmatization around AIDS and HIV," Mamata said. "And she's the one who went into AIDS wards and said, 'No, I'm going to talk to people like they're normal human beings. I'm going to shake hands, we're going to communicate and I'm going to raise consciousness.'"
In a Morning Edition interview right after Diana's death, the late British historian Ben Pimlott predicted Diana would be remembered for her public service and for breathing fresh air into the monarchy.
He described her as "a very funny, witty, sharp, human person with a great rapport and a great compassion."
Diana's life — including her troubled marriage to Prince Charles and treatment by the royal family — and the circumstances leading up to her death continue to captivate the public even decades later.
In recent months her story has made it to the big screen as well as streaming services, where she's played by Emma Corrin in Netflix's The Crown and Kristen Stewart in the film Spencer. Princes William and Harry unveiled a statue of her at Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday last July. And just over the weekend, a Ford Escort that Diana drove in the 1980s sold at auction for more than $850,000.
On Wednesday, the day of the anniversary, mourners gathered in Paris to lay flowers, leave messages and pay their respects on the bridge above the underpass where Diana was killed. Others decorated a makeshift memorial outside the gates of Kensington Palace. And at Althorp House, the Spencer estate where Diana grew up, the flag was lowered to half-staff.
The audio for this story was produced by Taylor Haney and Kurt Gardinier, and edited by Reena Advani.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-31/princess-diana-showed-the-world-how-to-use-celebrity-for-good | 2022-08-31T16:32:24Z |
4 people found shot dead in North Dakota wheat field
TOWNER COUNTY, N.D. (KVLY/Gray News) – Four bodies were discovered in a North Dakota wheat field Monday.
The Towner County Sheriff’s Department said deputies were called to the field for a report of unresponsive people.
When deputies arrived, they found four people shot dead. They said they also found a gun on one of the bodies.
Early investigation points to an apparent murder-suicide, the sheriff’s office said.
Family members and neighbors on the scene tell KVLY an argument occurred, and a man shot and killed his brother, his son, and his boss before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities have identified one of the victims as Doug Dulmage. The identities of the three related men will be released later this week.
Friends describe Dulmage as a devoted farmer, an avid hunter, a loving husband and a father of two.
“He was a pillar of the community; it’s a total devastating loss. Everybody loved Doug Dulmage,” said Pat Traynor, a friend of nearly two decades. “Everybody, Doug didn’t have enemies. Everybody loved, loved Doug. Just a tremendous role model for all of us.”
The Towner County Sheriff’s Department and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation are working the case.
Copyright 2022 KVLY via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/4-people-found-shot-dead-north-dakota-wheat-field/ | 2022-08-31T16:36:53Z |
American nun found safe 5 months after her abduction in Africa
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE/Gray News) - A Louisiana nun who was kidnapped in west Africa has been found alive after nearly five months of captivity.
WVUE reported 83-year-old Marianite Sister Suellen Tennyson had been found safe Monday after she was abducted from the convent of her educational and medical mission in Burkina Faso.
The Archdiocese newspaper the Clarion Herald reported Marianite Sister Ann Lacour had talked to Tennyson over the phone Tuesday.
“She is safe,” Lacour said. “She is on American soil, but not in America. She is safe.”
The congregation reported they currently don’t know Tennyson’s exact location but said she is safe and they are awaiting her return to the U.S.
According to the Clarion Herald, Tennyson was kidnapped in the middle of the night, blindfolded and barefoot, on April 5 by a group of about 10 armed men.
Members of the congregation reported the residents of the convent were asleep when the men burst into the convent, ransacked the living quarters and kidnapped her.
“They destroyed almost everything in the house, shot holes in the new truck and tried to burn it. The house itself is OK, but its contents are ruined,” Lacour said in an e-bulletin April 6.
Two other Marianite sisters and two young women who were also living at the convent were not kidnapped during the attack.
The Clarion Herald reported the two other sisters were relocated after the kidnapping.
Since her abduction, there had been no information on Tennyson’s condition or whereabouts until she was found.
She had been stationed as a missionary in Burkina Faso since 2014.
It’s unclear how she located or freed from her captors.
The Clarion Herald says no other details would be released for now for privacy reasons.
Copyright 2022 WVUE via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/american-nun-found-safe-5-months-after-her-abduction-africa/ | 2022-08-31T16:37:00Z |
Big discounts coming this holiday shopping season
(CNN) - You can expect to find more discounts this year than in previous holiday shopping seasons.
Executives at Best Buy, Ulta, Gap and other top chains have said they are expecting a shopping season packed with deals.
Walmart said Tuesday it was offering more “rollbacks,” temporary price reductions on items, than in previous years and a wider array of toys for less than $50 and $25.
In addition to toys, shoppers will likely find discounts on clothing, televisions, beauty products, sporting goods and other items.
Other companies are also ramping up promotions to offer incentives to inflation-strained shoppers who might otherwise be priced out of holiday gifts, but it is unclear whether holiday discounts will be compelling enough to spur inflation-conscious shoppers to buy.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/big-discounts-coming-this-holiday-shopping-season/ | 2022-08-31T16:37:07Z |
Girl, 14, charged with arson for starting Walmart fire, police say
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (CBS46/Gray News) – A 14-year-old girl in Georgia was charged with arson after being accused of setting a fire inside Walmart.
The Peachtree City Police Department believes the teen intentionally started a fire in the paper goods aisle of the store, WGCL reports.
According to police, officers executed a search warrant at the 14-year-old’s home, where they said she admitted to starting the fire.
Investigators said the girl stated no motive behind setting the fire. It was said to be her impulsive decision.
Authorities said the fire was set around 7:20 p.m. Aug. 24. It took firefighters throughout the night to get the fire under control. It was finally extinguished around 4 a.m. the following day.
Although the store’s sprinkler system functioned as designed, the store suffered extensive damage to the interior and the roof.
Three Peachtree City police officers who evacuated the store had to be treated for smoke inhalation, but no one was seriously injured.
Copyright 2022 WGCL via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/girl-14-charged-with-arson-starting-walmart-fire-police-say/ | 2022-08-31T16:37:14Z |
Home run ball at Royals game taken from man’s glove on 18th birthday
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV/Gray News) - A Missouri man had the 18th birthday of a lifetime, but it didn’t start that way.
Bruce Williams was going to celebrate at Sunday’s Kansas City Royals game against the San Diego Padres. He had one wish: to catch a home run ball from Padres star Juan Soto.
“Juan Soto’s playing. Juan Soto’s going to hit a ball to me,” he said. “I knew it’s coming to me. I know I’m going to catch it. No problem.”
It happened. During the seventh inning, Soto stepped up to the plate.
“He blasted it, and it just sailed through the air,” Williams said.
On the Pepsi Porch, he stood up with his glove, ready to catch the ball. Another fan went for it, but Williams reached over him and caught the ball. Then the man stole it from him.
“He just grabbed my arm and pinned it to his body, and opened up my glove and took the ball out and ran off,” he said.
The man tried to give Williams a No. 62 Sam Gaviglio jersey. He’s a pitcher who appeared in four games for the Royals in 2017.
“I told him, I said, ‘No, I don’t want the jersey.’ I said, ‘Give me the ball.’ He said, ‘Nope. I’m not going to,’” Williams recalled.
Word of the theft was heard around Kauffman Stadium, including by Royals’ top brass. Nick Pironi, director of Guest Relations and Fan Experience, knew exactly what he had to do.
“What I got was one of every bobblehead I had in that collection,” Pironi said. “And, obviously, Bobby Witt Jr. being one of our young superstars, I happened to have an autographed ball from him.”
The Royals identified the man who took it as Mark Kirsch, a YouTuber known for a series called “Man vs. Impossible.”
“I was in tears when he stole that ball from me,” Williams said. “I’ve never seen anything like that or experienced anything like that.”
In an instant, Pironi righted the wrong.
“Me handing him this stuff, he just jumped toward me and he was crying,” Pironi said.
“Things were definitely made right for me,” Williams said.
Pironi also made a call to the Padres camp. Williams ended up with another signed baseball, this one from the player who hit the home run.
“He had a ball signed by Juan Soto. He wrote down, ‘2019 World Series champ,’ ‘Home Run Derby,’ and all that crazy cool stuff,” Williams said.
Soto also signed “Sorry about that,” turning the ultimate foul into the biggest birthday win.
“It made my birthday super. It really turned a bad event into a good one,” Williams said.
Williams hoped Kirsch would be banned from Kaufman, but Pironi said that was unlikely.
“He knew what he did was wrong,” Pironi said. “He immediately tried to rectify it by giving Bruce the Sam Gaviglio jersey.”
Copyright 2022 KCTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/home-run-ball-royals-game-taken-mans-glove-18th-birthday/ | 2022-08-31T16:37:21Z |
Man charged in random Detroit shootings that killed 3
DETROIT (AP) — A 19-year-old man was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in a series of apparently random shootings over roughly two hours last weekend in Detroit that left three people dead and a fourth wounded.
Dontae Ramon Smith was expected to be arraigned later in the day in 36th District Court on the three murder counts as well as other charges, including assault and firearms charges, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office said. It wasn’t immediately known if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
“It is not an overstatement to say that on Sunday morning ... this ... defendant reigned real terror on the citizens northwest Detroit,” Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement while announcing charges. “Normal, everyday life was brought to a standstill as he moved east to his next victim.”
Police spent 12 hours searching for the man and peacefully arrested him Sunday at his home following a tip from someone close to him. Police said a gun was found that matched shell casings at the shooting scenes.
Detroit Police Chief James White has said the man may have a mental illness and “terrorized our community.”
Mayor Mike Duggan told reporters Monday that the man also may have been emboldened after not encountering officers following the first shooting about 4:45 a.m. Sunday when a 28-year-old man was slain less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from a police station. At that early hour, no calls were made to 911, Duggan said.
The prosecutor’s office said police found the man’s body in the doorway of a church.
About 30 minutes later someone called 911 after finding a woman shot about three blocks from the first shooting. She has not yet been identified.
Another woman, Lari Brisco, a 43-year-old single mother of five children, was waiting nearby for a city bus when she was shot multiple times. Both women died from their wounds.
Then, about 7:10 a.m., 76-year-old John Palik was shot in the leg while walking his dog. The dog was shot in a paw. Both survived.
Wallace Pleasant told WXYZ-TV that an armed bystander saw the fourth shooting and fired his own weapon at the suspect who then fled.
___
Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/31/man-charged-random-detroit-shootings-that-killed-3/ | 2022-08-31T16:37:28Z |
4 people found shot dead in North Dakota wheat field
TOWNER COUNTY, N.D. (KVLY/Gray News) – Four bodies were discovered in a North Dakota wheat field Monday.
The Towner County Sheriff’s Department said deputies were called to the field for a report of unresponsive people.
When deputies arrived, they found four people shot dead. They said they also found a gun on one of the bodies.
Early investigation points to an apparent murder-suicide, the sheriff’s office said.
Family members and neighbors on the scene tell KVLY an argument occurred, and a man shot and killed his brother, his son, and his boss before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities have identified one of the victims as Doug Dulmage. The identities of the three related men will be released later this week.
Friends describe Dulmage as a devoted farmer, an avid hunter, a loving husband and a father of two.
“He was a pillar of the community; it’s a total devastating loss. Everybody loved Doug Dulmage,” said Pat Traynor, a friend of nearly two decades. “Everybody, Doug didn’t have enemies. Everybody loved, loved Doug. Just a tremendous role model for all of us.”
The Towner County Sheriff’s Department and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation are working the case.
Copyright 2022 KVLY via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/4-people-found-shot-dead-north-dakota-wheat-field/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:30Z |
American nun found safe 5 months after her abduction in Africa
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE/Gray News) - A Louisiana nun who was kidnapped in west Africa has been found alive after nearly five months of captivity.
WVUE reported 83-year-old Marianite Sister Suellen Tennyson had been found safe Monday after she was abducted from the convent of her educational and medical mission in Burkina Faso.
The Archdiocese newspaper the Clarion Herald reported Marianite Sister Ann Lacour had talked to Tennyson over the phone Tuesday.
“She is safe,” Lacour said. “She is on American soil, but not in America. She is safe.”
The congregation reported they currently don’t know Tennyson’s exact location but said she is safe and they are awaiting her return to the U.S.
According to the Clarion Herald, Tennyson was kidnapped in the middle of the night, blindfolded and barefoot, on April 5 by a group of about 10 armed men.
Members of the congregation reported the residents of the convent were asleep when the men burst into the convent, ransacked the living quarters and kidnapped her.
“They destroyed almost everything in the house, shot holes in the new truck and tried to burn it. The house itself is OK, but its contents are ruined,” Lacour said in an e-bulletin April 6.
Two other Marianite sisters and two young women who were also living at the convent were not kidnapped during the attack.
The Clarion Herald reported the two other sisters were relocated after the kidnapping.
Since her abduction, there had been no information on Tennyson’s condition or whereabouts until she was found.
She had been stationed as a missionary in Burkina Faso since 2014.
It’s unclear how she located or freed from her captors.
The Clarion Herald says no other details would be released for now for privacy reasons.
Copyright 2022 WVUE via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/american-nun-found-safe-5-months-after-her-abduction-africa/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:32Z |
Big discounts coming this holiday shopping season
(CNN) - You can expect to find more discounts this year than in previous holiday shopping seasons.
Executives at Best Buy, Ulta, Gap and other top chains have said they are expecting a shopping season packed with deals.
Walmart said Tuesday it was offering more “rollbacks,” temporary price reductions on items, than in previous years and a wider array of toys for less than $50 and $25.
In addition to toys, shoppers will likely find discounts on clothing, televisions, beauty products, sporting goods and other items.
Other companies are also ramping up promotions to offer incentives to inflation-strained shoppers who might otherwise be priced out of holiday gifts, but it is unclear whether holiday discounts will be compelling enough to spur inflation-conscious shoppers to buy.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/big-discounts-coming-this-holiday-shopping-season/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:35Z |
Girl, 14, charged with arson for starting Walmart fire, police say
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (CBS46/Gray News) – A 14-year-old girl in Georgia was charged with arson after being accused of setting a fire inside Walmart.
The Peachtree City Police Department believes the teen intentionally started a fire in the paper goods aisle of the store, WGCL reports.
According to police, officers executed a search warrant at the 14-year-old’s home, where they said she admitted to starting the fire.
Investigators said the girl stated no motive behind setting the fire. It was said to be her impulsive decision.
Authorities said the fire was set around 7:20 p.m. Aug. 24. It took firefighters throughout the night to get the fire under control. It was finally extinguished around 4 a.m. the following day.
Although the store’s sprinkler system functioned as designed, the store suffered extensive damage to the interior and the roof.
Three Peachtree City police officers who evacuated the store had to be treated for smoke inhalation, but no one was seriously injured.
Copyright 2022 WGCL via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/girl-14-charged-with-arson-starting-walmart-fire-police-say/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:37Z |
Home run ball at Royals game taken from man’s glove on 18th birthday
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV/Gray News) - A Missouri man had the 18th birthday of a lifetime, but it didn’t start that way.
Bruce Williams was going to celebrate at Sunday’s Kansas City Royals game against the San Diego Padres. He had one wish: to catch a home run ball from Padres star Juan Soto.
“Juan Soto’s playing. Juan Soto’s going to hit a ball to me,” he said. “I knew it’s coming to me. I know I’m going to catch it. No problem.”
It happened. During the seventh inning, Soto stepped up to the plate.
“He blasted it, and it just sailed through the air,” Williams said.
On the Pepsi Porch, he stood up with his glove, ready to catch the ball. Another fan went for it, but Williams reached over him and caught the ball. Then the man stole it from him.
“He just grabbed my arm and pinned it to his body, and opened up my glove and took the ball out and ran off,” he said.
The man tried to give Williams a No. 62 Sam Gaviglio jersey. He’s a pitcher who appeared in four games for the Royals in 2017.
“I told him, I said, ‘No, I don’t want the jersey.’ I said, ‘Give me the ball.’ He said, ‘Nope. I’m not going to,’” Williams recalled.
Word of the theft was heard around Kauffman Stadium, including by Royals’ top brass. Nick Pironi, director of Guest Relations and Fan Experience, knew exactly what he had to do.
“What I got was one of every bobblehead I had in that collection,” Pironi said. “And, obviously, Bobby Witt Jr. being one of our young superstars, I happened to have an autographed ball from him.”
The Royals identified the man who took it as Mark Kirsch, a YouTuber known for a series called “Man vs. Impossible.”
“I was in tears when he stole that ball from me,” Williams said. “I’ve never seen anything like that or experienced anything like that.”
In an instant, Pironi righted the wrong.
“Me handing him this stuff, he just jumped toward me and he was crying,” Pironi said.
“Things were definitely made right for me,” Williams said.
Pironi also made a call to the Padres camp. Williams ended up with another signed baseball, this one from the player who hit the home run.
“He had a ball signed by Juan Soto. He wrote down, ‘2019 World Series champ,’ ‘Home Run Derby,’ and all that crazy cool stuff,” Williams said.
Soto also signed “Sorry about that,” turning the ultimate foul into the biggest birthday win.
“It made my birthday super. It really turned a bad event into a good one,” Williams said.
Williams hoped Kirsch would be banned from Kaufman, but Pironi said that was unlikely.
“He knew what he did was wrong,” Pironi said. “He immediately tried to rectify it by giving Bruce the Sam Gaviglio jersey.”
Copyright 2022 KCTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/home-run-ball-royals-game-taken-mans-glove-18th-birthday/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:38Z |
Man charged in random Detroit shootings that killed 3
DETROIT (AP) — A 19-year-old man was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in a series of apparently random shootings over roughly two hours last weekend in Detroit that left three people dead and a fourth wounded.
Dontae Ramon Smith was expected to be arraigned later in the day in 36th District Court on the three murder counts as well as other charges, including assault and firearms charges, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office said. It wasn’t immediately known if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
“It is not an overstatement to say that on Sunday morning ... this ... defendant reigned real terror on the citizens northwest Detroit,” Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement while announcing charges. “Normal, everyday life was brought to a standstill as he moved east to his next victim.”
Police spent 12 hours searching for the man and peacefully arrested him Sunday at his home following a tip from someone close to him. Police said a gun was found that matched shell casings at the shooting scenes.
Detroit Police Chief James White has said the man may have a mental illness and “terrorized our community.”
Mayor Mike Duggan told reporters Monday that the man also may have been emboldened after not encountering officers following the first shooting about 4:45 a.m. Sunday when a 28-year-old man was slain less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from a police station. At that early hour, no calls were made to 911, Duggan said.
The prosecutor’s office said police found the man’s body in the doorway of a church.
About 30 minutes later someone called 911 after finding a woman shot about three blocks from the first shooting. She has not yet been identified.
Another woman, Lari Brisco, a 43-year-old single mother of five children, was waiting nearby for a city bus when she was shot multiple times. Both women died from their wounds.
Then, about 7:10 a.m., 76-year-old John Palik was shot in the leg while walking his dog. The dog was shot in a paw. Both survived.
Wallace Pleasant told WXYZ-TV that an armed bystander saw the fourth shooting and fired his own weapon at the suspect who then fled.
___
Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/man-charged-random-detroit-shootings-that-killed-3/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:50Z |
Page County Sheriff’s Inmate Garden produces purpose
PAGE COUNTY, Va. (WHSV) - Fresh produce and a sense of purpose are being grown in the Page County Sheriff’s Inmate Garden.
It’s had an especially good yield this year. Sheriff Chad Cubbage said they’ve harvested 120 bushels of potatoes and sweet corn, around 300 bushels of cabbage, and the list goes on.
The vegetables grown are used to feed inmates at the Page County Jail, which cuts down on those food costs.
Sheriff Cubbage noted that’s especially helpful since around 30 percent of the jail population is diabetic.
The Sheriff’s Office will also give back to some of the local nonprofits that are in need of food as well, but this garden does more than put food on the table.
The Sheriff said it teaches important life skills to inmates and gives them something to take pride in.
When this program first started, and the inmates first came out into the garden, there were times that you would hear them grumble a little bit, but as they would get out here and work it and see the plants grow and the vegetables grow and then when it’s prepared on the table to eat, they took it personal and they begin to grow with it and enjoy it,” Sheriff Cubbage said.
He explained that inmates tend to the garden about three days a week as they also work to fulfill other responsibilities in the county, like trash pick-up and mowing.
The Sheriff is proud of how the garden and inmates have grown and says he really appreciates the community efforts that make it all possible. Southern States and the Page County Farm Bureau donate seed and fertilizer each year.
Copyright 2022 WHSV. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/page-county-sheriffs-inmate-garden-produces-purpose/ | 2022-08-31T16:38:57Z |
Some women say they’re having trouble getting prescriptions filled because of Georgia abortion law
ATLANTA (WGCL/Gray News) - Some Georgian residents are having trouble picking up medication that’s been prescribed to them by licensed doctors. It’s a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, and is complicating access to essential drugs.
Atlanta resident Cindi Gatton takes Misoprostol to prevent stomach ulcers, which can be caused by the long-term use of anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed for her arthritis.
“After my second ulcer, I had asked my primary care doctor if he would be comfortable prescribing this drug,” Gatton said. “He did, and and I’ve taken it daily pretty much ever since.”
Gatton never had a problem filling her prescription at her Publix pharmacy in Decatur until a few weeks ago.
“The pharmacy tech said we have to get additional information from your doctor,” Gatton said, “And that’s when he told me we need the doctor to tell us the diagnosis that they’re prescribing for.”
In addition to preventing stomach ulcers, Misoprostol can also be used to complete miscarriages or induce abortions.
Because of Georgia’s controversial “heartbeat bill,” most abortions are now banned in the state at roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Gatton, however, said she’s past child-bearing age, and even if she wasn’t, she believes her privacy has been invaded.
“If a licensed physician writes a prescription, a pharmacy can and should fill it,” she said. “That’s the obligation of the pharmacist.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mississippi’s abortion law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks. That decision, announced June 24, essentially overturns Roe v. Wade, the court’s landmark 1973 ruling which ruled a pregnant woman has the right to choose to an abortion without excessive government restriction.
Now it seems pharmacists, who have liability for the prescriptions they fill, are scrambling.
According to patient advocacy groups like the Global Healthy Living Foundation, dozens of women are also having problems getting Methotrexate - another drug which treats arthritis but can also be used to end a pregnancy - at pharmacies.
Zoe Rothblatt with the Global Healthy Living Foundation said, “Many of our members – only women -- have been asked to validate their diagnosis, particularly in states with anti-abortion trigger laws, despite having prescriptions written by their health care providers. Our members are fearful that they won’t be able to get their medications, and even a small delay can cause harm.”
Some Atlanta OB/GYN’s believe Georgia’s abortion law will delay patients from seeking care. “So we are, under this law, unable to take care of those patients, and that’s really egregious,” Dr. Megan Cohen explained.
At a recent panel sponsored by the Democratic Party of Georgia, Cohen talked about the restrictions Georgia’s abortion ban could create for women experiencing miscarriages.
“The medications we use to treat a miscarriage are exactly the same that we use for a medication abortion, so not only is it going to delay people from coming in, but it’s also going to restrict our ability to treat people who are in the midst of a miscarriage,” she added.
“We’re going to see communities that are already disenfranchised and already having issues with access to care having more issues and that gap becoming wider with these restrictions,” Dr. Tiffany Hailstorks said. “We’re going to see poorer health outcomes for mothers and for babies.”
“It’s unfortunate that it’s being misunderstood in such a way as to scare women,” said Sue Liebel, state policy director at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Anti-abortion activists like Liebel said they disagree, and said doctors should not be worried about prescribing these medications as long as they’re not doing so to induce an abortion.
“This is not intended to impact drugs that are used for other purposes. This is intended to impact drugs that are used to cause an abortion,” Liebel added.
But Gatton said she believes doctors’ and patients’ concerns are valid, and she said she doesn’t like experiencing politics at the pharmacy.
“This just seems like a burden on an important part of the health care system that is unnecessary,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently reminded pharmacists they must follow federal civil rights laws when they dispense medication. Refusing to fill a prescription because of its potential to end a pregnancy could violate anti-sex discrimination laws.
CBS46 Investigates sent four emails to Publix asking about new policies following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. All four went unanswered.
Meanwhile, Walgreens and CVS both responded to questions about their policies.
Pharmacists are “caught in the middle on this issue,” said Amy Thibault, CVS Pharmacy spokesperson
“Our highest priority is ensuring safe and timely access to medications for our patients, and we’re committed to supporting women’s health care,” said Amy Thibault, CVS Pharmacy spokesperson.
But laws in some states restrict the dispensing of medications for the purpose of inducing an abortion, she said.
“These laws, some of which include criminal penalties, have forced us to require pharmacists in these states – which does NOT include Georgia – to validate that the intended indication is not to terminate a pregnancy before they can fill a prescription for Methotrexate or Misoprostol,” Thibault said.
She said they encourage providers to include the diagnosis on the prescriptions they write.
Fraser Engerman, a Walgreens spokesperson, blamed “trigger laws in various states,” for the extra steps pharmacies take. “In these states, our pharmacists work closely with prescribers as needed, to fill lawful, clinically appropriate prescriptions.”
Walgreens pharmacists are being providing training and information to keep them up-to-date with the latest requirements, Engerman said.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/31/some-women-say-theyre-having-trouble-getting-prescriptions-filled-because-georgia-abortion-law/ | 2022-08-31T16:39:03Z |
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Two executive producers of the FX drama series "The Americans" have re-teamed to create and write a new 10-part drama premiering today on Hulu. It's called "The Patient" and stars Steve Carell as a therapist who's abducted by a serial killer. The killer, played by Domhnall Gleeson, orders the therapist to cure him of his deadly tendencies or else. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: If you had to describe "The Patient," this new 10-episode series from writers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, in 10 words or less, it might be something like this - "In Treatment" meets "Dexter." In the HBO series "In Treatment," you had intimate one-on-one conversations between a therapist and their patients. In Showtime's "Dexter," you had a serial killer who tried to channel his murderous impulses and kill other serial killers. In Hulu's "The Patient," you sort of have both.
In "The Patient," we have a murderer who abducts a therapist, Alan Strauss, whose books on psychology he's read and liked. After attending a few sessions in Alan's office to feel him out, pretending to be a patient named Gene, the murderer whose real name is Sam makes Alan his captive. He knocks him out, and Alan regains consciousness chained by the ankle to the floor of the basement in Sam's secluded home. Sam's idea is that the two of them will undergo some intense and intensive therapy sessions quickly curing Sam of his homicidal tendencies. Sam is played by Domhnall Gleeson, who played Bill Weasley in the "Harry Potter" films. Steve Carell from "The Office," in a totally dramatic role, plays the therapist Alan, who understandably recoils at this extremely unusual arrangement.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PATIENT")
STEVE CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Gene. Sam. You have to listen to me.
DOMHNALL GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I am listening. I am listening. I know how to listen. I understand. This is upsetting for you. I get that. It's a little scary, but this is the only way that I could - I need help. I want help. I'm asking you for help. You said therapy can't work if I'm not truthful. I know that you're right. So...
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) No, no. You don't understand. I don't think you know what you're doing to me.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I realize it might take you a little time to get used to what's happening here.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Whatever is troubling you, we can address it. But not here, not like this.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) Mr. Strauss, I have much bigger problems than your other patients. I have a compulsion to kill people.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) A compulsion.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) Yeah, I do it.
CARELL: (As Alan Strauss) Sam.
GLEESON: (As Sam Fortner) I don't mean just once or twice. Every once in a while, I just do it.
BIANCULLI: They do, of course, begin a series of sessions or else there's no TV series. But it's the way this story unfolds and expands that makes it noteworthy. What sounds like a two-person drama becomes, little by little, more than that. This very contained universe with so much of it set in one finished basement opens up a lot thanks to flashbacks and dream sequences that give us insight not only into Sam's life, but into Alan's.
Both of them, it turns out, have family issues to unravel. Sam, the killer, has a father who abused him as a boy. And Alan, the therapist, has a son who rebelled against his parents by following a different religious path. And added to all that are real-life characters who occasionally intrude upon Sam's homemade basement prison or are shown interacting with him outside.
As "The Patient" unfolds, it gets more intense. The stakes rise, and so does the body count. And because this is a one-season limited series, there's no guarantee that even the main characters will survive, adding measurably to the sense of jeopardy. That unpredictability is a crucial ingredient here, and so is the constant reexamination of motives and the past. For Alan to literally talk his way out of his potentially deadly circumstances, he has to probe deeply into Sam's head but also his own.
By the time the series is over, the very title of "The Patient" has a multiple meaning. The patient easily could refer to more than one person and arguably more than two. How that happens and why is what makes "The Patient" so watchable throughout. Sam, the killer, is the one seeking treatment, but by the time this drama is over, nearly everyone in this drama reflects upon past actions and decisions or dies trying.
GROSS: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey. He reviewed the new FX series "The Patient."
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll continue our weeklong series featuring some of our favorite music interviews from the archive. We'll hear interviews with Jay-Z and Lizzo. I hope you'll join us.
FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HADEN QUARTET WEST'S "MARABLES'S PARABLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/in-treatment-meets-dexter-in-hulus-psychological-thriller-the-patient | 2022-08-31T17:05:40Z |
Updated August 31, 2022 at 11:41 AM ET
It's been exactly 25 years since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. But her legacy of activism and charity (not to mention the bike shorts) lives on.
Diana died at age 36 on August 31, 1997, of injuries sustained in a car crash in Paris, which also killed her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. About a decade later, a jury attributed her death to the reckless driving of both her chauffeur and the paparazzi who were pursuing them (her sons also blame the BBC for the role its bombshell 1995 interview — obtained through a scheme of forgery and deceit — played in her death).
The so-called "people's princess" wasn't just beloved by the public. She also entirely changed how people view celebrity, according to British journalist Bidisha Mamata.
"In the 21st century we completely take it for granted that famous people will also be a U.N. special envoy or that they'll use their privilege to do good," she explains. "Princess Diana invented the idea of the famous person who does good, and she was extremely radical."
Diana used her fame to draw attention to a number of humanitarian issues and philanthropic causes, and at one point was linked to more than 100 charities.
She traversed minefields in Bosnia and Angola to advocate for landmine clearance, visited people with leprosy in Nepal, India and Zimbabwe and opened Britain's first AIDS ward in London — where she famously shook ungloved hands with a patient, challenging the false and once-prevalent assumption that HIV/AIDS could be spread by casual touch.
Diana also made headlines for hugging a young patient while visiting a pediatric AIDS unit in Harlem, New York.
"She was an activist at a time when there was so much stigmatization around AIDS and HIV," Mamata said. "And she's the one who went into AIDS wards and said, 'No, I'm going to talk to people like they're normal human beings. I'm going to shake hands, we're going to communicate and I'm going to raise consciousness.'"
In a Morning Edition interview right after Diana's death, the late British historian Ben Pimlott predicted Diana would be remembered for her public service and for breathing fresh air into the monarchy.
He described her as "a very funny, witty, sharp, human person with a great rapport and a great compassion."
Diana's life — including her troubled marriage to Prince Charles and treatment by the royal family — and the circumstances leading up to her death continue to captivate the public even decades later.
In recent months her story has made it to the big screen as well as streaming services, where she's played by Emma Corrin in Netflix's The Crown and Kristen Stewart in the film Spencer. Princes William and Harry unveiled a statue of her at Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday last July. And just over the weekend, a Ford Escort that Diana drove in the 1980s sold at auction for more than $850,000.
On Wednesday, the day of the anniversary, mourners gathered in Paris to lay flowers, leave messages and pay their respects on the bridge above the underpass where Diana was killed. Others decorated a makeshift memorial outside the gates of Kensington Palace. And at Althorp House, the Spencer estate where Diana grew up, the flag was lowered to half-staff.
The audio for this story was produced by Taylor Haney and Kurt Gardinier, and edited by Reena Advani.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-31/princess-diana-showed-the-world-how-to-use-celebrity-for-good | 2022-08-31T17:05:46Z |
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services took rare steps — like instructing staffers to avoid written communications — to keep details of child abuse investigations related to gender-affirming care in secret, according to internal agency communications reviewed by The Texas Tribune.
The agency’s actions are detailed in more than 900 pages of emails and other records that were recently released through an open records request filed by American Oversight, a government watchdog group. They show how the agency tried to limit the public trail of the cases and control public communications about the controversial investigations while employees across the state internally raised concerns.
The Dallas Morning News, which first reported on the issue, obtained similar documents from DFPS.
Gov. Greg Abbott in February ordered the state’s child welfare agency to open investigations of parents and licensed facilities that provide standard gender-affirming care to transgender teenagers. The directive was based on a nonbinding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton classifying such care as child abuse. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy slammed the directive, calling out the state for inserting itself between doctors and patients.
Families sued Texas and, in July, District Judge Amy Clark Meachum blocked the state from investigating two families for providing gender-affirming care to their children. Meachum will decide whether to block child abuse investigations over gender-affirming care for all Texas families at a Dec. 5 trial. DFPS has investigated 11 families for providing gender-affirming care; it has removed no children from those homes to date, KXAN-TV reported last week.
The state’s child welfare agency directed employees to not communicate about cases over email or text, even with the families who were under investigation.
“If you get any intakes regarding this issue, please immediately CALL ME to staff; no emails or texts are allowed,” Patricia Salinas, a supervisor with Child Protective Investigations, wrote in a February email to her staff.
Employees were told they would get case assignments pertaining to the directive over the phone; a supervisor in McAllen explicitly wrote to her staff telling them she would not be using text messages or email to discuss the cases. Staffers were also asked to avoid using text and email to communicate with the families under review about their cases.
Getting instructions to not communicate about cases in writing is unusual for DFPS. Employees told the Tribune earlier this year that documenting investigations relentlessly was a standard process that allowed the department to track who was making decisions about each case.
Department supervisors also directed employees to avoid commenting on Abbott’s directive or the cases on social media.
“Staff need to be clear that as state employees their public/social media opinions must be neutral to non-existent,” Martin Lopez, a supervisor at DFPS, wrote in reference to Abbott’s directive.
“Everyone you need to stay off social media with any opinions based on the following,” one employee wrote about Paxton’s opinion. “We will be investigating these cases. This will get messy.”
Lower-level employees were not authorized to handle such cases, according to the documents.
“We need to ensure our high performing workers are assigned these cases because there will be a lot of eyes on them,” Keith Gailes, a regional director in Texarkana, wrote to leadership.
Supervisors were told to notify higher-ups if they received a case pertaining to Abbott’s directive so that they could staff the cases.
Several employees have told the Tribune they were directed to mark cases under Abbott’s directive as sensitive, a rare designation usually reserved for cases in which DFPS employees are personally involved.
The internal documents also show how DFPS employees revolted against the directive, with some considering leaving the agency.
One supervisor repeatedly brought up concerns with other members of the agency about the nature of the investigations. Shaun Santiago raised questions about whether the department could be forced to follow through with the directive.
“We have trans workers here at DFPS, what kind of message are we sending to them?” Santiago wrote in one email.
Santiago in multiple emails said he would resign before he investigated a family over gender-affirming care. Santiago did not respond to calls from the Tribune.
Emma Menchaca, a DFPS employee in South Texas, expressed disbelief that the department was following through with the investigations. “This is Texas now? Because this is BS. Sorry not sorry. Really???” she wrote. Another employee in El Paso wrote: “Effing bull poop.”
The agency has been roiled by resistance and resignations since Abbott’s directive was rolled out. More than half a dozen child abuse investigators told the Tribune in April they either have resigned or are actively job hunting as a result of the directive. It’s part of a staffing crisis the agency is facing, with nearly 2,300 employees leaving since the beginning of the year, according to a Houston Chronicle report. | https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-08-31/texas-child-welfare-agency-told-staffers-to-keep-quiet-about-gender-affirming-care-investigations | 2022-08-31T17:05:52Z |
HONOLULU, O'ahu (KITV4) -- Working professionals across the U.S. are fearing the worst.
According to Kelly Bass, a career expert at Forage, 78% of Americans are worried about losing their job right now, and recent college grads are experiencing the challenges of finding their first "real" job during a recession.
Forage is an online platform that works directly with Fortune 500 companies by providing virtual job simulations for people who want to test drive a job before applying.
KITV4 sat down with Bass to talk about the job market, how job seekers can stand out to employers, and "recession-proof industries."
Question: What would you tell the young adults who just graduated this past summer, and are feeling the angst of finding a job during a recession?
Answer: Start expanding your extracurricular activities right away. Now more than ever the competition for jobs is fierce. So it’s important to build your resume and your confidence with achievements outside of school.
You can attend career events on campus even as a graduate, volunteer, attend industry conferences or webinars, and even subscribe to industry newsletters or magazines so you can start to get a taste of what the professional world is all about.
Start thinking about skills rather than just experience. Most recent graduates don’t have much work experience, so it’s important to know that the relevancy of your skills actually holds more weight than when or where you acquired them. Therefore, if you have relevant skills you learned from high school, you can include them along with any skills you might have picked up in college. Highlight your skills in your application and talk be sure to talk about them in an interview.
Forage is a great place to build and practice skills when you’re job hunting - completely free. We work directly with hundreds of Fortune 500 companies like Electronic Arts, Lululemon, Visa and Citibank to make their open job opportunities more accessible to new grads by providing access to free first-hand experience of how skills are used in a specific role at a specific company.
I mean, it’s so relevant for us in Hawaii because we don’t typically have the same access to opportunities that you would on the mainland. It shouldn’t matter where you live or what school you went to. Everyone should be able to earn a living wage and enjoy their career at the same time, especially this next generation of local talent we have here.
Which is why my favorite thing about Forage is that our job simulations are completely free - no strings attached. They are self-paced so anyone anywhere can complete them on their own time around studies, family obligations or any other responsibilities.
One of the students on Forage who ended up landing an internship and then a full-time role actually said that Forage was like having career binoculars. I don’t know about you Lia, but I definitely didn’t know what work was really like when I was in school, and a pair of binoculars would have been pretty clutch.
Q: Are there certain industries that are better than others to start a career in right now?
A: I would definitely encourage candidates to look closely at recession-proof industries: There are many industries which are more protected from recessions than others. Healthcare, education, and government are all industries which are typically insulated given they aren't as sensitive to the impacts of rising interest rates and inflation.
We also find that professional services (e.g. law, accounting, audit etc.) tend to continue to thrive during economic downturns as well.
And of course, technology. Every company has some element of tech in their organization so building your technical skillset is a great way to expand your options for employment now and into the future.
You should definitely pursue a career in these fields if you have interest in them.
Q: Should candidates apply to anything and everything right now – does that help increase their chances in getting a job? And any tips on KEEPING a job if you’re lucky enough to have one?
A: It’s really important for you and for your potential employer that you don’t 'spray and pray': Even without an economic downturn, jobseekers have been conditioned over the past decade or so to apply to everything and anything. I mean it only takes one click to apply to some jobs. My advice is to resist this urge and stay targeted with the roles you apply for. Applications take time. And quality will always trump quantity for recruiters, especially during a downturn when budgets are tight.
The trick is to make yourself stand out. You do this is by demonstrating real interest and intent for a specific job and a specific company. That can feel overwhelming, but by beefing up your extracurriculars and leveraging free online resources - anything is possible.
And as far as keeping a job you already have…
Even in times of economic security, I always like to remind myself and my teammates to take your work seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously.
You can introduce yourself to key players in the company without waiting for them to come to you. Get creative, don’t give up, and just try to enjoy the ride. | https://www.kitv.com/news/local/how-to-navigate-the-job-search-process-during-a-recession/article_cd423308-289d-11ed-bf63-07deaee62beb.html | 2022-08-31T17:38:14Z |
If you've ever been bitten by a mosquito, you know how frustrating their bites can be. The little red bumps swell up almost immediately, creating an itch that once you start scratching only seems to get worse. The more you scratch, the more they itch -- starting a vicious cycle that can leave you irritated, sore and covered in red bumps.
Some people seem to be mosquito magnets -- the insects flock to them wherever they are, leaving bites in any exposed flesh -- while others are left relatively unscathed and itch free.
How do mosquitoes choose their prey and how can we repel them? We spoke to some experts for their advice.
Why does a mosquito bite itch?
When a mosquito bites you, it pierces the skin using a special mouthpart (proboscis) to suck up blood. As the mosquito is feeding on your blood, it injects saliva into your skin, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Leslie Vosshall, vice president and chief scientific officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, explained that a mosquito's saliva has a quality similar to an anesthetic, so you don't feel the bite until after the insect flies away. It also has anticoagulants so your blood continues to flow without clotting.
"Mosquitoes' saliva has lots of proteins in it; some are allergens," Vosshall said, adding, "Our body recognizes the mosquito protein as foreign, and our immune cells spring into action to try to fight it."
It's not the bite that causes the itch -- it's actually the body's response to the foreign mosquito protein it is trying to fight. That's why some people may only have a mild reaction to bites, while others, more sensitive to the foreign protein, react with large areas of swelling that are more painful.
And there's no need to get mad at male mosquitoes since only female mosquitoes bite. They bite to get a blood meal as most female mosquitoes can't produce eggs without that blood.
How do mosquitoes choose their prey?
Like most other blood-feeding insects, mosquitoes can smell us from a long distance through the carbon dioxide we exhale, and that's what makes them come close in the first place, according to Daniel Markowski, technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association.
"Once they actually get close to a host, they use a variety of other cues to finally hone in," he said. "These include visual components like shapes, sizes and colors. That's why dark colors are not recommended out in prime skeeter habitats because they stand out more, particularly in regards to backgrounds and contrasts."
Other chemical cues "including breath odors, microbiota byproducts on our skin, or other general human odors like octenol, ammonia, caproic acid or lactic acid" all combine with our carbon dioxide to make us more or less attractive to different mosquito species, he added.
It's likely a combination of a person's carbon dioxide and other odors that attracts mosquitoes, said VosshalI, who recently wrote a paper on "The unbreakable attraction of mosquitoes to humans." But she said the jury's still out on what exactly makes one person more attractive to a mosquito than another.
"This is something we are working on -- the amount and type of body odor that a person gives off is probably the reason," Vosshall said via email. "There are papers that claim it is blood type, or sweetness in blood, or gender (women are supposedly more attractive to mosquitoes), but nothing is conclusively proven."
What counters the urge to scratch?
"Don't scratch" is the advice that most experts and health professionals give. As hard and sometimes unrealistic as it can sound, scratching inflames the skin, and the inflammation makes the skin itch more.
"Scratching can also cause secondary infections and prolong the irritation," Markowski warned, adding that in extreme cases, people can scar themselves.
Instead, there are dozens of creams and sprays that promise itch relief as well as home remedies and mosquito repellents, so choosing what's right for you can often come down to trial and error.
"In general, all of the various anti-itch creams are very similar," Markowski said. "Generally, I suggest that if you're highly allergic to mosquitoes, you may need a cream with Benadryl or a similar antihistamine."
Vosshall recommended applying hot water to the bite as soon as possible.
"Very hot water -- as hot as you can stand it but not so hot that you burn yourself -- short-circuits the itch reflex," she said.
"If you are hiking and that's not practical, a topical lidocaine local anesthetic gel can be helpful to prevent the feeling of itching as well as an over-the-counter cortisone cream."
While both experts said that many people prefer natural remedies or herbal products, they urged caution. There is no scientific evidence these remedies work, and they can come with their own precautions or side effects.
In fact, the best remedy to fight the itch is to prevent a bite in the first place.
"Chemical repellents including DEET or picaridin are safe and highly effective," Vosshall said. Markowski agreed, describing DEET as the "gold standard," registered with the Environmental Protection Agency and endorsed by the CDC.
However, he acknowledged some people's concerns regarding the ingredient's toxicity, adding, "As with all products, I would suggest treating a small area at first and ensuring you don't have any allergic reactions. Also, make sure you read the label and follow all use guidelines."
For a comprehensive guide of insect repellents, the CDC lists EPA-registered options on its website, and the EPA site features a search tool to help you find the right one.
When to seek medical attention
Some people can have serious allergic reactions to mosquitoes, although in practice it is rare, Vosshall said. If you experience severe symptoms such as hives, breathing trouble or anaphylaxis, you should seek medical attention immediately.
You should also see a doctor if you're planning on traveling to a country where blood-borne pathogens such as the Zika virus and malaria are common. Mosquitoes can spread some diseases from person to person, but a doctor will be able to advise you if there are vaccines or preventive treatments available.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. | https://www.kitv.com/news/local/what-makes-mosquito-bites-itch-and-what-to-do-about-it/article_88b23dda-4415-54e3-bbbc-9b61088e42a1.html | 2022-08-31T17:38:20Z |
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