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Apple maintains prices on new iPhones despite inflation
CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple’s latest line-up of iPhones will boast better cameras, faster processors, and a longer lasting battery — all at the same prices as last year’s models, despite inflationary pressure that has driven up the cost of many other everyday items.
That pricing decision, revealed Wednesday during Apple’s first in-person product event in three years, came as a mild surprise. Many analysts predicted Apple would ask its devout fans to pay as much as 15% more to help offset rising costs for many components.
The hoopla surrounding Apple’s new iPhone 14 models is part of a post-Labor Day ritual the company has staged annually for more than a decade. Wednesday’s event was held on the company’s Cupertino, California, campus at a theater named after company co-founder Steve Jobs. After Apple CEO Tim Cook strolled out on stage, most of the event consisted of pre-recorded video presentation that the company honed during previous events staged during the pandemic.
For several years, Apple’s new iPhones have mostly featured incremental upgrades to cameras and battery life, and this year’s models were no exception. Pricing for the standard iPhone 14 will start at $799; the deluxe iPhone 14 Pro Max will start at $1099.
Among the latest improvements is a 48-megapixel camera in the Pro and Pro Max models that the company said will produce especially crisp pictures. The iPhone 13 versions of the Pro and Pro Max have 12-megapixel cameras. This year’s high-end models will also have always-on displays that stay lit even when the device is locked, a feature that has long been available on many smartphones powered by Google’s Android software.
Beginning in November, all the iPhone 14 models will be able to send SOS messages via a new satellite feature — a safety measure intended to let users request help when in remote areas without a wireless connection.
All the iPhone 14 models also will include a motion senor capable of detecting serious car crashes and automatically connecting to emergency services.
With inflation still hovering at its highest level in 40 years, consumers have curbed their spending on many discretionary items. That’s likely contributing to a recent decline in smartphone sales, although the iPhone has fared far better than competing Android devices .
The dimming sales outlook prompted the research firm International Data Corp. to predict a worldwide decline in 2022 smartphone shipments of 6.5%, almost double the 3.5% decline it had estimated a few months ago. Despite that anticipated drop in sales, the average price for new smartphones is expected to finish this year about 6% higher than last year, IDC estimated.
By keeping iPhones prices the same, Apple faces the potential risk of undermining its profits if inflation drives up its own costs. It’s a hit that the company could easily afford, given it has reaped $44 billion in profits through the first half of this year.
Apple could also end up fatten its bottom line if more consumers looking upgrade their mobile devices gravitate to the high-end Pro and Pro Max models, which generate bigger profit margins than the cheaper models. And it appears Apple is anticipating a growing number of consumers will will be prepared to pay an additional $200 to $300 for deluxe versions of the iPhone 14, said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.
Apple’s stock price gained 1% Wednesday to close at $155.96.
Consumers have already been snapping up iPhones this year, even though Apple charges among the industry’s highest prices. Apple sold an estimated 106 million iPhones through the first half of this year, an 8% increase from the same time last year, according to Canalys, another research firm.
Forrester analyst Thomas Husson hailed the new lineup for its faster chips, improved design and “some incremental innovative features.”
The company’s Apple Watch Series 8, meanwhile, will include a new temperature sensor intended to help women retrospectively track their ovulation cycles in addition to the crash detection feature also debuting on the iPhone 14. The price for the latest Apple Watch, available in stores Sept. 16, will start at $399, the same as last year’s model.
In an effort to broaden the appeal of wearable technology, Apple is rolling out a Watch Ultra model designed to be more durable and offering a variety of special features tailored for hikers, scuba divers and other outdoor enthusiasts. The Watch Ultra, available in stores Sept. 23, will carry a premium price of $799.
CCI Insight analyst Leo Gebbie predicted that the Ultra will compete with existing sports watch brands like Garmin and some luxury Swiss watchmakers that market their products around extreme sports.
Apple also took the wraps off its next generation of wireless earbuds, the AirPods Pro 2, which will also maintain a starting price of $249.
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AP Business Writer Matt Ott contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/apple-maintains-prices-new-iphones-despite-inflation/ | 2022-09-09T00:36:55Z |
Power outage at Austin airport leads to flight delays
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — An early morning power outage Wednesday at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport caused flight delays and cancellations that continued even after electricity was restored.
The airport reported it lost power shortly before 5 a.m., and soon after said flights had been stopped. The lights were back on by 8 a.m., but airport officials told passengers that flights would be delayed.
The airport shut down roads leading to the airport, which led to traffic backups on a nearby freeway. Austin police asked people to stay in their vehicles until the roads reopened.
Transportation Security Administration checkpoints were open shortly after 8 a.m., but flight delays continued.
Austin Energy said in a statement that the outage was caused by malfunctioning underground equipment that has since been repaired, and a crew is reviewing what happened in the hope of avoiding a repeat.
Airport officials recommended that travelers check with their airlines for any changes in their flight status.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/austin-airport-experiencing-lengthy-power-outage/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:02Z |
Bidens welcome Obamas for White House portrait reveal
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, returned to the White House Wednesday, unveiling official portraits with a modern vibe in an event that set humor and nostalgia over his presidency against the current harsh political talk about the survival of democracy.
While her husband cracked a few jokes about his gray hair, big ears and clothes in his portrait, Mrs. Obama, a descendant of slaves, said the occasion for her was more about the promise of America for people like herself.
“Barack and Michelle, welcome home,” declared President Joe Biden as the gathering cheered.
Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, praised his former boss’ leadership on health care, the economy and immigration and said nothing could have prepared him any better for being president than serving with Obama for those eight years.
“It was always about doing what was right,” he said.
The portrait of Obama, America’s 44th and first Black president, doesn’t look like any of his predecessors, nor does Michelle Obama’s look like any of the women who filled the role before her.
Obama stands expressionless against a white background, wearing a black suit and gray tie in the portrait by Robert McCurdy that looks more like a large photograph than an oil-on-canvas portrait. The former first lady, her lips pursed, is seated on a sofa in the Red Room in a strapless, light blue dress. She chose artist Sharon Sprung for her portrait.
Scores of former members of Obama’s administration were on hand for the big reveal.
Obama noted that some of them in the East Room audience had started families in the intervening years and feigned disappointment “that I haven’t heard of anyone naming a kid Barack or Michelle.”
He thanked McCurdy for his work, joking that the artist, who is known for his paintings of public figures from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama, had ignored his pleas for fewer gray hairs and smaller ears. “He also talked me out of wearing a tan suit, by the way,” Obama quipped, referring to a widely panned appearance as president in the unflattering suit.
Obama went on to say his wife was the “best thing about living in the White House,” and he thanked Sprung for “capturing everything I love about Michelle, her grace, her intelligence -- and the fact that she’s fine.”
Michelle Obama, when it was her turn, laughingly opened by saying she had to thank her husband for “such spicy remarks.” To which he retorted, by way of explanation, “I’m not running again.”
Then the former first lady turned serious, drawing a connection between unveiling the portraits and America’s promise for people with backgrounds like her own, a daughter of working-class parents from the South Side of Chicago.
“For me, this day is not just about what has happened,” she said. “It’s also about what could happen, because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”
Mrs. Obama said the portraits are a “reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country.”
Tradition holds that the sitting president invites his immediate predecessor back to the White House to unveil his portrait, but Donald Trump broke with that custom and did not host Obama. So, Biden scheduled a ceremony for his former boss.
Mrs. Obama said the tradition matters “not just for those of us who hold these positions, but for everyone participating in and watching our democracy.”
In remarks that never mentioned Trump but made a point as he continues to challenge his 2020 reelection loss, she added: “You see the people, they make their voices heard with their vote. We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power ... and once our time is up, we move on.”
McCurdy, meanwhile, said his “stripped down” style of portraiture helps create an “encounter” between the person in the painting and the person looking at it.
“They have plain white backgrounds, nobody gestures, nobody — there are no props because we’re not here to tell the story of the person that’s sitting for them,” McCurdy told the White House Historical Association during an interview for its “1600 Sessions” podcast.
“We’re here to create an encounter between the viewer and the sitter,” he said. “We’re telling as little about the sitter as possible so that the viewer can project onto them.”
He works from a photograph of his subject, selected from about 100 images, and spends at least a year on each portrait. Subjects have no say in how the painting looks. McCurdy said he knows he’s done “when it stops irritating me.”
Obama’s portrait went on display in the Grand Foyer, the traditional showcase for paintings of the two most recent presidents. His portrait replaced Bill Clinton’s near the stairway to the residence, the White House tweeted Wednesday night. George W. Bush’s portrait hangs on the wall opposite Obama’s in the foyer.
Mrs. Obama’s portrait was hung one floor below on the Ground Floor, joining predecessors Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, according to the tweet.
Two spokespeople for Trump did not respond to emailed requests for comment on whether artists have begun work on White House portraits for Trump and former first lady Melania Trump. Work, however, is underway on a separate pair of Trump portraits bound for the collection held by the National Portrait Gallery, a Smithsonian museum.
The White House Historical Association, a nonprofit organization founded in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and funded through private donations and sales of books and an annual Christmas ornament, helps manage the White House portrait process. Since the 1960s, the association has paid for most of the portraits in the collection.
Congress bought the first painting in the collection, of George Washington. Other portraits of early presidents and first ladies often came to the White House as gifts.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/bidens-welcome-obamas-white-house-portrait-reveal/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:09Z |
Document with foreign government’s nuclear information found at Mar-a-Lago, report says
(CNN) - A Washington Post report said agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago last month found a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.
The report highlights the concerns of U.S. intelligence officials about classified material that Trump kept in his Florida home.
The Post did not identify the foreign government named in the document.
The Post also reported some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations that are so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them.
Only the president, some cabinet members, or a near-cabinet-level official could authorize other officials to know the details.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/document-with-foreign-governments-nuclear-information-found-mar-a-lago-report-says/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:16Z |
Frontier offering reward in copper thefts
Company officials say thefts up more than 400%
HUNTINGTON/CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) - Copper thefts are on the rise in West Virginia, causing serious -- even life-threatening problems for those who need their landlines.
Frontier Communications officials say this year compared to last, copper line thefts are up more than 400%.
For the first time in West Virginia, Frontier is asking for your help. And, if you know something, there’s a reward.
The Cabin Creek area of Kanawha County has been a problem area where drivers have been forced to seriously slow it down. It was down to one lane Wednesday as crews repaired hundreds of feet of copper lines that were stolen late last week.
“This particular area is really bad,” said Jason Fields, Frontier’s senior vice president of operations, explaining that Cabin Creek Road is a hot spot. “We’ve had 19 incidents this year just on this road.”
The latest theft left at least 300 customers, multiple businesses -- even coal mine circuits -- without Frontier’s service since Sept. 1.
WSAZ’s Sarah Sager asked, “This a pretty extensive copper theft right here?”
“It is,” Fields responded.
Sager: “Is this one of the bigger ones you’ve seen?”
Fields: “It is. This is a piece of the cable. This came off of that. There’s 900 pairs of copper inside of that. It’s very heavy. There’s 275 feet. You can see this is off the road, so imagine the weight of that from this side to that side. It’s a pretty big operation.”
After thieves haul the copper away, Frontier crews told Sager that they strip the cover and burn anything left off the copper, then sell it to scrap metal recycling centers. They estimate this theft could have put $10,000 in the thieves’ pockets.
Sager: “Would security be something Frontier would think about on a road like this? Or is that just not feasible?”
Fields: “It is some, but it’s 24 by 7. It’s so hard. If you think about even with this road, it’s so long. It is difficult. It’s something we have looked at. We’ve talked about trail cams and other things.”
Now, Frontier wants your help. The company is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
Fields: “We’re putting it in place right now.”
Sager: “Why announce it on WSAZ?
Fields: “It’s hot off the press. We huddled internally and talked. We had done this recently in Arizona and were very successful. We caught somebody and prosecuted them. We brought this up yesterday when we were talking about meeting with WSAZ. I said, ‘You know what. Let’s do the same thing here. Let’s offer the reward statewide and see if that helps us catch the person doing this.’ "
Fields says Frontier workers will always have visible logos on the side of their trucks showing they are doing legitimate work. You’ll also see flaggers, cones, and signs showing it’s official.
Customers affected by copper theft outages will be credited for time their service was offline, but you need to contact the company at 800-590-6605.
Fields said customers affected by the outage on Cabin Creek Road should be back online by Thursday.
Copyright 2022 WSAZ. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/frontier-offering-reward-copper-thefts/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:23Z |
Giant space tarantula spotted in the galaxy
Published: Sep. 7, 2022 at 4:09 PM EDT
(CNN) – NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the image of a large Magellanic cloud galaxy nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula.
Scientists say it got that nickname because it resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home line with its silk.
The nebula sits 161,000 light years away from Earth.
It is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the galaxies closest to the Milky Way.
NASA says it also houses the hottest and most massive stars currently known to astronomers.
Thanks to the Webb Telescope, scientists have been able to spot tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the galaxy.
They originally thought the stars were just cosmic dust.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/giant-space-tarantula-spotted-galaxy/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:29Z |
GOP gives thumbs down to Biden’s $47B emergency request
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s request for more than $47 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine and tackle COVID-19, monkeypox and natural disasters is encountering deep skepticism from Senate Republicans, signaling a showdown ahead.
The early resistance on the size and scope of the spending request points to the fraught negotiations to come as Congress labors to pass a stopgap spending bill that would keep the federal government running past Oct. 1 or risk a federal shutdown.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that while Ukraine aid “is obviously a priority,” he downplayed the need for other funding — even in his Kentucky home state hit hard by devastating floods.
“It’s a big ask without much explanation,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of GOP leadership.
Lawmakers are eager to avoid another government shutdown just weeks before November’s midterm election when voters will decide which party controls Congress. But their plan to pass a short-term bill to keep government funded could run into trouble unless the parties can strike an agreement on what additional priorities, if any, should be included.
The budget showdown is fast emerging as a showcase for party priorities at home and abroad that will define the lawmakers as they face voters in the fall.
The White House request includes $11.7 billion for security and economic assistance for Ukraine, on top of some $40 billion Congress has already approved to help the country battle’s Russia’s invasion. Closer to home, the Biden administration is seeking $22 billion to respond to COVID-19, and additional funds for monkeypox and natural disasters.
Republicans object to much of it.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., endorsed Biden’s request and said “it’s disgraceful that Republicans are playing political games with this.”
“Ukraine needs more help. We want to give it to them,” Schumer said Wednesday. “And on monkeypox and on COVID relief, we need to be prepared.”
This latest round of proposed funding for Ukraine comes as the country depends on support from the U.S. and allies in battling the Russian invasion.
The White House says more than three-quarters of the money approved for Ukraine has already been dispersed or committed, creating an urgent need for more.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has struck up relationships with members of Congress this year, many of whom have traveled to the region and rallied to his aid. Zelenskyy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke earlier this week.
Republicans said they still support Ukraine and are open to more funding, but want more details about how the earlier money has been spent.
“I would be interested in why they feel this is an emergency, why they need to do it now, but certainly, I would not slow down our support for what Ukraine is doing,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
But few Republicans seemed willing to even entertain Biden’s request for $22.4 billion in emergency funding to deal with COVID-19.
While the administration says the money is needed for additional COVID-19 vaccines, testing programs and research and development, Republicans say the federal spending on the virus needs to wind down, not ramp up.
Blunt said that people can pay for their vaccines like they pay for other aspects of their health care, and “there’s really no reason that the government should be paying for all of that.”
GOP lawmakers are sticking with the view that dedicating more money to the country’s COVID response should be paid for by cutting spending elsewhere.
“The problem is they want to keep spending more money and throw more gasoline on the inflation fire,” Cornyn said. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
The White House is also asking for $4.5 billion to bolster efforts to fight monkeypox. Officials said they have already depleted significant reserves from the national stockpile to provide over 1.1 million vials of vaccine.
On disaster relief, the Biden administration is seeking about $6.5 billion to help states such as Kentucky recover from recent flooding. Aid would also help residents of California, Louisiana and Texas rebuild from major disasters.
Schumer also indicated that he supports adding a measure from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that is designed to speed up the permitting process for energy infrastructure projects. But including it could trigger opposition from House Democrats who see it as rushing projects to approval before the environmental ramifications are clear.
Still, there’s wide agreement on both sides that even a temporary government shutdown before the election is out of the question.
Democrats want to keep the focus on legislative victories designed to bolster the country’s infrastructure, semiconductor production and address climate change and health care costs. Republicans want voters to focus on inflation, gas prices and crime.
“There might be a couple of emergencies we’re going to need to deal with, but my guess is that with an election coming, you won’t see a lot of interesting brinksmanship,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/gop-gives-thumbs-down-bidens-47b-emergency-request/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:37Z |
Gradually drying out a bit more into late-week
Highs in the 70s, isolated showers at times into Thursday
A frontal boundary and areas of low pressure to our southeast and further aloft will keep us slightly unstable into tonight. We’ll see a few more showers/rumbles of thunder, and locally heavy rain will still be possible, especially before sundown this evening. We’ll otherwise end up partly cloudy with areas of fog overnight and slightly cooler high temperatures in the mid 50s-low 60s.
Thursday will bring a mix of sun and clouds, and slightly lower humidity (at least to start) as surface high pressure to our northwest fights for a little more control. We’ll still have enough energy for a few showers here & there during the afternoon, but many will stay rain-free. Highs will top off in the low-upper 70s for most. Thursday night, we should be dry and cool with lows in the 50s.
Friday will bring a quiet end to the work week. We’ll be mainly sunny, with only a slim chance of an isolated shower during the afternoon/evening. Football Friday should be good overall weather-wise. High temps will be in the low-upper 70s Friday and Friday night will be partly cloudy with lows in the 50s and 60s.
Our next frontal system will swing in this weekend-giving us wider-spread rain and cooler daytime highs (below normal) in the upper 60s-low 70s Saturday and Sunday....STAY TUNED!
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) -
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/gradually-drying-out-bit-more-into-late-week/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:44Z |
Harris to lead US delegation to Japan for Abe’s funeral
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will lead the U.S. delegation to the state funeral of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later this month, the White House announced Wednesday.
Harris will also visit South Korea on the Sept. 25-29 trip.
The White House said “her visit will honor the legacy of Prime Minister Abe and underscore the importance of his leadership in championing the alliance between the United States and Japan and advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The trip marks Harris’ first official visits to both countries since taking office last year. Harris is set to meet with senior government officials and civil society leaders, and the White House said she will raise economic, trade and security interests during her trip.
Abe was shot to death in July on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech. The 67-year-old Abe was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/harris-lead-us-delegation-japan-abes-funeral/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:51Z |
‘I’m exhausted of having to constantly run’: Cyber trolls force trans woman into hiding
(CNN) – Transphobic trolls have forced a trans woman into hiding as they post personal details about her and her family online.
Clara Sorrenti said she fled to northern Ireland as a result, but the trolls tracked her all the way there.
The trans activist and Twitch streamer said the online trolls called in a fake emergency, sending armed police to her home in Canada. The tactic is known as “swatting.”
“I went into the hallway, they told me to put my hands up,” she said. “And honestly, in that moment, I thought I was going to die. I screamed as soon as I saw the gun.”
Over the past month, she’s been targeted, harassed and stalked around the globe.
“I’m so exhausted of having to constantly run,” she said.
Earlier this year, when Sorrenti began using the Twitch platform, popular among video gamers, to talk about trans rights, she caught the attention of Kiwi Farms, a notorious online forum that has been used to organize transphobic harassment campaigns.
“The first thing that they did was find the obituary for my dead father and use it to find his memorialized Facebook page,” Sorrenti said. “They were able to find a picture of my dad on the front porch of my childhood home and, from that, use Google Maps and figure out where that was located.”
After Sorrenti’s home in Ontario was swatted, she moved to a nearby hotel. However, her harassers tracked her down there, remarkably using a photo of her cat on her hotel bed.
“They were able to cross reference what they saw on the bedsheets with every other hotel in the city until they found out that the specific bedsheets only had a pattern in this one hotel that I was staying at,” Sorrenti said.
Eventually, she said her Uber account was hacked, allowing the online bullies to track her location. It was then when she decided to leave Canada, coming here to Belfast in northern Ireland to stay with her friend.
“I thought that if I got far away and went to a different continent, they wouldn’t be able to do the same thing,” she said. “And then it turned out I was wrong.”
Her harassers somehow were able to track her down in Belfast. One of them even came to the apartment building she’s staying at, took a photo and posted it online.
Ellen Murray, another Twitch streamer, said the trolls harassed Sorrenti while they were streaming together.
“In the middle of it, we find out that, on the website 4chan, somebody had posted a picture taken from right (outside),” she said.
Sorrenti decided to take the trolls on, launching a campaign to get Kiwi Farms taken off the internet.
“I know that there’s always a threat against me as long as I’m standing up for this, but the alternative would’ve been the site keeps going and, not only me, but the countless other victims of this site who get harassed relentlessly every single day would have to continue through that nightmare,” she said.
Sorrenti called for Cloudflare, a major U.S. internet company, to stop providing cyber security services to Kiwi Farms that allows the site to stay online.
Cloudflare initially said no, but then reversed track over the weekend, citing “imminent threats to human life.”
Sorrenti knows getting Kiwi Farms taken offline won’t make all her trolls and harassers go away.
“They got roped into a hate group, and once you get deep enough inside one of these things, it’s really hard to get out,” she said. “I want to show them more compassion than they’ve ever shown me.”
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/im-exhausted-having-constantly-run-cyber-trolls-force-trans-woman-into-hiding/ | 2022-09-09T00:37:57Z |
Judge strikes down 1931 Michigan law criminalizing abortion
DETROIT (AP) — A judge on Wednesday struck down Michigan’s 1931 anti-abortion law, months after suspending it, the latest development over abortion rights in a state where the issue is being argued in courtrooms and, possibly, at the ballot box.
The law, which was long dormant before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, violates the Michigan Constitution, said Judge Elizabeth Gleicher.
“A law denying safe, routine medical care not only denies women of their ability to control their bodies and their lives — it denies them of their dignity,” Gleicher of the Court of Claims wrote. “Michigan’s Constitution forbids this violation of due process.”
The decision comes as the Michigan Supreme Court is considering whether to place a proposed amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot that would add abortion rights to the state constitution. A Friday deadline is looming.
Supporters submitted more than 700,000 signatures, easily clearing the threshold. But a tie vote by the Board of State Canvassers over spacing issues on the petition has kept it off the ballot so far.
In the case handled by Gleicher, the 1931 law makes it a crime to perform an abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger.
The judge said the law “compels motherhood” and prevents a woman from determining the “shape of her present and future life.”
The law “forces a pregnant woman to forgo her reproductive choices and to instead serve as `an involuntary vessel entitled to no more respect than other forms of collectively owned property,’” Gleicher wrote, quoting constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe.
The law was suspended in May with an injunction, following a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood of Michigan. Gleicher said her latest decision applies to all state and local prosecutors. An appeal by the Republican-controlled Legislature is possible.
“The House is reviewing the ruling,” spokesman Gideon D’Assandro said.
Gleicher acknowledged in July that she has been a regular donor to Planned Parenthood and gave $1,000 to the 2018 campaigns of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel, both Democrats who support abortion rights.
But that support wasn’t a reason to pass the case to another judge, said Gleicher, who also serves as chief judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals.
“Judges are presumed to be unbiased and impartial,” she said.
In a separate lawsuit, Whitmer has repeatedly asked the state Supreme Court to bypass lower courts and settle the status of the 1931 law. The court hasn’t decided whether to intervene.
“With our rights still hanging by a thread, the Michigan Supreme Court needs to provide certainty,” the governor said Wednesday.
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Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez
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Find more AP coverage of the abortion issue: https://apnews.com/hub/abortion
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The spelling of Laurence Tribe’s first name has been corrected.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/judge-strikes-down-1931-michigan-law-criminalizing-abortion/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:04Z |
Man dressed as ‘Halloween’ character Michael Myers spotted at Florida beach
Published: Sep. 7, 2022 at 5:37 PM EDT
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (TMX/Gray News) - A beachgoer says he spotted a man dressed as Michael Myers from “Halloween” at a Florida beach over Labor Day weekend.
Todd Brandon Easter shared images of what he saw that day at a Panama City beach.
The beachgoer said he saw the iconic movie character while visiting the beach on Sept 4.
Easter said the person dressed as Myers wasn’t bothering anyone and seemed approachable while not causing any problems.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/man-dressed-halloween-character-michael-myers-spotted-florida-beach/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:11Z |
Mysterious object spotted flying low over several states
TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD/Gray News) – An unusual object flew over Tucson Wednesday morning, leaving many people questioning what they saw.
According to KOLD, the first object was seen around 5:20 a.m.
As seen in the University of Arizona Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences webcam, it appears to be flying to the west or northwest at a relatively low altitude.
After the object goes out of view, another is seen descending at the extreme left of the camera’s view.
According to WFIE, the same objects were seen over areas of Kentucky as well.
Meteorologist Arden Gregory said they were likely SpaceX Starlink Satellites that were visible for a few minutes.
“A neat sight for sure, but nothing to be worried about,” Gregory said.
Copyright 2022 KOLD via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/mysterious-object-spotted-flying-low-over-arizona/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:18Z |
Officer arrested in prostitution sting while out of town for seminar, sheriff says
CARTERSVILLE, Ga. (WGCL/Gray News) - A Georgia man whose job is to protect and serve found himself caught in the middle of a sting operation in late August, authorities say.
Deputy Chief Jason Diprima with the Cartersville Police Department was in Orlando, Florida, in an unmarked DEA government vehicle soliciting prostitution while he was in town for the American Polygraph Association seminar on Aug. 28, according to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.
Grady said Diprima began texting with an undercover detective in Orlando. Eventually, he showed up at a location with alcohol and money in hand with the intention of having sex with the undercover agent. That’s when the police moved in to arrest him, and he allegedly lied about what was going on, WGCL reported.
“You would’ve thought, as a high-ranking police officer, well respected, he would’ve known better … but he didn’t, and now he’s got lots of issues: home issues, work issues, criminal issues. What he’s got going on here is a situation, and he’s in the middle of it,” Judd said during a news conference.
Diprima was taken to the Polk County Jail and later released on a $500 bond.
The Cartersville Police Department has been notified of the arrest.
Copyright 2022 WGCL via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/officer-arrested-prostitution-sting-while-out-town-seminar-sheriff-says/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:25Z |
Officials rule shooting deaths of elementary teacher, her 2 children as murder-suicide
HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WMBF/Gray News) - An investigation into the deaths of an elementary school teacher and her children in South Carolina has revealed that they died in a murder-suicide, according to authorities.
The Horry County Coroner’s Office said the cause of death of the children, 11-year-old Eric and 8-year-old Emily Moberley, is homicide. Their mother, Laura Moberly, died by suicide.
Officials confirmed to WMBF that the deaths have been ruled a murder-suicide.
The Horry County Police Department and Horry County Coroner’s Office said the 42-year-old teacher and her two children were all found shot to death at a home on Centennial Circle last week.
Records from family court show a legal order of separation was filed by Moberly’s husband, William, on June 13.
The latest filings were dated Aug. 30, the same date on which a temporary hearing was scheduled.
Officers were called to the home the day after the scheduled hearing, where they found the three of them dead.
Moberley taught at Carolina Forest Elementary School, which is also where Emily attended.
According to the funeral home, services are planned for Thursday for Moberley and her two children.
Copyright 2022 WMBF via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/officials-rule-shooting-deaths-elementary-teacher-her-2-children-murder-suicide/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:31Z |
Stone Age skeleton missing foot may show oldest amputation
NEW YORK (AP) — The 31,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult found in a cave in Indonesia that is missing its left foot and part of its left leg reveal the oldest known evidence of an amputation, according to a new study.
Scientists say the amputation was performed when the person was a child — and that the “patient” went on to live for years as an amputee. The prehistoric surgery could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than previously thought, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Researchers were exploring a cave in Borneo, in a rainforest region known for having some of the earliest rock art in the world, when they came across the grave, said Tim Maloney, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and the study’s lead researcher.
Though much of the skeleton was intact, it was missing its left foot and the lower part of its left leg, he explained. After examining the remains, the researchers concluded the foot bones weren’t missing from the grave, or lost in an accident — they were carefully removed.
The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over, Maloney said. There were no signs of infection, which would be expected if the child had gotten its leg bitten off by a creature like a crocodile. And there were also no signs of a crushing fracture, which would have been expected if the leg had snapped off in an accident.
The person appears to have lived for around six to nine more years after losing the limb, eventually dying from unknown causes as a young adult, researchers say.
This shows that the prehistoric foragers knew enough about medicine to perform the surgery without fatal blood loss or infection, the authors concluded. Researchers don’t know what kind of tool was used to amputate the limb, or how infection was prevented — but they speculate that a sharp stone tool may have made the cut, and point out that some of the rich plant life in the region has medicinal properties.
Also, the community would have had to care for the child for years afterward, since surviving the rugged terrain as an amputee wouldn’t have been easy.
This early surgery “rewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments,” Maloney said at a press briefing.
Before this find, the earliest example of amputation had been in a French farmer from 7,000 years ago, who had part of his forearm removed. Scientists had thought that advanced medical practices developed around 10,000 years ago, as humans settled down into agricultural societies, the study authors said.
But this study adds to growing evidence that humans started caring for each other’s health much earlier in their history, said Alecia Schrenk, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved with the study.
“It had long been assumed healthcare is a newer invention,” Schrenk said in an email. “Research like this article demonstrates that prehistoric peoples were not just left to fend for themselves.”
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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/2022/09/07/one-legged-stone-age-skeleton-may-show-oldest-amputation/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:38Z |
Payday loan scams victimize most financially vulnerable
Consumers have lost more than $3M over the last four years
InvestigateTV - Payday loans are high-cost, short term loans that are often a quick way for people to get cash before their next paycheck. Unfortunately, payday loan scams have cost consumers almost $500,000 this year.
Josh Planos with the Better Business Bureau said the con comes when bad actors pose as representatives from legal payday loan companies.
Planos explained that fraudsters will offer fake payday loans or trick customers into thinking they still owe money on a debt even after the debt is paid.
These scams typically cost victims an average of $1,000 per person and the frequency is increasing.
Planos reported that the BBB saw a 27% increase in payday loan scams from 2019 to 2021.
Senior Attorney Mark Glassman with the Federal Trade Commission said the uptick in payday loan scams means borrowers need to stay on high alert.
Glassman noted that the scams are targeted towards people who, in many cases, are already economically vulnerable.
Experts said one way to avoid falling victim is to skip the payday loan and instead, try working with your creditors to make payment arrangements.
If you need help with creditors, USA.gov and Consumer.gov both offer free resources on dealing with debt and managing debt.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/payday-loan-scams-victimize-most-financially-vulnerable/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:45Z |
Police: 70-year-old crossing guard dies days after being hit by SUV
YUMA, Ariz. (Gray News) - A 70-year-old crossing guard in Arizona died this week after she was hit by an SUV while on duty.
The Yuma Police Department reports Maria Cecilia Chavez was working as a school crossing guard near the intersection of 24th Street and 8th Avenue on Sept. 1 when a Toyota RAV4 struck her.
Chavez was taken to the hospital, but died from her injuries on Tuesday.
According to authorities, a 60-year-old woman was driving the Toyota and hit Chavez while making a left turn.
Police said alcohol or speed didn’t appear to be factors in the crash.
Yuma police said the 70-year-old crossing guard was wearing a reflective vest. No children were injured.
The incident remains under investigation, and police urged anyone with further information to contact the department at 928-783-4421.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/police-70-year-old-crossing-guard-dies-days-after-being-hit-by-suv/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:52Z |
Registered sex offender tries to kidnap, rape jogger in Tennessee, police say
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT/Gray News) – A registered sex offender tried to kidnap and rape a woman in Tennessee as she jogged Tuesday morning, according to the Knoxville Police Department.
Officers responded to the Market Square area just after 7 a.m. for a report that a woman was randomly assaulted by a man she did not know.
Scott Erland, spokesperson for Knoxville police, said multiple bystanders rushed to help the woman, and she was able to escape with only minor injuries.
Erland said the suspect fled the scene prior to police arriving.
Multiple units worked together to identify the man as Japa Goins, 34. He was located and arrested a few hours after the attempted kidnapping, Erland said.
Goins reportedly admitted to the assault during an interview with Violent Crimes Unit investigators.
Police said Goins will be charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted rape.
“I am incredibly proud of the great urgency and teamwork our investigators and patrol officers showed to bring this incident to an almost immediate resolution,” Chief of Police Paul Noel said. “I am also thankful for the bystanders who jumped in to help when help was needed. People should feel and be safe in every public space in our city, and we will respond quickly to address any actions or behavior that compromises that sense of safety.”
According to the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry, Goins faced two separate rape charges and two separate sexual battery charges in 2021. The rape charges were dismissed, but Goins pleaded guilty to the sexual battery charges, according to records.
The attempted kidnapping and rape Tuesday comes amid a heightened fear of safety for joggers following the death of 34-year-old Eliza Fletcher in Memphis that made news nationwide. Officials said Fletcher was kidnapped and murdered while out on a jog early Friday morning. Cleotha Henderson, initially referred to as Cleotha Abston by police, has been charged with first-degree murder in the case and is being held without bond.
Copyright 2022 WVLT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/registered-sex-offender-tries-kidnap-rape-jogger-tennessee-police-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:38:59Z |
Scary moments: Dog helps save owner in backyard bear attack, police say
MEDFORD Ore. (KPTV/Gray News) - Officials say a bear has been killed after it attacked a woman and her dog in southern Oregon over the weekend.
KPTV reports the incident happened on Sept. 4, when the animal attacked the woman and her dog while the two were in their backyard in west Medford.
The Medford Police Department estimated the bear weighed between 150 and 200 pounds.
Authorities said the woman and her dog suffered injuries in the attack. The woman’s left arm and leg were injured, but she is expected to survive after her dog helped scare the bear away.
Police initially said they couldn’t find the bear, but it was eventually spotted on Tuesday by a neighbor in a nearby yard.
On Wednesday, Medford police said officers shot and killed the animal, as it’s their policy that any bear which is a threat to human life must be killed and not relocated.
Authorities said they collected evidence from the attack and matched it with the bear.
Copyright 2022 KPTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/scary-moments-dog-helps-save-owner-backyard-bear-attack-police-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:07Z |
Senate to vote on same-sex marriage in coming weeks
WASHINGTON (AP) — Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed Wednesday that the Senate will vote on legislation to protect same-sex marriage “in the coming weeks” as a bipartisan group backing the bill negotiates changes to gain more Republican support.
The vote, expected by the end of the month, comes as Democrats and a small group of Republicans are moving to safeguard same-sex marriage following the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and the federal right to an abortion. Lawmakers fear the court’s ruling, and a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas, indicate that an earlier high court decision protecting same-sex marriage could come under threat.
“We all want to pass this quickly,” Schumer said. “I hope there will be 10 Republicans to support it.”
A bipartisan group of senators, led by Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, is working to round up those ten GOP votes needed to overcome a filibuster and get the legislation through the 50-50 Senate.
“I think the momentum is going in the right direction,” Baldwin said after the bipartisan group met on Wednesday.
The Senate push for the historic vote — and the openness by some Republicans to back it in an election year — reflects a seismic shift on the issue since the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide. Some 70% of U.S. adults in a June Gallup poll said same-sex unions should be valid under the law.
The bill protecting same-sex marriage cleared the House in a July vote with the support of 47 Republicans – a larger than expected number that gave the measure a boost in the Senate.
To win over more Senate Republicans, negotiators are planning to introduce amendments aimed at addressing concerns from some about “religious liberty” – the rights of religious institutions or religious business owners to oppose same-sex marriage, for example. Supporters say such religious liberty is already enshrined in law, but new language would simply make that clear.
Another proposed tweak to the bill would make clear that a marriage is between two people, an effort to ward off some far-right criticism that the legislation could endorse polygamy.
Baldwin and two of the Republicans supporting the marriage bill, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, said Wednesday that the group was drafting the amendments to address the concerns they’ve heard from their GOP colleagues.
“There’s no harm in doing it,” Tillis said, even though some Democrats have pointed out that those rights are already protected under law.
Collins said the amendment would “make crystal clear that it does not in any way infringe religious liberties” and allow Republicans to have input on the bill.
“I’m never confident until the roll is called but we’re making good progress,” Collins said.
The legislation would repeal the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed. The new Respect for Marriage Act would also protect interracial marriages by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”
So far, three Republicans have said they will vote for the legislation and are working with Baldwin and others to pass it: Collins, Tillis and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. A fourth GOP senator, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has supported same-sex marriage in the past. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who is up for reelection this year, has said he doesn’t see a “reason to oppose it” but has talked on both sides of the issue in recent weeks.
Several other Republican senators have said they are undecided or have declined to comment.
“I don’t have anything for you on that at this point,” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey said Wednesday, when asked if he would vote for the bill.
Indicative of the political shift, many of the Republicans who are opposing the bill aren’t arguing whether same-sex marriages should be recognized by the government. They say instead that they believe the Supreme Court is unlikely to overturn Obergefell.
“I don’t think that’s a pressing matter,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is up for re-election this year. “There’s no threat to same-sex marriage in America.”
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said the effort is a “show vote” and Democrats are playing politics.
Baldwin, who is the first openly gay senator and has been working on gay rights issues since she first entered state politics in the 1980s, said she disagrees with that assessment.
“It’s not” just politics, Baldwin said. “It’s very real for a whole lot of people.”
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Nomaan Merchant and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/senate-vote-same-sex-marriage-coming-weeks/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:13Z |
Shelling resumes near Ukraine nuclear plant, despite risks
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Shelling resumed near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, with the warring sides trading blame again on Wednesday, a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency pressed for a safe zone there to prevent a catastrophe.
Russian forces fired rockets and heavy artillery on the city of Nikopol, on the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from Europe’s largest nuclear plant, regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.
“There are fires, blackouts and other things at the (plant) that force us to prepare the local population for the consequences of the nuclear danger,” Reznichenko said. Officials in recent days have distributed iodine pills to residents to help protect them in the event of a radiation leak.
In Enerhodar, where the power plant is located, Dmytro Orlov, the pre-occupation mayor, reported the city had come under Russian attack for a second time Wednesday and was without power. “Employees of communal and other services simply do not have time to complete emergency and restoration work, as another shelling reduces their work to zero,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
The Russian side blamed the Ukrainians. Vladimir Rogov, head of the Russia-installed Enerhodar administration, said on Telegram that heavy Ukrainian fighting had caused the city’s blackout, and Russia’s Defense Ministry blamed the outage on a Ukrainian attack on a power substation.
Russian rockets on Wednesday hit Mala Tokmachka 90 kms (55 miles) northeast of Enerhodar, killing three people and injuring five, Zaporizhzhia regional Gov. Oleksandr Starukh reported.
It’s not possible to independently reconcile the conflicting reports of the fighting, which has caused international alarm.
The head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has warned that “something very, very catastrophic could take place” at the Zaporizhzhia plant and urged Russia and Ukraine to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around it. The fear is that the fighting could trigger a disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.
Neither Moscow nor Kiev officials would immediately commit to a safety zone.
Conditions at the plant have worsened. Because of damage to external power lines from the fighting, the plant is generating electricity only to power safety systems that keep the reactor cores cool and prevent them from melting down, a Ukrainian official said. Any further power disruption could force the plant to use back-up diesel generators, requiring four diesel fuel trucks a day to travel through the fighting, said Oleh Korikov, Ukraine’s acting chief inspector for nuclear and radiation safety.
“We could potentially be in a situation where we run out of diesel,” he said. “And this can lead to an accident with damage to the active zone of the reactors and, accordingly, the release of radioactive products into the environment.”
The plant had to activate its diesel generators late last month, according to Ukrainian officials.
Authorities could consider shutting down the plant, Korikov said, without offering details.
The plant’s operator, Energoatom, said that despite the shelling, Ukrainian staff still working at the Russian-occupied plant will try to restore external power.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday defied pressure to halt the war, saying Moscow will forge ahead with its offensive and mocked Western attempts to stop Russia with sanctions.
Putin told an annual economic forum in the far-eastern port city of Vladivostok that even though the IAEA didn’t assign blame for the shelling around the Zaporizhzhia plant, claims that Russian forces are responsible are “absolute nonsense.” He asked rhetorically, “Well, are we shooting at ourselves or what?”
He claimed fragments of Western weapons have been found at the plant, denied that Russia has placed military equipment there and said he doesn’t understand why Ukraine would fire on the facility, other than “to create an additional crisis.”
Heavy fighting was reported on three fronts: in the north, near the city of Kharkiv; in the east, in the industrial Donbas region of mines and factories; and in the south, in the Kherson region, where Ukraine has mounted a counteroffensive to try to retake territory from the Russians.
Ukrainian forces have taken control of an unspecified number of towns in the Kherson region, military spokesperson Nataliya Humenyuk said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, also reported success in the Kharkiv region, without providing details.
The Ukrainian military said it had foiled Russian attempts to advance on a dozen settlements in the east, including the city of Bakhmut, which the UK defense ministry has identified as “probably Russia’s planned main effort.” Capturing Bakhmut would enable Moscow’s forces to threaten Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the region’s two largest Ukrainian-held cities.
Sloviansk came under Russian fire on Wednesday, and a school and another building were damaged, according to mayor Vadym Lyakh.
Firefighters dug deep into the smoldering rubble of an apartment building and removed at least one body. Chunks of bricks, masonry and concrete lay among torn tree branches, broken glass and roof tiles. Metal doors, buckled by the blast’s force, hung off their hinges.
The strike came at around 4 a.m., said resident Raisa Smelkova, 75, who lives in another part of the building. She and her husband were unhurt. The couple lived through the fighting in Ukraine in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea region.
“What is happening now is not just scary, it’s gruesome,” she said. “There is more destruction. Everything is worse. Just everything.”
In other developments:
—Andrei Turchak, the leader of United Russia, the main Kremlin-directed political party, suggested that referendums on joining the Russian Federation could be held in the eastern Donbas and other Russia-controlled areas in Ukraine on Nov. 4, when Russia marks National Unity Day. Russia has already recognized some parts of the Donbas as sovereign.
—The United States said Wednesday that it has evidence showing “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainian citizens have been interrogated, detained and forcibly removed to Russia. Russia dismissed the allegation as “fantasy,” calling it the latest invention in a Western disinformation campaign.
—The Russian military on Wednesday ended large-scale drills in the country’s east that involved forces from China. It was seen as another show of increasingly close ties between Moscow and Beijing, con trasting with tensions with the West over the war.
___
Elena Becatoros in Sloviansk contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/shelling-goes-near-ukraine-nuclear-plant-despite-risks/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:20Z |
Phone call led to California deputy’s surrender in slayings
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — When the phone rang inside a Northern California police station around midday Wednesday, the homicide suspect — an off-duty sheriff’s deputy accused in a shocking double-slaying — was on the line.
But the detectives working the case were all out in the field, part of a desperate 12-hour manhunt to find Devin Williams Jr. So the police chief grabbed the phone.
“The secretary says ‘hey, Mr. Williams is calling and wants to speak to somebody here,’ " Lt. Ray Kelly, a spokesperson with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, told The Associated Press.
Williams was wanted in connection with the fatal shootings of a husband and wife in their Dublin, California, home around 12:45 a.m. Wednesday — less than two hours after the rookie deputy had finished an overtime shift at the county jail.
Williams, 24, fled Northern California after he allegedly barged into the couple’s home and shot them with his service weapon while their child and three other people were inside. A manhunt immediately began after a witness — the couple’s relative — called 911, with police describing him as armed and dangerous.
He’d made it 160 miles (258 kilometers) south of the East Bay crime scene to the Central Valley — a remote, desolate area off Interstate 5 near the city of Coalinga where temperatures had reached triple digits — before making a pivotal decision.
“I think his call to us was an indicator that he wanted help, that he had gotten himself way beyond his thinking, his emotions, and that he needed help,” Kelly said. “I think that phone call was a call for help.”
Williams’ call came into the police department’s business line just as Dublin Police Chief Garrett Holmes and Kelly were about to go in front of the cameras for a news conference.
Kelly, along with a crisis negotiator who later arrived, scribbled and passed hand-written notes to Holmes throughout the 45-minute conversation. They worked to find a place for Williams, now in the middle of a mental health crisis, to surrender peacefully without harming himself or any California Highway Patrol officers there to take him into custody. At some point, he had tossed his gun out the car window.
“We don’t need any more people dying today,” Kelly said.
The slain couple’s names have not yet been released. They were only identified as a 42-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man after officials pronounced them dead at the scene.
Williams knew the couple, but investigators are still working to “to fine-tune their connection” and determine the motive, Kelly said. Detectives are looking into, among other things, the possibility of a romantic relationship or an extramarital affair.
“This was not a random crime,” Kelly said. “This is a very bizarre chain of events that unfolded.”
Kelly said Williams went through “some significant events” in his life in the last few months that led to the killings but did not specify what had happened.
“A lot of those events went undiscovered and undisclosed and we’re going to be looking into that. There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered,” he said.
The violence left the law enforcement agencies stunned. Williams had been with the sheriff’s office since September 2021 and was still on probation. He had been assigned to the Oakland courthouse, and there were no concerns about his job performance.
“It’s a great loss for our community and it’s even more disheartening to find out that it was one of our own that was the trigger-person behind this tragic incident,” said Holmes, the Dublin chief who is also a commander in the sheriff’s office.
Williams, who is from Stockton, briefly worked with the Stockton Police Department, where he completed their police academy but was ultimately let go after he failed their field training program, Kelly said.
Stockton Police spokesperson Officer Joseph Silva said he could not discuss why Williams left the department because it is a “personnel matter.” He confirmed Williams worked for the Stockton Police Department from January 2020 to January 2021.
But Wednesday was Williams’ one-year anniversary with the sheriff’s department.
“How did he get there and where were the red flags and how did we not see them?” Kelly said. “How did he get to this point of violence?”
___
Dazio reported from Los Angeles.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/sheriffs-deputy-sought-connection-with-2-fatal-shootings-california/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:27Z |
Official: Suspect in Canada stab rampage died after arrest
ROSTHERN, Saskatchewan (AP) — The final suspect in a stabbing rampage that killed 10 people in and around a Canadian Indigenous reserve died after being arrested by police Wednesday following a manhunt that stretched more than three days, authorities said. One official said he died of self-inflicted injuries.
Myles Sanderson, 32, was caught on a highway near the town of Rosthern in the province of Saskatchewan as officers responded to a report of a stolen vehicle being driven by a man armed with a knife, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Officers forced Sanderson’s vehicle off the road and into a ditch, Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore, commander of the RCMP in Saskatchewan, said at a news conference. He was detained and a knife was found inside the vehicle she said.
She said Sanderson went into medical distress after he was arrested. She said CPR was attempted on him before an ambulance arrived. She said emergency medical personnel then took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“All life saving measures that we are capable of were taken at that time,” she said.
Blackmore gave no details on the cause of death. “I can’t speak to the specific manner of death,” she said.
But an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, earlier said Sanderson died of self-inflicted injuries, without giving any further details.
Video and photos from the scene showed a white SUV off to the side of the road with police cars all around. Air bags had deployed in the SUV. Some photos and video taken from a distance appeared to show Sanderson being frisked.
His death came two days after the body of his brother, 30-year-old Damien Sanderson, was found in a field near the scene of their rampage, which also wounded 18 people. Police are investigating whether Myles Sanderson killed his brother.
Blackmore said that with both men dead, authorities will find it hard to figure out what set off the rampage.
“Now that Myles is deceased we may never have an understanding of that motivation,” she said.
But she started off her remarks that the news conference by stressing that people in Saskatchewan can rest easier.
“This evening our province is breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Blackmore said.
Later, she added: “I hope that this brings them closure. I hope they can rest easy knowing that Myles Sanderson is no longer a threat to them.”
Some family members of the victims arrived at the scene Wednesday, including Brian Burns, whose wife and son were killed.
“Now we can start to heal. The healing begins today, now,” he said.
The stabbing rampage raised questions of why Myles Sanderson — an ex-con with 59 convictions and a long history of shocking violence — was out on the streets in the first place.
He was released by a parole board in February while serving a sentence of over four years on charges that included assault and robbery. But he had been wanted by police since May, apparently for violating the terms of his release, though the details were not immediately clear.
His long and lurid rap sheet also showed that seven years ago, he attacked and stabbed one of the victims killed in the weekend rampage, according to court records.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said there will be an investigation into the parole board’s assessment of Sanderson.
“I want to know the reasons behind the decision” to release him, Mendicino said. “I’m extremely concerned with what occurred here. A community has been left reeling.”
Investigators have not given a motive for the bloodshed.
The Saskatchewan Coroner’s Service said nine of those killed were from the James Smith Cree Nation: Thomas Burns, 23; Carol Burns, 46; Gregory Burns, 28; Lydia Gloria Burns, 61; Bonnie Burns, 48; Earl Burns, 66; Lana Head, 49; Christian Head, 54; and Robert Sanderson, 49, One was from Weldon, 78-year-old Wesley Patterson.
Authorities would not say how the victims might be related.
Mark Arcand said his half sister Bonnie and her son Gregory were killed.
“Her son was lying there already deceased. My sister went out and tried to help her son, and she was stabbed two times, and she died right beside him,” he said. “Right outside of her home she was killed by senseless acts. She was protecting her son. She was protecting three little boys. This is why she is a hero.”
Arcand rushed to the reserve the morning of the rampage. After that, he said, “I woke up in the middle of the night just screaming and yelling. What I saw that day I can’t get out of my head.”
As for what set off the violence, Arcand said: “We’re all looking for those same answers. We don’t know what happened. Maybe we’ll never know. That’s the hardest part of this.”
Court documents said Sanderson attacked his in-laws Earl Burns and Joyce Burns in 2015, knifing Earl Burns repeatedly and wounding Joyce Burns. He later pleaded guilty to assault and threatening Earl Burns’ life.
Many of Sanderson’s crimes were committed when he was intoxicated, according to court records. He told parole officials at one point that substance use made him out of his mind. Records showed he repeatedly violated court orders barring him from drinking or using drugs.
Many of Canada’s Indigenous communities are plagued by drugs and alcohol.
“The drug problem and the alcohol problem on these reserves is way out of hand,” said Ivor Wayne Burns, whose sister was killed in the weekend attacks. “We have dead people, and we asked before for something to be done.”
Myles Sanderson’s childhood was marked by violence, neglect and substance abuse, court records show. Sanderson, who is Indigenous and was raised on the Cree reserve, population 1,900, started drinking and smoking marijuana at around 12, and cocaine followed soon after.
In 2017, he barged into his ex-girlfriend’s home, punched a hole in the door of a bathroom while his two children were hiding in a bathtub and threw a cement block at a vehicle parked outside, according to parole documents.
He got into a fight a few days later at a store, threatening to kill an employee and burn down his parents’ home, documents said.
That November he threatened an accomplice into robbing a fast-food restaurant by clubbing him with a gun and stomping on his head. He then stood watch during the holdup.
In 2018, he stabbed two men with a fork while drinking and beat someone unconscious.
When he was released in February, the parole board set conditions on his contact with his partner and children and also said he should not enter into relationships with women without written permission from his parole officer.
In granting Sanderson “statutory release,” parole authorities said: “It is the Board’s opinion that you will not present an undue risk to society.”
Canadian law grants prisoners statutory release after they serve two-thirds of their sentence. But the parole board can impose conditions on that freedom, and inmates who violate them — as Sanderson did more than once — can be ordered back to prison.
Sharna Sugarman, who was organizing a GoFundMe for the victims, questioned the parole board for releasing him and wondered why Sanderson was still on the loose so many months after he was deemed “unlawfully at large.”
“That’s just egregious to me,” said Sugarman, a counselor who counted one of the stabbing victims as a client. “If they claim that they’ve been looking for him, well, you weren’t looking that hard.”
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Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/suspect-deadly-canada-stabbings-has-long-criminal-record/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:33Z |
UPS driver saves dogs trapped in pool, family says
IRETON, Iowa (KTIV/Gray News) - A family in Iowa is praising the work of a UPS delivery driver.
KTIV reports UPS driver Colin Mitchell heard some commotion while making a delivery at a home in Ireton, Iowa. He checked the home’s backyard area and reported seeing two dogs swimming in an above-ground pool.
Mitchell tried to notify the customers, but no one was home. He said he didn’t feel right about leaving, so he walked back to check on the dogs and realized the pool’s solar cover had trapped them.
The UPS driver was able to rescue the two dogs, Groot and Remy, and returned to his route.
The family said the dogs would have been stuck in the pool for at least another three hours if it wasn’t for Mitchell.
But now the dogs are doing well.
Copyright 2022 KTIV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/ups-driver-saves-dogs-trapped-pool-family-says/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:40Z |
UPS hiring for the holiday rush holds steady above 100,000
NEW YORK (AP) — UPS plans to hire more than 100,000 workers to help handle the holiday rush this season, in line with hiring the previous two years.
Holiday season volumes usually start rising in October and remain high into January. While online shopping has slowed from the height of the pandemic, it’s still well above historic norms.
UPS said Wednesday that there will be job openings for full- and part-time seasonal positions, primarily package handlers, drivers and driver helpers. UPS promotes seasonal jobs as positions that can lead to year-round employment. In recent years, according to UPS, roughly 35% of people hired for seasonal package-handling jobs land permanent positions.
Seasonal drivers with UPS start at $21 per hour, with tractor-trailer drivers making as much as $35 per hour. Package handler starting wages can range from $15 – $21 per hour.
The company continues to streamline its job hiring process and most hires require only 25 minutes – from filling out of an online application to receiving an offer, according to Danelle McCusker Rees, the president of human relations at UPS. That’s down five minutes from last year.
Rees started at UPS as a seasonal worker.
The job market remains just as competitive as it was last year, said Rees in an interview this week with The Associated Press.
Employers added 315,000 jobs in August, about what economists had expected, down from an average 487,000 a month over the past year, according to a government report last week.
The jobless rate reached 3.7%, its highest level since February. But it increased for a healthy reason: Hundreds of thousands of people went back to the job market, and some didn’t find work right away, which boosted the government’s count of unemployed people.
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Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/ups-more-than-100000-workers-holidays-hire/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:47Z |
Las Vegas police arrest county official in connection with stabbing death of reporter
LAS VEGAS (KVVU/Gray News) - Las Vegas police have taken a county official into custody Wednesday evening in connection with the stabbing death of a newspaper reporter.
KVVU reports Clark County Administrator Robert Telles was taken into police custody following a search warrant. He was booked late Wednesday on one count of open murder, per Clark County Detention Center records.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said at a news conference Thursday that DNA found at the crime scene matched Telles, the Associated Press reported. They also said they found shoes and a straw hat at his home that matched those of the suspect captured on video.
Police spent most of the day searching Telles’ home, even towing two vehicles off the property, in connection to the death of 69-year-old Jeff German.
German was found stabbed to death outside his home after authorities received a 911 call. The Clark County coroner’s office stated that he died of “multiple sharp force injuries” in a homicide.
Police said it appeared German was in an altercation with another person that led to the stabbing, which is believed to be an isolated incident.
German had previously written a series of reports about Telles during his re-election bid that reportedly did not place Telles in a favorable light.
Telles lost the bid for re-election.
In an email late Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for Clark County said they “have no comment at this time.”
Copyright 2022 KVVU via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/vegas-police-search-county-officials-home-connection-with-stabbing-death-reporter/ | 2022-09-09T00:39:54Z |
WHO: COVID cases drop everywhere, but pandemic not over
GENEVA (AP) — The number of new coronavirus cases fell everywhere in the world last week by about 12%, according to the World Health Organization’s latest weekly review of the pandemic issued Wednesday.
The U.N. health agency reported that there were just under 4.2 million new infections last week and about 13,700 deaths - a 5% drop.
“This is very encouraging, but there is no guarantee these trends will persist,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing. “The most dangerous thing is to assume (that) they will,” he said. He added that even though the number of weekly reported deaths has plummeted more than 80% since February, one person still dies with COVID-19 every 44 seconds and that most of those deaths are avoidable.
In its pandemic report, WHO said COVID-19 deaths dropped in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East, but increased in Africa, the Americas and the Western Pacific.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, noted that the virus has not yet settled into a seasonal pattern and that its continued evolution will require constant surveillance and possible tweaks to diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
Scientists warn the coronavirus will linger far into the future, partly because it is getting better and better at getting around immunity from vaccination and past infection. Experts point to emerging research that suggests the latest omicron variant gaining ground in the U.S. — BA.4.6, which was responsible for around 8% of new U.S. infections last week — appears to be even better at evading the immune system than the dominant BA.5.
In China, authorities this week locked down 65 million of its citizens under tough COVID-19 restrictions and is discouraging domestic travel during upcoming national holidays.
Across the country, 33 cities including seven provincial capitals are under full or partial lockdown covering more than 65 million people, according to a tally published late Sunday by the Chinese business magazine Caixin.
It said that outbreaks have been reported in 103 cities, the highest since the early days of the pandemic in early 2020.
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Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/07/who-covid-cases-drop-everywhere-pandemic-not-over/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:00Z |
10 things to know about Queen Elizabeth II’s life
LONDON (AP) — Ten things to know about the life of Queen Elizabeth II:
BRITAIN’S LONGEST-REIGNING MONARCH
Elizabeth, who marked 70 years on the throne this year, wass the oldest and longest-reigning monarch in British history. In September 2015 she surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years and seven months.
In 2016, Elizabeth also became the longest-reigning monarch in the world with the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. In 2022, she became the second-longest-reigning monarch in world history, behind 17th century French King Louis XIV, who took the throne at age 4.
Apart from Elizabeth and Victoria, only four other monarchs in British history have reigned for 50 years or more: George III (59 years), Henry III (56 years), Edward III (50 years) and James VI of Scotland (58 years.)
HOME-SCHOOLING
Like many royals of her time and before, Elizabeth never went to a public school and was never exposed to other students. Instead, she was educated at home with Margaret, her younger sister.
Among those who taught her was her father, along with a senior teacher at Eton College, several French and Belgian governesses who taught her French, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who taught her religion.
Elizabeth’s schooling also included learning to ride, swim, dance and the study of fine art and music.
“NO. 230873″
During World War II, young Princess Elizabeth briefly became known as No. 230873, Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor of the Auxiliary Transport Service No. 1.
After months of campaigning for her parents’ permission to do something for the war effort, the heir to the throne learned how to drive and service ambulances and trucks. She rose to the rank of honorary Junior Commander within months.
‘GREAT MIMICKER’
Elizabeth often gave the impression of a serious demeanor, and many have noted her “poker face,” but those who knew her described her as having a mischievous sense of humor and a talent for mimicry in private company.
Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said the queen could be “extremely funny in private — and not everybody appreciates how funny she can be.”
Bishop Michael Mann, the monarch’s domestic chaplain, once said that “the queen imitating the Concorde landing is one of the funniest things you could see.” Ian Paisley, the Northern Irish clergyman and politician, also noted that Elizabeth was a “great mimicker” of him.
More recently, she showed her mischievous side during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, when she starred in a comic video alongside an animated Paddington Bear and spoke of hiding marmalade sandwiches in her purse.
ROYAL TAXPAYER
She may have been the queen, but she paid taxes too — at least since 1992.
When Windsor Castle, the queen’s weekend residence, was ravaged by fire in 1992, the public rebelled against paying millions of pounds for repairs.
But she voluntarily agreed to pay tax on her personal income. She said she would meet 70 percent of the cost of restoration work, and she also decided to open her home at Buckingham Palace to the public for the first time to generate extra funds from admission fees.
LITTLE LILIBET
The queen was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor of York, in honor of her mother, paternal grandmother and paternal great-grandmother. But as a child, she was endearingly known as young Lilibet by her family — said to be because she couldn’t pronounce “Elizabeth” properly.
In a letter to her grandmother Queen Mary, the young princess wrote: “Dear Granny. Thank you very much for the lovely little jersey. We loved staying at Sandringham with you. I lost a top front tooth yesterday morning,” before signing off, “Love from Lilibet.”
The nickname became more widely known after Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, named their daughter Lilibet Diana in 2021.
A STEADFAST ROMANCE
Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip enjoyed a stable relationship for more 70 years, a union that far outlasted the marriages of three of her four children: Charles, Anne and Andrew.
“He has been quite simply my strength and stay all these years,” the queen said of Philip on their 50th wedding anniversary.
Their story began in 1939, when Prince Philip of Greece, a handsome 18-year-old naval cadet, was detailed to entertain the 13-year-old Elizabeth for a day. Several years later, Philip was invited to join the royal family at Windsor Castle at Christmas, and he soon made discreet inquiries whether he would be considered an eligible suitor.
The couple married in Westminster Abbey in 1947. When Philip died in 2021 at age 99, Elizabeth described his passing as leaving a “huge void” in her life, according to their son, Andrew.
MULTIPLE BIRTHDAYS
Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926, but it was sometimes confusing for the public to know when to celebrate.
There was no universally fixed day for her “official birthday” — it’s either the first, second or third Saturday in June, and was decided by the government.
In Australia, her birthday was celebrated on the second Monday of June, while in Canada, was marked on a Monday either on or before May 24, Queen Victoria’s birthday.
Only the queen and those closest to her celebrated her actual birthday in private gatherings.
HOW MANY CORGIS?
It’s widely known that Elizabeth loved corgis — Princess Diana reportedly called the dogs the queen’s “moving carpet” because they accompanied her everywhere.
She owned more than 30 corgis over the years. She also had two “dorgis” — crossbreeds of dachshund and corgi — named Candy and Vulcan.
Elizabeth was photographed hugging one of the dogs as far back as 1936 at age 10, and was given a corgi named Susan for her 18th birthday. The breed was introduced to the royal family by her father, King George VI, in 1933, when he bought a male corgi called Dookie from a local kennel.
As queen, she also technically owned the thousands of mute swans in open British waters, and had the right to claim all sturgeons, porpoises, whales and dolphins, according to a statute from 1324.
‘A PRETTY NICE GIRL’
The queen inevitably became the subject of pop songs.
The Beatles immortalized her with the tongue-in-cheek “Her Majesty,” calling her “a pretty nice girl” though “she doesn’t have a lot to say.” The brief song, sung by Paul McCartney and recorded in 1969, appeared at the end of the “Abbey Road” album.
Other musical treatments weren’t so kind. The Sex Pistols’ anti-monarchist “God Save The Queen,” released right before her Silver Jubilee in 1977, was banned on British television.
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Follow all AP stories on Britain’s royals at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/10-things-know-about-queen-elizabeth-iis-life/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:07Z |
19-year-old dolphin dies at Mirage on Las Vegas Strip
LAS VEGAS (KVVU/Gray News) – A bottlenose dolphin at the Mirage’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat has died, MGM Resorts announced Friday.
According to a letter from Mirage Interim President Franz Kallao, a dolphin named Maverick died Sept. 1 following treatment for a lung infection.
Maverick was 19 years old.
“Our veterinary and animal care teams were treating and closely monitoring Maverick’s condition, which sadly took a turn for the worse in recent weeks,” Kallao said in the letter.
In his letter, Kallao notes that the property’s animal care team “works closely with marine animal experts and veterinarians to ensure our dolphins are continually monitored and receive the very best care, year-round.”
Kallao also said the “animals receive weekly physical exams by veterinarians and a weekly meeting to review all aspects related to animal welfare including veterinary, behavioral and water quality.”
“Nothing is more important than the health, safety and happiness of the animals entrusted in our care,” Kallao said.
Earlier this year, the Dolphin Habitat lost another dolphin, Bella, after she died from a gastrointestinal illness.
Copyright 2022 KVVU via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/19-year-old-dolphin-dies-mirage-las-vegas-strip/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:09Z |
2 arrested for malicious burning after WVU football game
Marshals say Fisher and Binion used gasoline to set fire to a couch in the middle of Cornell Ave. shortly after the WVU-Pitt football game on Sept. 1.
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 9:21 AM EDT|Updated: 11 hours ago
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va (WDTV) - Two men were arrested on suspicion of burning a couch following a West Virginia University football game, authorities said.
City of Morgantown Fire Marshals identified the two suspects as 20-year-old Jaden Fisher, of Charleston, and 19-year-old Cole Binion, of St. Albans.
Both are being charged with malicious burning.
Marshals say Fisher and Binion used gasoline to set fire to a couch in the middle of Cornell Ave. shortly after the WVU-Pitt football game on Sept. 1.
The fire created “a dangerous situation,” the marshals said.
Fisher and Binion posted $500 bond.
Copyright 2022 WDTV. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/2-arrested-malicious-burning-after-wvu-football-game/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:16Z |
‘Absolutely unacceptable’: Family waiting for car title months after online purchase
PAPILLION, Neb. (WOWT/Gray News) - Imagine making payments on a $41,000 vehicle that you can’t drive. A family in Nebraska says that’s exactly what’s happening.
Colt Wettstein and his wife told WOWT they have been frustrated for months after buying a used Chevrolet Tahoe online.
“We’re actually having to borrow a car from my mother-in-law, which actually doesn’t have enough seats to carry the family,” Wettstein said.
The Wettsteins said they bought a 2015 Tahoe with 60,000 miles from Carvana in mid-April. But the online dealer has yet to deliver a title, so the SUV has been unlicensed for 144 days.
“Finally, I’ve been escalated to the executive level for the non-drivable task force, but all they do is say, ‘Hey, we recommend getting an Uber, park your vehicle and wait until they locate the title,’” Wettstein said.
The family said they have gone through more than one in-transit form, but they have expired and are afraid to drive their vehicle.
An inability to insure an unregistered car isn’t their only concern.
“We get pulled over, the car gets towed, and we’re not able to get it from the tow company until we can prove registration,” Wettstein said.
Sarpy County Treasurer Trace Jones said a key to driving the unregistered Tahoe might be a letter of explanation on his letterhead.
“There’s no guarantee if they’re pulled over by law enforcement that they wouldn’t be cited, but at least it can help tell the situation and hopefully help them catch a break,” Jones said.
The treasurer has traced the title to New York, where a duplicate has been issued for the Tahoe.
“It should never take this long. It’s absolutely unacceptable. They issue temporary tags or dealer tags for 30 days. It should never take longer than that. But things happen, and it’s happened a lot with the online car sales,” Jones said.
Wettstein said he’ll be watching the mail from Carvana, but so far, it has brought only frustrating surprises.
“We received registration paperwork for a Subaru for a guy that lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve been getting documents for other people and they’ve been sending my documents to other people,” Wettstein said.
After contacting Carvana, Wettstein said he received a phone call from the online dealer apologizing. He said if the title isn’t sent soon, the company offered to take back the SUV and provide a full refund, including loan payments already made.
“We are working closely with the customer to resolve the issue and ensuring their needs are met,” a Carvana spokesperson said regarding the ongoing situation.
Copyright 2022 WOWT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/absolutely-unacceptable-family-waiting-car-title-months-after-online-purchase/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:23Z |
After a lifetime of preparation, Charles takes the throne
LONDON (AP) — Prince Charles has been preparing for the crown his entire life. Now, at age 73, that moment has finally arrived.
Charles, the oldest person to ever assume the British throne, became King Charles III on Thursday following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. No date has been set for his coronation.
After an apprenticeship that began as a child, Charles embodies the modernization of the British monarchy. He was the first heir not educated at home, the first to earn a university degree and the first to grow up in the ever-intensifying glare of the media as deference to royalty faded.
He also alienated many with his messy divorce from the much-loved Princess Diana, and by straining the rules that prohibit royals from intervening in public affairs, wading into debates on issues such as environmental protection and architectural preservation,
“He now finds himself in, if you like, the autumn of his life, having to think carefully about how he projects his image as a public figure,” said historian Ed Owens. “He’s nowhere near as popular as his mother.”
Charles must figure out how to generate the “public support, a sense of endearment” that characterized the relationship Elizabeth had with the British public, Owens said.
In other words, will Charles be as loved by his subjects? It’s a question that has overshadowed his entire life.
A shy boy with a domineering father, Charles grew into a sometimes-awkward, understated man who is nevertheless confident in his own opinions. Unlike his mother, who refused to publicly discuss her views, Charles has delivered speeches and written articles on issues close to his heart, such as climate change, green energy and alternative medicine.
His accession to the throne is likely to fuel debate about the future of Britain’s largely ceremonial monarchy, seen by some as a symbol of national unity and others as an obsolete vestige of feudal history.
“We know the monarch and certainly the monarch’s family – they’re not meant to have political voices. They’re not meant to have political opinions. And the fact that he’s been flexing, if you like, his political muscle is something that he will have to be really careful with ... lest he be seen as unconstitutional,” said Owens, who wrote “The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932-53.”
Charles, who will be the head of state for the U.K. and 14 other countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, has defended his actions.
“I always wonder what meddling is, I always thought it was motivating,” he said in “Prince, Son and Heir: Charles at 70,” a 2018 documentary. “I’ve always been intrigued if it’s meddling to worry about the inner cities, as I did 40 years ago and what was happening or not happening there, the conditions in which people were living. If that’s meddling, I’m very proud of it.”
In the same interview, however, Charles acknowledged that as king, he wouldn’t be able to speak out or interfere in politics because the role of sovereign is different from being the Prince of Wales.
Charles has said he intends to reduce the number of working royals, cut expenses and better represent modern Britain.
But tradition matters, too, for a man whose office previously described the monarchy as “the focal point for national pride, unity and allegiance.”
That has meant a life of palaces and polo, attracting criticism that Charles was out of touch with everyday life, being lampooned for having a valet who purportedly squeezed toothpaste onto his brush.
But it was the disintegration of his marriage to Diana that made many question his fitness for the throne. Then, as he aged, his handsome young sons stole the limelight from a man who had a reputation for being as gray as his Saville Row suits.
Biographer Sally Bedell Smith, author of “Prince Charles: the Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,’’ described him as being constantly overshadowed by others in the family, despite his destiny.
“I think the frustrations are not so much that he’s had to wait for the throne,” Smith told PBS. “I think his main frustration is that he has done so much and that ... he has been sort of massively misunderstood. He’s sort of been caught between two worlds: the world of his mother, revered, now beloved; and Diana, the ghost of whom still shadows him; and then his incredibly glamorous sons.”
It took years for many in Britain to forgive Charles for his admitted infidelity to Diana before “the people’s princess” died in a Paris car crash in 1997. But the public mood softened after he married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005 and she became the Duchess of Cornwall.
Although Camilla played a significant role in the breakup of Charles and Diana, her self-deprecating style and salt-of-the-earth sense of humor eventually won over many Britons.
She helped Charles smile more in public by tempering his reserve and making him appear approachable, if not happier, as he cut ribbons, visited houses of worship, unveiled plaques and waited for the crown.
Her service was rewarded last February, when Queen Elizabeth II said publicly that it was her “sincere wish” that Camilla should be known as “Queen Consort” after her son succeeded her, answering questions once and for all about her status in the Royal Family.
Prince Charles Philip Arthur George was born Nov. 14, 1948, in Buckingham Palace. When his mother acceded to the throne in 1952, the 3-year-old prince became the Duke of Cornwall. He became Prince of Wales at 20.
His school years were unhappy, with the future king being bullied by classmates at Gordonstoun, a Scottish boarding school that prides itself on building character through vigorous outdoor activities and educated his father, Philip.
Charles studied history at Cambridge University’s Trinity College, where in 1970 he became the first British royal to earn a university degree.
He then spent seven years in uniform, training as a Royal Air Force pilot before joining the Royal Navy, where he learned to fly helicopters. He ended his military career as commander of the HMS Bronington, a minesweeper, in 1976.
Charles’ relationship with Camilla began before he went to sea, but the romance foundered and she married a cavalry officer.
He met Lady Diana Spencer in 1977 when she was 16 and he was dating her older sister. Diana apparently didn’t see him again until 1980, and rumors of their engagement swirled after she was invited to spend time with Charles and the royal family.
They announced their engagement in February 1981. Some awkwardness in their relationship was immediately apparent when, during a televised interview about their betrothal, a reporter asked if they were in love. “Of course,” Diana answered immediately, while Charles said, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.”
Although Diana giggled at the response, she later said that Charles’ remark “threw me completely.”
“God, it absolutely traumatized me,” she said in a recording made by her voice coach in 1992-93 that was featured in the 2017 documentary “Diana, In Her Own Words.”
The couple married on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in a globally televised ceremony. Prince William, now heir to the throne, was born less than a year later, followed by his brother, Prince Harry, in 1984.
The public fairy tale soon crumbled. Charles admitted to adultery to a TV interviewer in 1994. In an interview of her own, Diana drew attention to her husband’s relationship with Camilla, saying: “There were three of us in this marriage.”
The revelations tarnished Charles’ reputation among many who celebrated Diana for her style as well as her charity work with AIDS patients and landmine victims.
William and Harry were caught in the middle. While the princes revered their late mother, they said Charles was a good father and praised him as an early advocate for issues like the environment.
Tensions persist inside the royal family, underscored by the decision of Harry and his wife, Meghan, to step away from their royal duties and move to California in 2020. In a televised interview, they later said a member of the royal family had raised “concerns and conversations” about the color of their baby’s skin before he was born. The explosive revelation forced William to publicly declare the family wasn’t racist.
Charles soldiered on, increasingly standing in for the queen in her twilight years. In 2018, he was named the queen’s designated successor as head of the Commonwealth, an association of 54 nations with links to the British Empire. The process accelerated after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, on April 9, 2021.
As Elizabeth declined, he sometimes stepped in at the last moment.
On the eve of the state opening of Parliament this year, on May 10, the queen asked Charles to preside, delegating one of her most important constitutional duties to him -- evidence that a transition was underway.
Camilla said in a 2018 documentary that Charles was comfortable with the prospect of being king.
“I think his destiny will come,’’ she said. “He’s always known it’s going to come, and I don’t think it does weigh heavily on his shoulders at all.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/after-lifetime-preparation-charles-takes-throne/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:29Z |
Steve Bannon pleads not guilty in ‘We Build the Wall’ scheme
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon pleaded not guilty Thursday to duping donors who gave money to build a wall on the U.S. southern border. The case, brought by New York prosecutors, is a state-level reboot of a federal case cut short last year by a presidential pardon.
Bannon, 68, was released after his arraignment on money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges related to the “We Build the Wall” campaign. He is the second person pardoned by Trump and later charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for the same alleged conduct.
“It’s all nonsense. They will never shut me up,” Bannon said as he left court.
Manhattan prosecutors working in conjunction with the state attorney general’s office say that although Bannon promised all donations would go to constructing the wall, he was involved in transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to third-party entities and used them to funnel payments to two other people involved in the scheme.
The indictment didn’t identify those people by name, but the details match those of Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in April.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that after Bannon was pardoned, Manhattan prosecutors decided they had to hold him accountable because the alleged scheme ripped off hundreds of Manhattan residents. The top charge against Bannon carries a maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
“The simple truth is: It is a crime to profit off the backs of donors by making false pretenses,” Bragg said at a news conference.
Bannon’s New York charges stem from the same alleged conduct as an attempted federal prosecution that ended abruptly, before trial, when Trump pardoned Bannon on his last day in office. Manhattan prosecutors also charged WeBuildTheWall, Inc., the nonprofit entity that Bannon and his former co-defendants used to solicit donations. The company pleaded not guilty Thursday.
Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses. Last year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Ken Kurson, a friend of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with cyberstalking months after Trump pardoned him in a similar federal case. Like Bannon, Kurson was pardoned early in his federal case, before acquittal or conviction, negating any double jeopardy argument.
Arriving at the Manhattan district attorney’s office shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday, Bannon said it was “an irony” that New York City’s mayor has been objecting to busloads of migrants sent to the city from Texas while prosecutors “are persecuting people here, that try to stop them at the border.”
Bannon accused Bragg of pursuing “phony charges” against him, saying the Democratic prosecutor targeted him ahead of November’s midterm elections because he and his radio show are popular among Trump’s Republican supporters.
He claimed federal prosecutors had the same intent when he was first charged in August of 2020 ahead of the presidential election.
But New York Attorney General Letitia James said it was about holding “powerful political interests” to account.
“They think they are above the law. And the most egregious of them take advantage of hardworking Americans in the process. Steve Bannon stands out as a perfect example of this blatant inequality,” said James, a Democrat.
In 2020, federal agents pulled Bannon from a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast and arrested him on charges he pocketed more than $1 million in donations to the wall-building effort. In all, more than $25 million was raised, prosecutors said.
In that case, federal prosecutors alleged Bannon and his co-defendants capitalized on public fervor over border security — a pillar of Trump’s presidential campaign — and tricked thousands of people into thinking 100% of their donations would go to building a wall along the 1,933-mile (3,110-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico line.
Instead, according to federal prosecutors, Bannon used some of the money to pay personal expenses for himself and a secret salary to Kolfage, a “We Build the Wall” co-founder.
“All the money you give goes to building the wall,” Bannon told donors at a June 2019 fundraising event, according to the New York indictment unsealed Thursday. Kolfage, who is not charged in the state case, repeatedly pledged: “I won’t take a penny from these donations, not a penny,” the indictment said.
Charitable organizations are allowed to pay their executives, sometimes handsomely, but must disclose that compensation in documents available to the public.
Bannon, who had pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, was dropped from the federal case when Trump pardoned him.
Kolfage, a U.S. Air Force veteran who lost both legs in a mortar attack in Iraq, and Badolato, a Florida financier, had been scheduled to be sentenced this week, but that was recently postponed to December. A third defendant’s trial ended in a mistrial in June after jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict.
In another case not covered by Trump’s pardon, Bannon was convicted in July on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He is scheduled to be sentenced in October and faces up to two years in federal prison.
A voice of nationalist, outsider conservatism, Bannon led the conservative Breitbart News before becoming chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 campaign in its critical final months. As the president’s chief strategist, he was at the forefront of many of the administration’s most contentious policies, including its travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries, but was pushed out after less than a year.
___
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed. Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak. Send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/bannon-expected-surrender-ny-court-wall-donor-case/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:29Z |
Bernard Shaw, CNN’s 1st chief anchor, dies at 82
NEW YORK (AP) — Bernard Shaw, former CNN anchor and a pioneering Black journalist remembered for his blunt question at a presidential debate and calmly reporting the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991 from Baghdad as it was under attack, has died. He was 82.
He died of pneumonia, unrelated to COVID-19, on Wednesday at a hospital in Washington, according to Tom Johnson, CNN’s former chief executive.
A former CBS and ABC newsman, Shaw took a chance and accepted an offer to become CNN’s chief anchor at its launch in 1980. He later reported before a camera hurriedly set up in a newsroom after the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Regan.
He retired at age 61 in 2001.
As moderator of a 1988 presidential debate between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, he asked the Democrat — a death penalty opponent — whether he would support that penalty for someone found guilty of raping and murdering Dukakis’ wife Kitty.
Dukakis’ coolly technocratic response was widely seen as damaging to his campaign, and Shaw said later he got a flood of hate mail for asking it.
“Since when did a question hurt a politician?” Shaw said in an interview aired by CSPAN in 2001. “It wasn’t the question. It was the answer.”
Shaw memorably reported, with correspondents Peter Arnett and John Holliman, from a hotel room in Baghdad as CNN aired stunning footage of airstrikes and anti-aircraft fire at the beginning of U.S. invasion to liberate Kuwait.
“I’ve never been there,” he said that night, “but this feels like we’re in the center of hell.”
The reports were crucial in establishing CNN when it was the only cable news network and broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC dominated television news. “He put CNN on the map,” said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief and now a professor at George Washington University.
Shaw, who grew up in Chicago wanting to be a journalist and admiring legendary CBS newsmen Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, recognized it as a key moment.
“In all of the years of preparing to being anchor, one of the things I strove for was to be able to control my emotions in the midst of hell breaking out,” Shaw said in a 2014 interview with NPR. “And I personally feel that I passed my stringent test for that in Baghdad.”
Shaw covered the uprising in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, signing off as authorities told CNN to stop its telecast. While at ABC, he was one of the first reporters on the scene of the 1978 Jonestown massacre.
On Twitter, CNN’s John King paid tribute to Shaw’s “soft-spoken yet booming voice” and said he was a mentor and role model to many.
“Bernard Shaw exemplified excellence in his life,” Johnson said. “He will be remembered as a fierce advocate of responsible journalism.”
CNN’s current chief executive, Chris Licht, paid tribute to Shaw as a CNN original who made appearances on the network as recently as last year to provide commentary.
So guarded against any appearance of bias that he didn’t vote, Shaw asked tough questions of several politicians. He asked George H.W. Bush’s pick for vice president, Dan Quayle, if “fear of being killed in Vietnam” led to Quayle joining the National Guard in 1969.
As a member of the U.S. Marines, Shaw angled for a meeting with one of his heroes, Cronkite, in Hawaii in 1961.
“He was the most persistent guy I’ve ever met in my life,” the late Cronkite told the Washington Post in 1991. “I was going to give him five begrudging minutes and ended up talking to him for a half hour. He was just determined to be a journalist.”
He got a radio job in Chicago, where an early assignment was covering an appearance by Martin Luther King. Shaw recalled for CNN King telling him, “one day you’re going to make it. Just do some good.”
In retiring at a relatively young age, Shaw acknowledged the toll on his personal life that went with being a successful journalist. Because of all the things he missed with his family while working, he told NPR that “I don’t think it was worth it.”
His funeral will be private, with a public memorial planned for later, Johnson said. He is survived by his wife, Linda, and two children.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/bernard-shaw-cnns-1st-chief-anchor-dies-82/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:36Z |
Biden‘s remarks on updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters postponed
(Gray News) - In remarks from the White House on Thursday, President Joe Biden intended to highlight the arrival of new COVID-19 vaccine boosters that have been updated to target the variants currently in circulation.
Those comments were canceled after the announcement of Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
Federal health officials approved the boosters from Pfizer and Moderna last week. Pfizer’s boosters are approved for use in people aged 12 and older, while Moderna’s vaccine is approved for ages 18 and up.
The shots rolled out nationwide this week to pharmacies and other sites.
During a press briefing Tuesday, White House health officials urged people to roll up their sleeves for the updated vaccine booster.
“We have a virus out there that’s still circulating, still killing hundreds of Americans every day,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said in a Tuesday press briefing.
But, he added, “We now have all of the capability to prevent, I believe, essentially all of those deaths. If people stay up to date on their vaccines, if people get treated if they have a breakthrough infection, we can make deaths from this virus vanishingly rare.”
The White House is asking for more funds to continue the fight against the coronavirus but is running into resistance.
Biden has requested more than $47 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine and tackle COVID-19, monkeypox and natural disasters, the Associated Press reported.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell reacted with skepticism, signaling tough negotiations ahead as Congress tries to pass a budget by Oct. 1 to keep the federal government running.
He said Wednesday that Ukraine aid “is obviously a priority” but downplayed other needs.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/biden-discuss-updated-covid-19-vaccine-boosters/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:43Z |
Boy suffers unexpected brain bleed, prognosis uncertain, parents say
BOSQUEVILLE, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A child in Texas suffered a brain hemorrhage that his family said was completely unexpected. Six months later, his prognosis is still uncertain.
Colter Clements’ life suddenly changed forever on March 6. He was on spring break with his family when his father, Jason Clements, said the unthinkable happened.
“He was with all the kids, and luckily when he told his brother his head felt like it exploded, his brother actually took him seriously,” Clements told KWTX.
Colter’s brother Cooper took him to see their mom, Jill Clements, who said she at first thought her youngest son was just being dramatic.
“He just kind of walked up and said, ‘Mom, my head hurts, and kind of fell down on the ground … and then eyes rolled back in his head, and we called 911,” she said.
It was then planned for him to be flown to a children’s hospital in Fort Worth. However, the weather didn’t allow it.
Jill Clements said the delay caused them to lose time. She said, by the time they got him to a hospital and into surgery, the doctors said they had lost five or six hours and “didn’t know what kind of neurological damage was done.”
At the hospital, Jill Clements said Colter went straight to surgery to relieve the pressure in his brain.
He stayed at the hospital for 37 days, mostly under intense sedation.
“We switched off in hotels every night: she would stay, next night I would stay,” Jason Clements said.
Then, finally, Colter woke up.
“I was with my mom at the time, and I remember it was just a really powerful moment,” Jill Clements said. “He looked me in the eyes, and I knew he was in there. It’s a moment when you look in your child’s eyes and you see that they’re there, and we just knew that his personality was there, and he was going to be OK.”
Although he was awake, Colter’s hospital journey was far from over. After a month at the Cook Children’s Hospital, he went to an aggressive inpatient rehab facility in Dallas.
Colter finally came home in June as the community of Bosqueville lined the streets.
“We just knew that when he got here, he would flourish and thrive, and that’s exactly what he’s done,” Jason Clements said. “Being home with his brother, his pets, all of his things, his hamster, his cats, everything, it just brings a smile to his face and because of that he works hard to do what he needs to do to get back to where he was before.”
At 9 years old, Colter can understand a lot but still has to re-learn how to walk and talk through hours of daily therapy.
His parents said the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal was that there was no warning.
“If we could have known, we would have absolutely done anything and everything that we could have, so that’s probably the most difficult part of this,” Jills Clements said. “It’s like time stands still, you have these memories of the baby thats in the pictures around the house and my child prior to the bleed, and now it’s just a different version of Colter.”
Since Colter’s brain bleed, both of his parents have returned to work.
At first, Jill Clements, who works in a non-medical practitioner role, was taking on all of Colter’s care herself at home. In the last few weeks, they got a full-time home health nurse.
“I never knew what it would be like on the other side of it,” she said. “Be an advocate for your child, but also lean on your family, your community, and allow them to give. That was hard for both of us; it was hard to accept that.”
To help pay for his medical expenses, the community came together in August to throw the Colter Classic, a benefit for the Clements family.
“We couldn’t believe how many people were there, all of our friends and family, the whole community, it was bananas,” Jason Clements said. “There are no words for it.”
Through Colter’s struggles, he’s had an entire community cheering him on.
Jill Clements said the community has been behind Colter “since day one” and is thankful.
Jill Clements said the best support for her has been prayers.
“This has definitely strengthened our faith; there’s something about a life-altering event that brings you to your knees that will humble you pretty quickly,” she said.
They’re hoping the prayers will continue as doctors have found a cavernoma on Colter’s brain stem.
“It came to the surface, so you either risk another bleed, or they can do surgery,” Jill Clements said. “We’re debating which direction to go, that’s high-value real estate, so it’s not something you jump to do surgery on.”
In the meantime, Colter’s parents have put him back in school for a couple of hours each week. They said his school and classmates were very welcoming.
The Clements said Colter’s prognosis is uncertain, but they remain hopeful.
“One of the neurosurgeons told us he suspected he would make a significant recovery,” said Jill Clements. “The others will tell you that every child is different and every child has a unique recovery. It’s just an emotional roller coaster, just not knowing. It’s the unknown; we’re definitely not out of the woods yet.”
Copyright 2022 KWTX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/boy-suffers-unexpected-brain-bleed-prognosis-uncertain-parents-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:50Z |
BREAKING: Person of Interest turns himself into Monroe County Sheriff’s Office
West Virginia State Police are also on hand at the sheriff’s office as processing of Hamrick is underway
UNION, W.Va. (WVVA) - Darrel Hamrick, the Wayside man who was considered “armed and dangerous” and on the run Wednesday evening, has turned himself in to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office .
According to Chief Deputy James Hylton, Hamrick turned himself in around 9:30 am Thursday, September 8th.
On Wednesday Hamrick was identified as a person of interest in an incident earlier in the day in Monroe County, according to Capt. R. A. Maddy with West Virginia State Police.
It is still unknown at this time the particulars of the incident.
West Virginia State Police is also at the sheriff’s office working with the fellow officers as processing of Hamrick is underway.
Limited information is being released at this time as the investigation is on-going.
As we learn more WVVA will bring it to you both on-air and online.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/breaking-person-interest-turns-himself-into-monroe-county-sheriffs-office/ | 2022-09-09T00:40:57Z |
Busted: Officers seize $11.9 million in meth at US-Mexico border
DEL RIO, Texas (Gray News) - Authorities say they have made their largest methamphetamine bust at a Texas port of entry.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports field operations officers in Del Rio seized meth valued at $11.9 million within a tractor-trailer on Monday.
According to the CBP, the drug bust was the largest methamphetamine seizure in port history.
The seizure occurred at the Del Rio International Bridge when a CBP officer stopped a 2016 Kenworth tractor-trailer hauling a shipment of diesel tank reservoir containers and referred it for a secondary inspection.
Authorities said they discovered 320 packages containing 1,337 pounds of alleged methamphetamine within the shipment. The narcotics were estimated to have a street value of $11.9 million.
Agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-Homeland Security Investigations said they are continuing the investigation.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/busted-officers-seize-119-million-meth-us-mexico-border/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:03Z |
...RED FLAG WARNING FOR MUCH OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING AND THE
NEBRASKA PANHANDLE TODAY DUE TO GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW
HUMIDITY...
...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM MDT THIS EVENING
FOR GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 418,
419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, AND
432...
* AFFECTED AREA...Fire weather zones 418 through 430. Fire
weather zone 432.
* WIND...West to northwest winds 15 to 20 mph sustained with
gusts to 35 mph possible.
* HUMIDITY...7 to 15 percent.
* HAINES...5 to 6.
* THUNDERSTORMS...Isolated dry thunderstorms are likely
Thursday afternoon leading to additional fire starts.
* IMPACTS...any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.
Outdoor burning is not recommended.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.
&&
1 of 2
Queen Elizabeth II examines a Frederic Remington painting depicting a Western scene during an October 1984 tour of the Brinton Ranch House near Big Horn, Wyo.
Queen Elizabeth II examines a Frederic Remington painting depicting a Western scene during an October 1984 tour of the Brinton Ranch House near Big Horn, Wyo.
Courtesy Photo/The Brinton Museum
Queen Elizabeth II walks down Main Street in Sheridan in October 1984. Bob Zellar/Billings Gazette
The death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday morning sparked a global wave of nostalgia and reflections on her 70 years on the English throne, the longest reign in British history.
It also tapped into the memories of some in the Cowboy State who recall the four days the monarch spent vacationing in Wyoming.
The royals were guests of Lady Porchester at the 4,000-acre Canyon Ranch near Big Horn, according to an October 1984 report by United Press International. Porchester was the sister of then Wyoming Sen. Malcom Wallop. She also was the wife of Lord Porchester, a family friend.
UPI reports that during her brief stay in northern Wyoming, the queen spoke by telephone with President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan. She reportedly said she was “very grateful” for the low-key nature of her visit and that local residents and the media respected her private time.
Although logistics prevented the monarch from attending Sunday church services, the UPI report says the queen instead visited The Brinton Museum in Big Horn. She spent time talking with the museum’s assistant director Dan Nelson about its collection of art. She also visited with Brinton caretaker Andy Kukuchka.
Kukuchka reported that the queen “asked him about the area where she planned to picnic later in the day,” according to the UPI story. Also, “The queen hoped to see some elk and perhaps a moose in the area.”
The news agency also described some of Queen Elizabeth’s other activites while in Wyoming.
“The queen spent a most enjoyable day Saturday, first on a shopping trip in Sheridan and Big Horn, then a picnic on the Wallop ranch,” UPI reported. “The queen stopped at two Sheridan stores, Ritz Sporting Goods and King’s Saddlery. At Ritz Sporting Goods, store owner Stan Mavrakis, who had tied fishing flies for her husband, Prince Philip, 15 years (earlier) gave the queen a handmade graphite fishing rod and a box of flies to give to the prince.
“The queen was presented with a hand-tooled leather wastebasket and purchased a pair of leather gloves for herself and gifts for the rest of the royal family at King’s Saddlery.”
The UPI story also recorded that 96-year-old Ethyl Crawley of Casper gave her a hand-knitted coat made for the queen’s then-new grandchild, Prince Henry.
Immediately upon Queen Elizabeth II’s death, her oldest son Charles, 73, automatically became king, according to the Associated Press. He’ll be known as King Charles III, although it may be months before a formal coronation may take place.
At the direction of President Joe Biden, Gov. Mark Gordon has ordered both the United States and Wyoming flags to be flown at half-staff in honor and remembrance of the queen. Flags will remain at half staff until the day of interment. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/report-queen-elizabeth-ii-enjoyed-wyo-visit/article_b0b0a86c-2fca-11ed-917b-97ed8111fe02.html | 2022-09-09T00:41:09Z |
California avoids outages after day of grid-straining heat
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California avoided rolling outages during extreme heat, as operators of the state’s electricity grid continued to warn that unprecedented demand on energy supplies could force them to periodically cut power to some customers.
The California Independent System Operator on Wednesday thanked residents and businesses for heeding another “flex alert,” a request to reduce electricity consumption during peak evening hours.
“With your help, we made it through another day without rotating #poweroutages,” Cal-ISO said on Twitter. Another flex alert was issued for Thursday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. as temperatures were expected to spike again.
Targeted blackouts were avoided a day after miscommunication led utilities to mistakenly cut power to customers in several California cities.
The confusion occurred Tuesday afternoon between a dispatcher at the Northern California Power Agency, which owns and operates power generating facilities for 16 members including a dozen cities, and the California Independent System Operator as the grid it manages was perilously close to running out of energy amid record-breaking temperatures.
“That is certainly concerning to me,” Elliot Mainzer, president and CEO of Cal-ISO, said Wednesday. “There was a lot happening on the grid for everybody last night. And so we’ll double down on the communication to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
With record demand on power supplies across the West, California snapped its record energy use around 5 p.m. Tuesday with 52,061 megawatts, far above the previous high of 50,270 megawatts set July 24, 2006.
As residents and businesses cranked air-conditioning to escape withering heat across the West and solar power supplies began to wane, Cal-ISO issued a stage 3 energy emergency alert to prepare utilities to initiate outages if demand didn’t decrease. The state’s legal marijuana regulatory agency also urged businesses to turn off lights and reduce power or use backup generators.
The Northern California Power Agency said its dispatcher misinterpreted Cal-ISO’s order to prepare to cut power and immediately undertook the process to cut 46 megawatts — enough to serve about 35,000 customers — in the cities of Alameda, Lodi, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Healdsburg, and Ukiah.
It wasn’t clear how many customers lost power, though the agency said no outage lasted more than an hour.
“Once the outages had been initiated, our dispatcher contacted (Cal-ISO) to inform them that the curtailment action had been undertaken, and was then notified there had been a misunderstanding of the initial order,” NCPA said.
With the state on the brink of outages, Gov. Gavin Newsom for the first time triggered a wireless emergency alert system at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday that sent messages to 27 million cellphones urging them to turn off or reduce non-essential power.
Within moments, there was a reduction of more than 2,000 megawatts, bringing the state “back from the edge,” Mainzer said.
“It took a very loud signal,” Mainzer said. “I think they now recognize that we’re not messing around. This is a real issue. And we need real response.”
Newsom, speaking Wednesday in Beverly Hills, said he had debated pushing that button for the past four to five days. He ultimately decided to test it and concluded it was a game- changer, though he’s reluctant to use it too often because he fears weakening its effectiveness. The emergency alert was not repeated Wednesday.
Western states are struggling through one of the hottest and longest September heat waves on record. Temperatures began soaring last week, and the National Weather Service warned that dangerous heat could continue through Friday, despite some slight moderation.
Nearly 54 million people were under heat warnings and advisories across the West as temperature records were shattered in many areas.
California’s state capital of Sacramento hit an all-time high Tuesday of 116 degrees (46.7 C), breaking a 97-year-old record. Salt Lake City tied its all-time high temperature Wednesday at 107 degrees (41.6 C). The heat wave was expected to last until Saturday.
Reno, which sits just across the Nevada line along the Sierra’s eastern front at an elevation of 4,500 feet (1,372 meters), topped the century mark for the ninth day in a row on Wednesday with its seventh consecutive daily record-high — reaching 104 degrees (40 C) after recording its hottest September day ever on Tuesday at 106 degrees (41.1 C), according to weather service records dating to 1893.
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in state history.
On the Northern Plains, the unusually late heat wave peaked Wednesday following a prolonged string of scorching days.
Along a main thoroughfare in downtown Billings, where the temperature set a daily record at 102 degrees (39 C), Gale Spotted Bear, native of the Blackfeet Reservation, sought shelter from the punishing heat in the shade of a vacant building.
“This year has been hotter than hell,” said Spotted Bear, adding that homeless people can be hit the hardest if they have nowhere to go. “It’s hard out here.”
___
Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Michael R. Blood in Beverly Hills; Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada; and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/california-avoids-outages-after-day-grid-straining-heat/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:09Z |
...AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM MDT FRIDAY...
The following message is transmitted on behalf of the Wyoming
Department of Environmental Quality, Air Quality Division and the
Wyoming Department of Health.
WHAT...Air Quality Alert for Wildfire Smoke.
WHERE...Portions of east central and southeast Wyoming along and east
of the Laramie range.
WHEN...Through 1PM Friday.
IMPACTS...Heavy smoke from Idaho wildfires.
HEALTH INFORMATION...The Wyoming Department of Health recommends the
elderly, young children, and individuals with respiratory problems
avoid excessive physical exertion and minimize outdoor activities
during this time. Wildfire smoke is made up of a variety of
pollutants, including particulate matter and ozone, which can cause
respiratory health effect. Although these people are most
susceptible to health impacts, the Department of Health also advises
that everyone should avoid prolonged exposure to poor air quality
conditions.
CURRENT CONDITIONS...The Wyoming Department of Environmental
Quality, Air Quality Division offers near real-time air quality data
for Wyoming's monitoring stations and health effects information to
help the public interpret current conditions. Current air quality
conditions across the state of Wyoming can be found at
http://www.wyvisnet.com/
Weather Alert
...RED FLAG WARNING FOR MUCH OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING AND THE
NEBRASKA PANHANDLE TODAY DUE TO GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW
HUMIDITY...
...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM MDT THIS EVENING
FOR GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 418,
419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, AND
432...
* AFFECTED AREA...Fire weather zones 418 through 430. Fire
weather zone 432.
* WIND...West to northwest winds 15 to 20 mph sustained with
gusts to 35 mph possible.
* HUMIDITY...7 to 15 percent.
* HAINES...5 to 6.
* THUNDERSTORMS...Isolated dry thunderstorms are likely
Thursday afternoon leading to additional fire starts.
* IMPACTS...any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.
Outdoor burning is not recommended.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.
&&
A Cheyenne Fire Rescue truck sits inside Fire Station 1 Tuesday, July 6, 2021, in downtown Cheyenne. Wyoming Tribune Eagle/file
CHEYENNE – Cheyenne Fire Rescue responded Wednesday afternoon to fire at a single-family residence in the 300 block of Dell Range Boulevard.
The American Red Cross of Wyoming said they were assisting one adult and two children following the fire. CFR Battalion Chief John Fitzgerald said the residents were not home at the time of the fire, and there were no injuries.
Fitzgerald, who doubled as the fire investigator at the scene, said the fire was accidental. It started in the kitchen and was caused by items left on the stove, he said.
The battalion chief estimated $60,000 worth of damage to the home, mainly in the kitchen, but with a lot of smoke damage throughout the home. There also was some flame damage, but little water damage, he added.
Fitzgerald said he finished up his investigation at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday. He estimated that crews arrived at the scene about an hour and half before that.
The Cheyenne Police Department assisted with lane blockage during the incident. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/cheyenne-firefighters-respond-to-dell-range-fire-wednesday/article_e5742716-2fc2-11ed-87d2-9f6075a900dc.html | 2022-09-09T00:41:15Z |
Camilla becomes queen, but without the sovereign’s powers
LONDON (AP) — After seven decades, the United Kingdom has a new woman to call queen.
Charles’ wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will be known as Queen Consort — a title that came with Queen Elizabeth II’s blessing after years of contention, dating back to the days before she even married Prince Charles.
It wasn’t always a given that the 75-year-old Camilla would take the title, even though it gives her none of the sovereign’s powers.
While the wife of a king is traditionally crowned queen, the question of what title Camilla would hold when Charles became king had been a tricky one for many years. That was due to sensitivity about her status as his second wife — and the wave of grief that washed over Britain following the death of his former wife, Princess Diana, in a car crash in 1997.
Charles and the royal household have moved carefully on the matter, mindful of lingering public perceptions of Camilla as the “third person” that ruined the marriage between Charles and the beloved princess.
But over the decades, Camilla has won over large parts of the British public with her discretion, down-to-earth personality and loyalty to her husband.
When Camilla and Charles married in a low-key civil ceremony in 2005, she was in fact the new Princess of Wales — Diana’s title — but she styled herself the Duchess of Cornwall instead.
Palace officials said for years that Camilla “intended” to be known as “Princess Consort” — instead of the traditional “Queen Consort” — when Charles acceded to the throne.
There is no precedent for the title Princess Consort, which was reportedly suggested by royal officials. The similar title of Prince Consort has only been used once — for Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901.
In a 2010 interview with NBC, Charles was asked if Camilla would become “Queen of England, if and when you become the monarch.” He hesitated as he replied, “That’s, well ... We’ll see, won’t we? That could be.”
The question was resolved when Elizabeth declared she wanted Camilla to be known as Queen Consort after her son became king. It was an endorsement that formally signified the royal family’s acceptance of Camilla as a respected senior member and was widely seen as a move by Elizabeth to pave a smooth transition to Charles’ reign.
“When, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes king, I know you will give him and his wife, Camilla, the same support that you have given me; and it is my sincere wish that, when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service,” Elizabeth said in February 2022, when she marked the 70th anniversary of her rule.
Charles said he and Camilla were “deeply conscious of the honor.”
“As we have sought together to serve and support Her Majesty and the people of our communities, my darling wife has been my own steadfast support throughout,” he said.
The most recent Queen Consort in British history was George VI’s wife Queen Elizabeth, known in later years as the Queen Mother after her daughter became monarch in 1952.
By custom, Camilla will be anointed at Charles’ coronation, although that could be omitted.
Born Camilla Rosemary Shand on July 17, 1947, she came from aristocrats with long and close links with Britain’s royal family. Her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was a romantic partner of King Edward VII.
She met Charles at a polo match in 1970 when she was 23 and he was considered to be the most eligible bachelor in Britain. The two immediately became close, and by the end of 1972, Charles was smitten. But the romance was interrupted by his eight months of naval duty.
In his absence, Camilla married her longtime boyfriend, army officer Andrew Parker Bowles, in 1973. The couple divorced in 1995, shortly after Charles gave an explosive television interview admitting an affair with Camilla. Charles and Diana divorced the next year.
Charles and Camilla waited another nine years, marrying in 2005 in a private ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor.
Since then, Camilla has taken up dozens of royal duties. She is patron or president of more than 90 charities and has shown particular interest in work on animals, promoting literacy and empowering women. She also has found her voice as a public speaker, earning respect by campaigning about difficult issues such as sexual violence against women and domestic abuse.
In 2021, she delivered what many called her landmark speech, urging “the men in our lives” to get involved in women’s rights and expressing sympathy for the families of women who are murdered.
The same year, Buckingham Palace underlined Camilla’s role as a senior royal by making her a Royal Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most senior order of chivalry in Britain.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/camilla-becomes-queen-without-sovereigns-powers/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:16Z |
...AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM MDT FRIDAY...
The following message is transmitted on behalf of the Wyoming
Department of Environmental Quality, Air Quality Division and the
Wyoming Department of Health.
WHAT...Air Quality Alert for Wildfire Smoke.
WHERE...Portions of east central and southeast Wyoming along and east
of the Laramie range.
WHEN...Through 1PM Friday.
IMPACTS...Heavy smoke from Idaho wildfires.
HEALTH INFORMATION...The Wyoming Department of Health recommends the
elderly, young children, and individuals with respiratory problems
avoid excessive physical exertion and minimize outdoor activities
during this time. Wildfire smoke is made up of a variety of
pollutants, including particulate matter and ozone, which can cause
respiratory health effect. Although these people are most
susceptible to health impacts, the Department of Health also advises
that everyone should avoid prolonged exposure to poor air quality
conditions.
CURRENT CONDITIONS...The Wyoming Department of Environmental
Quality, Air Quality Division offers near real-time air quality data
for Wyoming's monitoring stations and health effects information to
help the public interpret current conditions. Current air quality
conditions across the state of Wyoming can be found at
http://www.wyvisnet.com/
Weather Alert
...RED FLAG WARNING FOR MUCH OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING AND THE
NEBRASKA PANHANDLE TODAY DUE TO GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW
HUMIDITY...
...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM MDT THIS EVENING
FOR GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 418,
419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, AND
432...
* AFFECTED AREA...Fire weather zones 418 through 430. Fire
weather zone 432.
* WIND...West to northwest winds 15 to 20 mph sustained with
gusts to 35 mph possible.
* HUMIDITY...7 to 15 percent.
* HAINES...5 to 6.
* THUNDERSTORMS...Isolated dry thunderstorms are likely
Thursday afternoon leading to additional fire starts.
* IMPACTS...any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.
Outdoor burning is not recommended.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.
&&
University of Wyoming golf coach Joe Jensen announced the addition of Kristof Panke on Thursday.
Panke comes to the Cowboys after earning third-team NAIA All-America honors as a freshman during the 2021-22 season at Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. The Davenport, Washington native has three years of college eligibility remaining.
Panke was named the Cascade Conference co-player of the year for the 2021-22 season, in addition to being selected to the all-conference team and earning NAIA PING All-West Region honors. He was named the Cascade Conference golfer of the week twice last season.
“Kristof was a young man who was a very competitive skier, striving to make the national ski team,” Jensen said. “He lived and trained in Europe for a while and was training to become an Olympic skier, so he is a very focused athlete. He is also a very focused young man who I think has a good upside.
“When he shifted his attention away from skiing and into golf, we had looked at him as a potential addition to our team. After he decided he wanted to make the move up to the NCAA Division I level, we were excited to have the opportunity to bring him into our program. He is coming off a very successful freshman season, and I believe he can add some great depth to our roster, which has seven players returning from last season.”
Panke qualified for the NAIA National Tournament as an individual and led the Cascade Conference with a 72.8 stroke average. He posted seven top-five finishes and finished in the top 15 of every tournament prior to the NAIA National Championships.
His highest finish was a second-place result at the Bushnell Fall Invitational, shooting a 151 (-2) in the two-round event. Panke’s season-low round of 70 and tournament-low score of 212 resulted in a fifth-place finish at the WWU Wine Valley Invitational. He helped lead his team to four tournament wins, and was voted the Lewis and Clark State freshman of the year by his peers.
Panke played his high school golf at Davenport High School in Washington, where he helped lead his team to two district championships and earned all-league and all-academic honors. He also competed in ski racing and graduated as the valedictorian of his high school class.
He is the son of Rolf and Heather Panke. His sister, Kaysa, played golf at Gonzaga. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/panke-joins-cowboys-golf-team/article_d59efe6e-2fc8-11ed-8c39-fbacc3a30e42.html | 2022-09-09T00:41:21Z |
Canada rampage suspect death prompts fresh investigation
ROSTHERN, Saskatchewan (AP) — The last suspect in a horrific stabbing rampage that killed 10 and wounded 18 in western Canada is dead following his capture, but how he died after being taken into custody has prompted fresh investigations.
One official said Myles Sanderson, 32, died from self-inflicted injuries Wednesday after police forced the stolen car he was driving off a highway in Saskatchewan. Other officials declined to discuss how he died .
“I can’t speak to the specific manner of death. That’s going to be part of the autopsy that will be conducted,” Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan, said at a news conference Wednesday night.
The other suspect, Sanderson’s 30-year-old brother, Damien Sanderson, was found dead Monday near the scene of the bloody knife attacks inside and around the James Smith Cree First Nation reserve early Sunday. Both men were residents of the Indigenous reserve.
Blackmore said Myles Sanderson was cornered as police units responded to a report of a stolen vehicle driven by a man armed with a knife. She said officers forced Sanderson’s vehicle off the road and into a ditch. He was detained and a knife was found inside the vehicle, she said.
Sanderson went into medical distress while in custody, Blackmore said. She said CPR was attempted on him before an ambulance arrived and he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“All life-saving measures that we are capable of were taken at that time,” she said.
Blackmore gave no details on the cause of death. But an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, earlier said Sanderson died of self-inflicted injuries, without elaborating.
Video and photos from the scene showed a white SUV alongside the road with police cars all around. Air bags had deployed in the SUV. Some photos and video taken from a distance appeared to show Sanderson being frisked.
Members of Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team went to the arrest site and will review Sanderson’s death and police conduct.
The federal public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, also stressed that the events will be investigated.
“You have questions. We have questions,” he told reporters during a Cabinet retreat in Vancouver, British Columbia, adding: “There will be two levels of police who will be investigating the circumstances of Myles Sanderson’s death.”
Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto police detective, said the police are bound by police service laws that govern the work of internal affairs when there is a death in police custody. Mendelson said police can’t comment yet on how the interaction took place or on what the officers saw or what he said to them.
“They have to at least wait until the forensic autopsy is concluded and hopefully the pathologist will come up with a cause of death. If it’s drugs, then toxicology is going to take sometime,” he said. “If it’s a stab wound that didn’t leak through his clothes then we should hear that. Everybody wants answers.”
His death came two days after the body of Damien Sanderson was found in a field near the scene of the knife rampage. Police are investigating whether Myles Sanderson killed his brother.
Darryl Burns, who lost his sister Gloria Burns to the attack, hugged Damien Sanderson’s widow at a news conference Wednesday, telling her that the family was ready to forgive.
“Damien was caught up in the life,” Darryl Burns said. “He was caught up in a moment. But hearing the stories of Damien. He tried to stop it, he tried to stop it, but he paid with his life.”
Sobbing, his widow muttered, “That’s not my husband.”
Chief Robert Head of Peter Chapman Band said the community was like a “war zone” in the immediate aftermath of the attack. He said four helicopters were swooping down to transport the wounded and dying to medical treatment.
“Right now, we still have 14 families that are in the hospitals there,” he said, noting that one of his first cousins was among the dead.
Blackmore said that with both men dead, “we may never have an understanding of that motivation.”
But she said she hoped the families of the stabbing victims will find some comfort “knowing that Myles Sanderson is no longer a threat to them.”
The stabbings raised questions of why Myles Sanderson — an ex-con with 59 convictions and a long history of shocking violence — was out on the streets in the first place.
He was released by a parole board in February while serving a sentence of over four years on charges that included assault and robbery. But he had been wanted by police since May, apparently for violating the terms of his release, though the details were not immediately clear.
His long and lurid rap sheet also showed that seven years ago, he attacked and stabbed one of the victims killed in Sunday’s stabbings, according to court records.
Tribal leaders at the news conference criticized the decision to release Myles Sanderson back into the community.
“The system itself is broken,” said Chief Wally Burns of James Smith Cree Nation. “The parole board let this young fellow out, this young man. And they didn’t notify any of our community members or our leadership or even our local detachment. All that we knew was that after the fact. This tragedy could have been avoided.”
The leaders declined to answer questions on the crime itself but called for more resources for mental health and substance abuse services and more control to police themselves.
Mendicino, the public safety minister, has said there will be an investigation into the parole board’s assessment of Sanderson.
“I want to know the reasons behind the decision” to release him, Mendicino said. “I’m extremely concerned with what occurred here. A community has been left reeling.”
The Saskatchewan Coroner’s Service said nine of those killed were from the James Smith Cree Nation: Thomas Burns, 23; Carol Burns, 46; Gregory Burns, 28; Lydia Gloria Burns, 61; Bonnie Burns, 48; Earl Burns, 66; Lana Head, 49; Christian Head, 54; and Robert Sanderson, 49. The other victim was from Weldon, 78-year-old Wesley Patterson.
Authorities would not say if the victims might be related.
Court documents said Sanderson attacked his in-laws Earl Burns and Joyce Burns in 2015, knifing Earl Burns repeatedly and wounding Joyce Burns. He later pleaded guilty to assault and threatening Earl Burns’ life.
Many of Sanderson’s crimes were committed when he was intoxicated, according to court records. He told parole officials at one point that substance use made him out of his mind. Records showed he repeatedly violated court orders barring him from drinking or using drugs.
___
Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/canadas-horrific-knife-rampage-over-last-suspect-dies/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:23Z |
...AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM MDT FRIDAY...
The following message is transmitted on behalf of the Wyoming
Department of Environmental Quality, Air Quality Division and the
Wyoming Department of Health.
WHAT...Air Quality Alert for Wildfire Smoke.
WHERE...Portions of east central and southeast Wyoming along and east
of the Laramie range.
WHEN...Through 1PM Friday.
IMPACTS...Heavy smoke from Idaho wildfires.
HEALTH INFORMATION...The Wyoming Department of Health recommends the
elderly, young children, and individuals with respiratory problems
avoid excessive physical exertion and minimize outdoor activities
during this time. Wildfire smoke is made up of a variety of
pollutants, including particulate matter and ozone, which can cause
respiratory health effect. Although these people are most
susceptible to health impacts, the Department of Health also advises
that everyone should avoid prolonged exposure to poor air quality
conditions.
CURRENT CONDITIONS...The Wyoming Department of Environmental
Quality, Air Quality Division offers near real-time air quality data
for Wyoming's monitoring stations and health effects information to
help the public interpret current conditions. Current air quality
conditions across the state of Wyoming can be found at
http://www.wyvisnet.com/
Weather Alert
...RED FLAG WARNING FOR MUCH OF SOUTHEAST WYOMING AND THE
NEBRASKA PANHANDLE TODAY DUE TO GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW
HUMIDITY...
...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM MDT THIS EVENING
FOR GUSTY WEST WINDS AND LOW HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 418,
419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, AND
432...
* AFFECTED AREA...Fire weather zones 418 through 430. Fire
weather zone 432.
* WIND...West to northwest winds 15 to 20 mph sustained with
gusts to 35 mph possible.
* HUMIDITY...7 to 15 percent.
* HAINES...5 to 6.
* THUNDERSTORMS...Isolated dry thunderstorms are likely
Thursday afternoon leading to additional fire starts.
* IMPACTS...any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.
Outdoor burning is not recommended.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of
strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.
&&
Queen Elizabeth II walks down Main Street in Sheridan in October 1984. Bob Zellar/Billings Gazette
CHEYENNE – It's been 38 years, but a visit by a vacationing Queen Elizabeth II in 1984 left an impression on those who were living in Sheridan and Big Horn at the time.
According to an archived UPI news service article, the British monarch "received a telephone call from President (Ronald) Reagan and discussed the bombing of an English resort hotel that narrowly missed killing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"The queen, staying at the Canyon Ranch, spoke with the president for about 15 minutes, saying she was 'very grateful' that her stay in Wyoming was being treated as a private visit, and she also spoke with Mrs. Reagan, royal news secretary Michael Shea" told UPI reporter Scott Farris.
The story went on to say the queen "spent four days at the ranch southwest of Sheridan near the small town of Big Horn as the guest of Lady Porchester, sister of Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop and wife of Lord Porchester, the queen's racing manager and an old friend of the Windsor family."
Photos posted to the Billings Gazette's website Thursday showed the queen visiting the Bradford Brinton Memorial near Sheridan, walking down Main Street in downtown Sheridan in a two-piece pink business suit, and waving to crowds from the steps of her plane at the airport.
Others showed people lining the street to catch a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth, who had been the head of the British royal family for nearly four decades at that point. She would go on to serve as queen for 70 years, a milestone marked earlier this summer.
"The queen stopped at two Sheridan stores, Ritz Sporting Goods and King's Saddlery," according to the UPI story. "At Ritz Sporting Goods, store owner Stan Mavrakis, who had tied fishing flies for her husband, Prince Philip, 15 years ago, gave the queen a handmade graphite fishing rod and a box of flies to give to the prince.
"The queen was presented with a hand-tooled leather wastebasket and purchased a pair of leather gloves for herself and gifts for the rest of the royal family at King's Saddlery, Shea said."
The story ended by noting that "Ethyl Crawley, 96, of Casper, presented the queen with a coat she had knitted for the queen's newest grandchild, Prince Henry."
At the direction of President Joe Biden, Gov. Mark Gordon has ordered both the United States and Wyoming flags to be flown at half-staff in honor and remembrance of the queen. Flags will remain at half staff until the day of interment. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/queen-elizabeth-vacationed-near-sheridan-in-1984/article_2587793a-2fc7-11ed-9543-efea75ffb05b.html | 2022-09-09T00:41:27Z |
Caught on camera: Mom chases peewee football opponent who tackled son
HOUSTON (KTRK) - A legal hit in a peewee football game led to a Texas mother getting banned from the sidelines.
The woman was caught on camera chasing and threatening a 12-year-old who had just tackled her son during a play.
Video captured a woman with something in her hand chasing him over a little league football game. The child is seen running away with his hands in the air.
“This is ridiculous. How can you get that angry at a kids game?” said Emilla Rucker, mother of the child who was chased. “Your son plays football, they tackle each other, that’s just the name of the game. How can you get that upset to chase him and not only chase him but curse at him while you’re chasing him.”
It was the first game of the season for the Southside Ravens. They were up against the North West Gorillas, but the game was cut short after just a few minutes of starting.
“Yeah, I picked him up and everything,” said Ivan Flanagan, the 12-year-old who was chased. “He was actually trying to shake my hand after the play until his mom I guess started chasing after me.”
An incident report by the Youth Football and Cheerleading league stated the parent in question was found in violation of multiple code of conduct policies.
It called the woman a substantial threat to the environment.
“If you cannot control your emotions that much that you get that upset then you don’t need to be around kids, but no, nobody has said anything to me,” Rucker said.
She has been banned from all events and activities permanently and so have the rest of her family and children.
“I hate that her son has to suffer,” Rucker said. “I hate that the team has to suffer, because we don’t hate them. We do this for fun.”
The woman will need to pay a $200 fine. Her sons former team owes $500 for not controlling the sideline.
The team apologized in a statement on social media. It said in part that they have removed the parent and child from the team, and they don’t stand with anyone putting children in harms way.
The Houston Police Department said it is looking into the incident.
Copyright 2022 KTRK via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/caught-camera-mom-chases-peewee-football-opponent-who-tackled-son/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:31Z |
Child drowns in pool after wandering off from father, authorities say
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 3:31 PM EDT|Updated: 5 hours ago
WASHINGTON, W. Va. (WTAP/Gray News) - A 6-year-old boy in West Virginia has died after falling into a pool.
WTAP reports the boy drowned in a neighborhood pool on Wednesday.
According to authorities, the boy’s father noticed his son had wandered off around 4 p.m. before deputies and firefighters found the child in a pool at a home nearby.
The Wood County sheriff said the boy was found unresponsive and taken to the hospital, but the child could not be revived.
Authorities said the boy’s name would not be released out of respect for the family.
Copyright 2022 WTAP via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/child-drowns-pool-after-wandering-off-father-authorities-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:38Z |
Coalfields Expressway construction to Welch may require several homes to be torn down
MULLENS, W.Va. (WVVA) - West Virginia’s Dept. of Highways is in talks with several different homeowners whose properties stand in the way of construction of the Coalfields Expressway to Welch.
According to the homeowners WVVA News spoke with on Thursday, several of the homes are located on Town Ridge Acres Road and Trace Fork Road in Mullens.
Many of the homeowners did not want to appear on camera due to ongoing negotiations with the state. Some of them said that the appraisal process had begun, but they have yet to receive offers.
In talks with WVVA, many recognized that the demolition is simply the price of progress, while others wished there was another way.
State construction crews broke ground on the project with Governor Jim Justice, (R) West Virginia, on August 1, 2022.
“The Coalfields Expressway has been in the making for 30-plus years now. It should have been done a long time ago; before I even walked in the door as Governor. But now, we’re making it happen. We’re getting this done for the people of southern West Virginia,” Gov. Justice said. “I believe in southern West Virginia with all my heart. It’s home to me. And I believe in how much the Coalfields Expressway means to this area. Today is another big step toward us running across the finish line,” said Gov. Justice at the time.
The $147.6 million project – which is part of the Governor’s Roads To Prosperity program – will be completed by Bizzack Construction of Lexington, KY.Gov.
Roadwork involves building a 5.12-mile section of highway from Welch to WV 16, connecting the southern West Virginia town with the Coalfields Expressway.
The project includes the construction of two ramps, two bridges, and will require more than 16 million yards of excavation.
As for plans regarding the demolition of homes, WVVA News has made several attempts to reach the West Virginia Dept. of Highways on the issue over the last month, but has yet to receive a response.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/coalfields-expressway-construction-welch-may-require-several-homes-be-torn-down/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:44Z |
Collar worn by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg up for auction
(CNN) – She was a trailblazer serving on the nation’s highest court for 27 years.
Now, nearly 100 personal items of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are up for auction.
According to Auction House Bonhams, the items being offered include some rare signature pieces from Ginsburg’s fashion collection.
Some of the items include two pairs of her lace gloves, one of her favorite shawls and a beaded gilt collar necklace.
Justice Ginsburg was known for styling her judicial robes with bold collars.
This one being auctioned is estimated to be worth between $3,000 and $5,000.
The auction is now live on Bonhams.com. It ends Sept. 16.
The proceeds will benefit SOS Children’s Villages, an organization that cares for foster children or those who are at risk of losing their parents.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/collar-worn-by-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-up-auction/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:50Z |
CUTE: Viral sensation ‘The Corn Kid’ visits the Corn Palace
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 4:42 PM EDT|Updated: 4 hours ago
MITCHELL, S.D. (Gray News) – “The Corn Kid” became so popular on TikTok that he now has a day named after him.
Tariq, a 7-year-old boy known as “The Corn Kid,” became a viral sensation for clips in which he enthusiastically declared his love of corn.
Over the weekend, he accepted an invitation to South Dakota’s Corn Palace, a major tourist attraction in the state.
During the visit with his family, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive proclamation to make Tariq the state’s “corn-bassador.”
Officials also declared Sept. 3 to be “Corn Kid Day” in the city of Mitchell, where the Corn Palace is located.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/cute-viral-sensation-corn-kid-visits-corn-palace/ | 2022-09-09T00:41:57Z |
Deputy rescues fox caught in high school’s soccer net
PARKER, Colo. (Gray News) – A school resource officer in Colorado is being credited with rescuing a fox that was tangled in a soccer net.
According to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Koski was called to the soccer field at Ponderosa High School early Thursday morning regarding the fox.
While the sheriff’s office said it’s best to leave wildlife alone in most cases, this was an extreme circumstance. Deputies said it was clear the fox was in distress and could not free itself.
With a bit of work, Koski was able to safely free the fox, which took off running.
“It ended in a win-win for all!” the sheriff’s office wrote in a Facebook post.
Ponderosa High School is located in the city of Parker, about 30 miles south of Denver.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/deputy-rescues-fox-caught-high-schools-soccer-net/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:04Z |
Queen Elizabeth II dead at 96 after 70 years on the throne
LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a symbol of stability in a turbulent era that saw the decline of the British empire and disarray in her own family, died Thursday after 70 years on the throne. She was 96.
The palace announced she died at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to her side after her health took a turn for the worse.
A link to the almost-vanished generation that fought World War II, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known.
Her 73-year-old son Prince Charles automatically became king and will be known as King Charles III, it was announced. British monarchs in the past have selected new names upon taking the throne. Charles’ second wife, Camilla, will be known as the Queen Consort.
A funeral was to be held after 10 days of official mourning.
The BBC played the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” over a portrait of Elizabeth in full regalia as her death was announced, and the flag over Buckingham Palace was lowered to half-staff as the second Elizabethan age came to a close.
The impact of her loss will be huge and unpredictable, both for the nation and for the monarchy, an institution she helped stabilize and modernize across decades of enormous social change and family scandals, but whose relevance in the 21st century has often been called into question.
The public’s abiding affection for the queen has helped sustain support for the monarchy during the scandals. Charles is nowhere near as popular.
In a statement, Charles called his mother’s death “a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family,” adding: “I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”
The changing of the guard comes at a fraught moment for Britain, which has a brand-new prime minister and is grappling with an energy crisis, double-digit inflation, the war in Ukraine and the fallout from Brexit.
Prime Minister Liz Truss, appointed by the queen just 48 hours earlier, pronounced the country “devastated” and called Elizabeth “the rock on which modern Britain was built.”
British subjects outside Buckingham Palace wept when officials carried a notice confirming the queen’s death to the wrought-iron gates of the queen’s London home. Hundreds soon gathered in the rain, and mourners laid dozens of colorful bouquets at the gates.
“As a young person, this is a really huge moment,” said Romy McCarthy, 20. “It marks the end of an era, particularly as a woman. We had a woman who was in power as someone to look up to.”
World leaders extended condolences and paid tribute to the queen.
In Canada, where the British monarch is the country’s head of state, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s eyes were red with emotion as he saluted her “wisdom, compassion and warmth.” In India, once the “jewel in the crown” of the British empire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “She personified dignity and decency in public life. Pained by her demise.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called her a “stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy who deepened the bedrock alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States.”
Since Feb. 6, 1952, Elizabeth reigned over a Britain that rebuilt from a destructive and financially exhausting war and lost its empire; joined the European Union and then left it; and made the painful transition into the 21st century.
She endured through 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Truss, becoming an institution and an icon -- a reassuring presence even for those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.
She became less visible in her final years as age and frailty curtailed many public appearances. But she remained firmly in control of the monarchy and at the center of national life as Britain celebrated her Platinum Jubilee with days of parties and pageants in June.
That same month she became the second longest-reigning monarch in history, behind 17th-century French King Louis XIV, who took the throne at age 4. On Tuesday, she presided at a ceremony at Balmoral Castle to accept the resignation of Boris Johnson as prime minister and appoint Truss as his successor.
When Elizabeth was 21, almost five years before she became queen, she promised the people of Britain and the Commonwealth that “my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”
It was a promise she kept across more than seven decades.
Despite Britain’s complex and often fraught ties with its former colonies, Elizabeth was widely respected and remained head of state of more than a dozen countries, from Canada to Tuvalu. She headed the 54-nation Commonwealth, built around Britain and its former colonies.
Married for more than 73 years to Prince Philip, who died in 2021 at age 99, Elizabeth was matriarch to a royal family whose troubles were a subject of global fascination -- amplified by fictionalized accounts such as the TV series “The Crown.” She is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Through countless public events, she probably met more people than anyone in history. Her image, which adorned stamps, coins and banknotes, was among the most reproduced in the world.
But her inner life and opinions remained mostly an enigma. Of her personality, the public saw relatively little. A horse owner, she rarely seemed happier than during the Royal Ascot racing week. She never tired of the companionship of her beloved Welsh corgi dogs.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21, 1926, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. She was not born to be queen -- her father’s elder brother, Prince Edward, was destined for the crown, to be followed by any children he had.
But in 1936, when she was 10, Edward VIII abdicated to marry twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, and Elizabeth’s father became King George VI.
Princess Margaret recalled asking her sister whether this meant that Elizabeth would one day be queen. “Yes, I suppose it does,” Margaret quoted Elizabeth as saying. “She didn’t mention it again.”
Elizabeth was barely in her teens when Britain went to war with Germany in 1939. While the king and queen stayed at Buckingham Palace during the Blitz and toured the bombed-out neighborhoods of London, Elizabeth and Margaret spent most of the war at Windsor Castle, west of the capital. Even there, 300 bombs fell in an adjacent park, and the princesses spent many nights in an underground shelter.
She made her first public broadcast in 1940 when she was 14, sending a wartime message to children evacuated to the countryside or overseas.
“We children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage,” she said with a blend of stoicism and hope that would echo throughout her reign. “We are trying to do all we can to help out gallant soldiers, sailors and airmen. And we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.”
In 1945, after months of campaigning for her parents’ permission to do something for the war effort, the heir to the throne became Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She enthusiastically learned to drive and service heavy vehicles.
On the night the war ended in Europe, May 8, 1945, she and Margaret managed to mingle, unrecognized, with celebrating crowds in London — “swept along on a tide of happiness and relief,” as she told the BBC decades later, describing it as “one of the most memorable nights of my life.”
At Westminster Abbey in November 1947 she married Royal Navy officer Philip Mountbatten, a prince of Greece and Denmark whom she had first met in 1939 when she was 13 and he 18. Postwar Britain was experiencing austerity and rationing, and so street decorations were limited and no public holiday was declared. But the bride was allowed 100 extra ration coupons for her trousseau.
The couple lived for a time in Malta, where Philip was stationed, and Elizabeth enjoyed an almost-normal life as a navy wife. The first of their four children, Prince Charles, was born in 1948. He was followed by Princess Anne in 1950, Prince Andrew in 1960, and Prince Edward in 1964.
In 1952, George VI died at 56 after years of ill health. Elizabeth, on a visit to Kenya, was told that she was now queen.
Her private secretary, Martin Charteris, later recalled finding the new monarch at her desk, “sitting erect, no tears, color up a little, fully accepting her destiny.”
“In a way, I didn’t have an apprenticeship,” Elizabeth reflected in a BBC documentary in 1992 that opened a rare view into her emotions. “My father died much too young, and so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on, and making the best job you can.”
Her coronation took place more than a year later, a grand spectacle at Westminster Abbey viewed by millions through the still-new medium of television.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first reaction to the king’s death was to complain that the new queen was “only a child,” but he was won over within days and eventually became an ardent admirer.
In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the queen is head of state but has little direct power; in her official actions she does what the government orders. However, she was not without influence. The queen, officially the head of the Church of England, once reportedly commented that there was nothing she could do legally to block the appointment of a bishop, “but I can always say that I should like more information. That is an indication that the prime minister will not miss.”
The extent of the monarch’s political influence occasionally sparked speculation -- but not much criticism while Elizabeth was alive. The views of Charles, who has expressed strong opinions on everything from architecture to the environment, might prove more contentious.
She was obliged to meet weekly with the prime minister, and they generally found her well-informed, inquisitive and up to date. The one possible exception was Margaret Thatcher, with whom her relations were said to be cool, if not frosty, though neither woman ever commented.
The queen’s views in those private meetings became a subject of intense speculation and fertile ground for dramatists like Peter Morgan, author of the play “The Audience” and the hit TV series “The Crown.” Those semi-fictionalized accounts were the product of an era of declining deference and rising celebrity, when the royal family’s troubles became public property.
And there were plenty of troubles within the family, an institution known as “The Firm.” In Elizabeth’s first years on the throne, Princess Margaret provoked a national controversy through her romance with a divorced man.
In what the queen called the “annus horribilis” of 1992, her daughter, Princess Anne, was divorced, Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated, and so did her son Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah. That was also the year Windsor Castle, a residence she far preferred to Buckingham Palace, was seriously damaged by fire.
The public split of Charles and Diana -- “There were three of us in that marriage,” Diana said of her husband’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles -- was followed by the shock of Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in 1997. For once, the queen appeared out of step with her people.
Amid unprecedented public mourning, Elizabeth’s failure to make a public show of grief appeared to many to be unfeeling. After several days, she finally made a televised address to the nation.
The dent in her popularity was brief. She was by now a sort of national grandmother, with a stern gaze and a twinkling smile.
Despite being one of the world’s wealthiest people, Elizabeth had a reputation for frugality and common sense. She turned off lights in empty rooms, and didn’t flinch from strangling pheasants.
A newspaper reporter who went undercover to work as a palace footman reinforced that down-to-earth image, capturing pictures of the royal Tupperware on the breakfast table and a rubber duck in the bath.
Her sangfroid was not dented when a young man aimed a pistol at her and fired six blanks as she rode by on a horse in 1981, nor when she discovered a disturbed intruder sitting on her bed in Buckingham Palace in 1982.
The image of the queen as an exemplar of ordinary British decency was satirized by the magazine Private Eye, which called her Brenda, apparently because it sounded working-class. Anti-monarchists dubbed her “Mrs. Windsor.” But the republican cause gained limited traction while the queen was alive.
On her Golden Jubilee in 2002, she said the country could “look back with measured pride on the history of the last 50 years.”
“It has been a pretty remarkable 50 years by any standards,” she said in a speech. “There have been ups and downs, but anyone who can remember what things were like after those six long years of war appreciates what immense changes have been achieved since then.”
A reassuring presence at home, she was also an emblem of Britain abroad — a form of soft power, consistently respected whatever the vagaries of the country’s political leaders on the world stage. It felt only fitting that she attended the opening of the 2012 London Olympics alongside another icon, James Bond. Through some movie magic, she appeared to parachute into the Olympic Stadium.
In 2015, she overtook her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria’s reign of 63 years, seven months and two days to become the longest-serving monarch in British history. She kept working into her 10th decade, though Prince Charles and his elder son, Prince William, increasingly took over the visits, ribbon-cuttings and investitures that form the bulk of royal duties.
The loss of Philip in 2021 was a heavy blow, as she poignantly sat alone at his funeral in the chapel at Windsor Castle because of coronavirus restrictions.
And the family troubles continued. Her son Prince Andrew was entangled in the sordid tale of sex offender businessman Jeffrey Epstein, an American businessman who had been a friend. Andrew denied accusations that he had sex with one of the women who said she was trafficked by Epstein.
The queen’s grandson Prince Harry walked away from Britain and his royal duties after marrying American TV actress Meghan Markle, who is biracial, in 2018. He alleged in an interview that some in the family -– but pointedly not the queen -– had been less than welcoming to his wife.
She enjoyed robust health well into her 90s, although she used a cane in an appearance after Philip’s death. Months ago, she told guests at a reception “as you can see, I can’t move.” The palace, tight-lipped about details, said the queen was experiencing “episodic mobility issues.”
She held virtual meetings with diplomats and politicians from Windsor Castle, but public appearances grew rarer.
Meanwhile, she took steps to prepare for the transition to come. In February, the queen announced that she wanted Camilla to be known as “Queen Consort” when “in the fullness of time” her son became king. It removed a question mark over the role of the woman some blamed for the breakup of Charles’ marriage to Princess Diana in the 1990s.
May brought another symbolic moment, when she asked Charles to stand in for her and read the Queen’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament, one of the monarch’s most central constitutional duties.
Seven decades after World War II, Elizabeth was again at the center of the national mood amid the uncertainty and loss of COVID 19 -- a disease she came through herself in February.
In April 2020 -- with the country in lockdown and Prime Minister Boris Johnson hospitalized with the virus -- she made a rare video address, urging people to stick together.
She summoned the spirit of World War II, that vital time in her life, and the nation’s, by echoing Vera Lynn’s wartime anthem “We’ll Meet Again.”
“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again,” she said.
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The late Associated Press writers Gregory Katz and Robert Barr contributed material to this report.
.___
Follow AP coverage of Queen Elizabeth II at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/doctors-concerned-about-queen-elizabeth-iis-health/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:10Z |
Drier air moves in for the end of the workweek
High pressure will bring a mix of sun and clouds and lower humidity
Most should stay dry throughout the day today, however, a few showers are possible this afternoon/evening. Temperatures will be seasonable with highs in the 70s this afternoon.
A few showers remain possible this evening, but most should stay dry with mainly cloudy skies. Lows are expected to drop down into the 50s and low 60s tonight.
A gorgeous day is in store for our Friday as high pressure builds in. We’ll see a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures in the 70s for most. We will stay dry Friday evening for Football Friday games and temperatures will be in the 60s for most.
We will grow more unsettled as we head into the weekend as rounds of rain and storms move through our area. Heavy rain is possible at times and may lead to some flooding issues. As a result of the rain and cloud cover, we will stay cooler with highs in the 60s.
Unsettled weather is expected to continue into early next week and temperatures look to remain below average. Make sure to stay tuned and catch the latest on WVVA.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/drier-air-moves-end-workweek/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:17Z |
A dry Friday on the way, rain chances rise again this weekend
High pressure will have temporary control of our weather to wrap the week
We could see a few showers here and there this evening, but the chance of rain should fade after sundown. Overnight, we can expect partly cloudy skies and low temps in the 50s and 60s. Areas of fog will be possible, especially in cooler valleys/river valleys.
Friday looks like the driest day of our work week. We should see a mix of sun, clouds, and only the slim chance for a stray shower.
Most will stay rain free. Highs will be seasonable Friday as well, topping off in the mid 70s to low 80s. Friday night looks partly cloudy with lows in the 50s and 60s.
High pressure will head east into the weekend, and low pressure will once again take the reins into Saturday and Sunday. This weekend looks a bit soggy at times, with on-and-off rounds of showers and thunderstorms through Sat, Sun, and into early next week. With more clouds and rain, temps will be below-average, topping off in the mid 60s-low 70s through the weekend.
Next week, we will gradually dry back out, and temps look to stay on the cooler side for a while...
STAY TUNED!
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) -
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/dry-friday-way-rain-chances-rise-again-this-weekend/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:24Z |
Earliest known mammal identified by fossil records, scientists say
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 4:41 PM EDT|Updated: 4 hours ago
(CNN) – Researchers have identified the world’s oldest mammal, and it’s not a human.
An illustration of the animal shows a small shrew-like creature that scientists believe walked the earth some 225 million years ago.
They said the animal predates what was believed to be the earliest mammal by about 20 million years.
The creature was only around 8 inches long, but it lived at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs.
Scientists dated the creature using fossils of hard tissues, such as bones and teeth.
The dental records were published in a study for the Journal of Anatomy on Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/earliest-known-mammal-identified-by-fossil-records-scientists-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:30Z |
In Focus: putting the spotlight on BSU
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 1:24 PM EDT|Updated: 7 hours ago
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) - Recently, WVVA featured Dr. Robin Capehart, President of Bluefield State University, on In Focus. The full 30-minute interview aired on Sun. September 4 at 9 a.m.
Dr. Capehart talked about the school’s change from Bluefield State College (BSC) to Bluefield State University (BSU). He also talked about academic programs in high demand, the school’s athletic programs and more.
In Focus is a community affairs show about people and events in West Virginia and Virginia. It airs every Sun. morning at 9 a.m. on WVVA. If you have an idea for a segment, or if you’d like to be interviewed, please email evening anchor/content manager Melinda Zosh at mzosh@wvva.com.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/focus-putting-spotlight-bsu/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:37Z |
What to know about UK accession rules after queen’s death
(AP) - The British monarchy’s rules state that “a new sovereign succeeds to the throne as soon as his or her predecessor dies.”
That means Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son, Prince Charles, became king immediately upon her death.
However, it may be months or even longer before Charles’ formal coronation. In Elizabeth’s case, her coronation came on June 2, 1953 -- 16 months after her accession on Feb. 6, 1952, when her father, King George VI, died.
A look at the formalities that take place after Charles accedes to the throne:
— Within 24 hours of a monarch’s death, a new sovereign is proclaimed formally as soon as possible at St. James’s Palace in London by the “Accession Council.” This is made up of officials from the Privy Council, which includes senior Cabinet ministers, judges and leaders of the Church of England, who are summoned to the palace for the meeting.
— Parliament is then recalled for lawmakers to take their oaths of allegiance to the new monarch.
— The new monarch will swear an oath before the Privy Council in St. James’s Palace to maintain the Church of Scotland, according to the Act of Union of 1707.
— The proclamation of the new sovereign is then publicly read out at St. James’s Palace, as well as in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – the capital cities of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.
— Charles must declare to Parliament on the first day of its session following the accession, or at the coronation, whichever is first, that he is a faithful Protestant. The oath is mandated by the Accession Declaration Act of 1910.
— He must also take a coronation oath as prescribed by the Coronation Oath Act of 1689, the Act of Settlement of 1701 and the Accession Declaration Act.
— He must be in communion with the Church of England, a flexible rule which allowed King George I and King George II to reign even though they were Lutherans.
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Follow all stories on the British royals at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/formal-steps-after-instant-shift-uk-queen-king/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:44Z |
Former teacher facing charges for ‘twerking’ on student, forcing alcohol, authorities say
PERRY, Fla. (WCTV/Gray News) - Authorities in Florida say a former teacher at a private Christian school is facing additional charges after a reported incident at a school prom.
WCTV reports that 39-year-old Julie Hoover has been charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and a second felony charge of an authority figure soliciting or engaging in lewd conduct with a student.
The charges stem from a school prom on April 8. A student reportedly told investigators that Hoover pressured him to drink alcohol at the event, even forcing the straw from her cup into his mouth.
An administrator told investigators that staff had the alcohol in a back room to drink after the event when students left.
According to authorities, the student also said that when he was on or near the dance floor, Hoover was “twerking” on him, making him uncomfortable. At least two other people corroborated the story and told investigators they got in between Hoover and the student several times, trying to get the teacher to stop.
Hoover was arrested in June after deputies said she was sexting with an 18-year-old at the school.
Previously, records showed that the 18-year-old’s mother contacted the sheriff’s office on June 2 after finding explicit messages between the student and teacher.
According to court documents, the mother also told deputies that Hoover was arranging for the student to sneak into Hoover’s home while her husband was at work.
An official with the school, who asked not to be identified, issued the following statement in response to Hoover’s latest arrest:
“Mrs. Hoover is a former teacher with Point of Grace Christian. We will not provide further information on her employment or departure from our school. The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office informed us of the allegations against Mrs. Hoover, and we have cooperated with the investigation. Out of respect for the judicial process, we will not comment any further at this time.”
Copyright 2022 WCTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/former-teacher-facing-charges-twerking-student-forcing-alcohol-authorities-say/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:51Z |
Greenbrier Valley Theatre adapts classic play
LEWISBURG, W.Va. (WVVA) - Lewisburg’s Greenbrier Valley Theatre is putting a twist on a classic play this month.
On Friday, September 9, the theatre will debut “Midsummer’s Nights,” an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Those who worked to adapt the piece say it will incorporate elements of the famous playwright.
But don’t be fooled...this isn’t your mamma’s Shakespeare.
“We wanted to create something that would make Shakespeare feel more fresh and exciting and accessible for, perhaps, younger audiences who may be struggling with Shakespeare or just veterans who may be ready for a refresh of what Shakespeare could be,” said the play’s co-director Jenn Sulecki. “There’s brand new music. There’s magic, so I think there’s something for everybody in here...we’re excited for everybody to see it.”
The play will run until September 24. Tickets and Showtimes can be found at www.gvtheatre.org.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/greenbrier-valley-theatre-adapts-classic-play/ | 2022-09-09T00:42:57Z |
Hurricane Kay makes landfall on Mexico’s Baja peninsula
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 9:02 AM EDT|Updated: 3 hours ago
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Kay has made landfall on a sparsely populated peninsula on Mexico’s Pacific coast and forecasters say it may bring rains to southernmost California by the weekend.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds weakened to near 75 mph, barely a Category 1 storm, and Kay is expected to continue weakening into a tropical storm in the coming hours.
The eye of the storm came ashore Thursday afternoon near Bahia Asuncion in Baja California Sur state.
Kay is forecast to move back out over cooler water, weakening it.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/hurricane-kay-set-brush-mexicos-baja-peninsula/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:04Z |
ICYMI, pumpkin spice among new Merriam-Webster entries
(AP) - Finding out that shrinkflation, adorkable, subvariant and even pumpkin spice are now officially in the dictionary might make you exclaim “Yeet!”
ICYMI, those are five of the 370 words and phrases that Merriam-Webster added to its dictionary this month, the publisher announced Wednesday. Oh yeah, ICYMI, short for “in case you missed it,” was also added.
“Some of these words will amuse or inspire, others may provoke debate. Our job is to capture the language as it is used,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, said in a statement. “Words offer a window into our ever-changing language and culture, and are only added to the dictionary when there is clear and sustained evidence of use.”
Worldwide inflation has made shrinkflation a household word. It is defined by the Springfield, Massachusetts publisher as “the practice of reducing a product’s amount or volume per unit while continuing to offer it at the same price.” Think, going to the grocery store and finding that orange juice is no longer available in 64 fluid ounce (1.9 liter) cartons, just 59 ounce.
Pumpkin spice — that polarizing blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice that’s used to flavor, well, just about everything every fall these days — has been around for years but is finally in the dictionary.
Many of the words are slang or used informally on social media. Adorkable, a mashup of dorky and adorable, means “socially awkward or quirky in a way that is endearing.” Yeet is either “used to express surprise, approval, or excited enthusiasm” or as a verb to mean “to throw especially with force and without regard for the thing being thrown,” according to Merriam-Webster’s definition.
The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has pushed terms once heard almost exclusively in medical circles onto everyone’s tongue, including subvariant, booster dose, and emergency use authorization, which are all new dictionary entries.
Many new words are drawn from popular culture, including the verb MacGyver, inspired by the television character who can make or repair just about anything with ordinary items within reach.
If all the new words are overwhelming, try listening to the calming dawn chorus, defined as: “the singing of wild birds that closely precedes and follows sunrise especially in spring and summer.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/icymi-pumpkin-spice-among-new-merriam-webster-entries/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:10Z |
Intel’s investment in Ohio a big win for jobs for middle America
President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Ohio Friday for the groundbreaking of the Intel plant just outside of Columbus.
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Semiconductor chips made in America are set to take on a new meaning for our nation’s manufacturing sector when President Joe Biden visits Ohio Friday to promote the CHIPS and Science Act.
President Biden says the legislation will help boost America’s semiconductor chip production by supporting the manufacturing of chips that can be used in a wide range of products including smartphones, appliances, and vehicles.
Biden plans on highlighting the legislation while attending the groundbreaking of the new intel semiconductor facility outside Columbus, Ohio.
“I love seeing jobs come to the Midwest,” said Jay Timmons, President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Timmons says the coronavirus pandemic not only amplified the need for semiconductor chips to be made in America, but it hurt our nation’s manufacturing workforce which was already struggling in Ohio.
“When something of this magnitude comes to an area that you have this tremendous amount of people who want to work, who are willing to work, and who have a lot of talents to give to this country. It’s pretty rewarding,” said Timmons.
The president’s visit to Ohio comes one month after he signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law.
After the signing on August 9, Gray’s Washington News Bureau spoke with Ohio Minority Leader Allison Russo.
“Obviously with the Intel plant coming to central Ohio, we’re talking thousands of construction jobs, thousands of on-site jobs, plus all the jobs that are going to happen in the surrounding communities and really throughout the state,” said Russo.
While in Ohio, the president is also expected to discuss the impact of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Friday’s visit will be the president’s third trip to Ohio this year to promote either infrastructure of manufacturing jobs following his visits in May and February earlier this year.
Copyright 2022 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/intels-investment-ohio-big-win-jobs-middle-america/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:17Z |
“It’s a disaster” Environmental groups rally against Sen. Manchin’s pipeline deal
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - “This project’s not needed. It’s a disaster.” Ridge Graham lives in one of the states the 300-mile Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline would dissect. He explains that those in it’s path have a lot to lose.
“There’s a lot of really important rivers and forests up there that people use for fishing, swimming,” said Graham. “It’s a big recreational area. And yeah, there’s a lot of important drinking water sources.”
The deal struck between Senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer gives the green light to finish the 6.6 billion dollar pipeline by changing the permitting process for major infrastructure projects. Opponent like Graham say it will weaken the environmental review process and bolster the fossil fuel industry.
Senator Manchin - who did not give us comment, has touted it will create jobs, and put money in the pockets of land owners. Graham explains it’s too little reward for too high a risk.
“It’s not good governance We shouldn’t we shouldn’t permit projects this way. We shouldn’t change our environmental regulations this way.”
Copyright 2022 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/its-disaster-environmental-groups-rally-against-sen-manchins-pipeline-deal/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:24Z |
Jeep unveils its 1st electric SUVs for North America, Europe
DETROIT (AP) — Jeep will start selling two fully electric SUVs in North America and another one in Europe over the next two years.
The new EVs, Jeep’s first, are part of the Stellantis brand’s plans to convert half of its U.S. sales and all of its European sales to battery-electric vehicles by 2030. They’re the first for the brand, and executives are promising that they’ll be fully capable of off-road travel.
The new vehicles include the Jeep Recon, a four-wheel-drive midsize SUV about the size of the Jeep Wrangler and rival Ford’s gas-powered Bronco Sport. It will be produced at an undisclosed North American factory starting in 2024. No range, performance figures or prices were released.
Jeep also will start making an all-electric Wagoneer S midsize luxury SUV in 2024 that also can go off road. The electric extension of the Wagoneer sub-brand is expected to go 400 miles (650 kilometers) on a single charge, have 600 horsepower, and be able to travel from zero to 60 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) in about 3.5 seconds.
The Wagoneer S also will be built in North America at a yet-to-be disclosed factory. No prices were released on this SUV either.
Heading for Europe next year will be the Jeep Avenger compact SUV, the brand’s first fully electric vehicle. Jeep says the small Avenger, with 250 miles (400 kilometers) of range per charge, won’t be coming to the U.S. It’s better suited for Europe, where there’s a strong market for smaller vehicles, executives said.
The Avenger will be officially unveiled Oct. 17 at the Paris Motor Show. It will arrive in showrooms early next year.
Jeep also plans to introduce four all-electric SUVs in North America and Europe by the end of 2025, the executives said.
The Recon, though, will not replace the Jeep Wrangler small SUV, said Christian Meunier, the brand CEO. “The Wrangler is the icon,” he said, without saying there would be an electric Wrangler.
Jeep, he said, is on a path to become the leading zero-emission SUV brand across the globe. The company has a goal of selling the SUVs in China, executives said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/jeep-unveils-its-1st-electric-suvs-north-america-europe/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:30Z |
Judge approves $2.46 billion Boy Scouts reorganization plan
(AP) – A bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a $2.46 billion reorganization plan proposed by the Boy Scouts of America, which would allow it to keep operating while compensating tens of thousands of men who say they were sexually abused as children while involved in Scouting.
Though legal hurdles remain, the ruling by Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Delaware marked an important milestone for the BSA, which sought bankruptcy protection more than two years ago to stave off a flood of lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by Scout leaders and volunteers.
Lawyers for some of the victims said the amount an individual survivor may receive from the bankruptcy plan depends on multiple factors relating to the alleged abuse. The plan calls for the BSA and its local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, including Catholic institutions and parishes, to contribute to a fund for survivors. In return, those groups would be shielded from future lawsuits over Scout-related abuse allegations.
More than 80,000 men have filed claims saying they were abused as children by troop leaders around the country.
“Credit to the courageous survivors that this breakthrough in child and scouting safety has been achieved,” said attorney Jeff Anderson, whose firm represented more than 800 Boy Scout abuse survivors.
Anderson said most of the $2.46 billion is to be paid to survivors, but some funds would be set aside in a trust to continue litigation against entities that have not settled, mainly insurance companies.
It will likely take months for any of the abuse claimants to receive compensation.
Anderson said the settlement has drawn mixed reactions from his clients. Many are proud they stood up and demanded a cleanup of the Irving, Texas-based Boy Scouts, while others feel like they were dismissed because the organization “hid behind the statute of limitations” in some states.
The Boy Scouts of America said it is pleased the court has approved its reorganization plan.
“We continue to be enormously grateful to the survivor community, whose bravery, patience, and willingness to share their experiences has been instrumental in the formation of this Plan,” the organization said in a statement.
The Boy Scouts said the perspectives and priorities of the survivors “will be ingrained in the BSA’s programming moving forward.”
The BSA also said that because certain parties have said they plan to appeal the order, the organization will next begin an appeal process in order to emerge from Chapter 11, “which will allow survivors to be equitably compensated and preserve the mission of Scouting for future generations.”
A federal district judge must sign off on Silberstein’s ruling.
When it filed for bankruptcy, the BSA faced about 275 filed lawsuits and was aware of numerous other potential cases. More than 80,000 abuse claims were eventually filed as part of the bankruptcy.
Attorneys for BSA insurers argued early on that the sheer volume of claims was an indication of fraud and the result of aggressive client solicitation by attorneys and for-profit claims aggregators. While some of those insurers later negotiated settlements, other insurers continued to oppose the plan. They argued that the procedures for distributing funds from the compensation trust would violate their contractual rights to contest claims and set a dangerous precedent for mass litigation.
___
Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/judge-approves-246-billion-boy-scouts-reorganization-plan/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:37Z |
Trump documents probe: US ready to appeal judge’s hold
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is preparing to appeal a judge’s decision granting the appointment of an independent arbiter to review records seized in a criminal investigation by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.
Citing national security concerns and other factors, the department also asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to put on hold her directive prohibiting it from using the seized classified records for investigative purposes while it contests her ruling.
“Without a stay, the government and public also will suffer irreparable harm from the undue delay to the criminal investigation,” department lawyers said in a motion Thursday in which they announced their intent to appeal the order to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 21-page Justice Department filing lays bare the government’s concern about the impact it believes will be caused by the judge’s order, which temporarily halted core aspects of its criminal investigation, and its continued objections to the planned appointment of a “special master” to conduct an independent review of the records taken from Mar-a-Lago. Already, the department said, the intelligence community has paused its separate risk assessment that the judge had permitted to continue because of “uncertainty regarding the bounds of the Court’s order.”
The department gave the judge until next Thursday to stay her original order, saying it would otherwise ask the federal appeals court to do so. Though such an appeal will almost certainly result in further delays to its underlying investigation, the department made clear throughout its motion its belief that it would be “injured” beyond repair if the judge’s order was permitted to stand.
The judge gave the Trump team until Monday morning to respond to the Justice Department motion.
The FBI has been investigating for months what it says was the unlawful retention of national defense information at Mar-a-Lago as well as efforts to obstruct the probe. It is not clear whether Trump or anyone else will face charges.
Reacting to Thursday’s motion, Trump renewed his attacks on the entire investigation.
“So now the FBI and Biden Department of ‘Justice’ leakers are going to spend Millions of Dollars, & vast amounts of Time and Energy, to appeal the order on the ‘Raid of Mar-a-Lago document hoax,’” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The FBI seized 33 boxes and containers with more than 100 documents with classified markings, including some designated top-secret, during an Aug. 8 search of the property. Those records have been segregated from the thousands of non-classified documents that were taken, the department said.
The Trump legal team had asked the judge, a Trump appointee, to name a special master — in many cases, a lawyer or retired judge — to examine the seized documents to ensure that personal materials are returned to him and that any privileged records are weeded out from the rest of the investigation.
In a procedural win for the ex-president, Cannon granted that request, agreeing to appoint an arbiter to inspect the records and filter out any that may be protected by claims not only of attorney-client privilege but executive privilege too. She also directed the FBI to temporarily stop using those documents in its investigation until a report from the special master or “further court order.”
Though she did permit the intelligence community to continue with an assessment of the security risk posed by the improper retention of classified secrets, that work has been paused in consultation with the Justice Department. The FBI’s chief counterintelligence official, Alan E. Kohler Jr., said in a declaration accompanying the court filing that the classification review and national security risk assessment were “inextricably linked with the criminal investigation” and that it made no sense to “bifurcate” the FBI officials in both of those endeavors.
On Thursday, the Justice Department lambasted anew the idea that any of the classified records could be protected by such claims, or that Trump could be entitled to the return of any government documents since he is no longer president. It also asked the judge to lift her directive that highly classified records be shared with a special master.
“The classification markings establish on the face of the documents that they are government records, not Plaintiff’s personal records. The government’s review of those records does not raise any plausible attorney-client privilege claims because such classified records do not contain communications between Plaintiff and his private attorneys,” the motion states.
It adds that “no potential assertion of executive privilege could justify restricting the Executive Branch’s review and use of the classified records at issue here.”
The judge’s ruling carries the prospect of substantially delaying the criminal investigation though it seems unlikely to have significant long-term effects that would take the probe off course. The department, for instance, said it did not interpret the order as a prohibition against interviewing witnesses about how the records were relocated from the White House to Mar-a-Lago or how they were stored — suggesting that at least that investigative work would continue. Nor did it think there was a bar against the department from briefing members of Congress.
“Even so,” department lawyers wrote, “the prohibition on the review and use of the classified records is uniquely harmful here, where the criminal investigation concerns the retention and handling of those very records, with the concomitant national security concerns raised by that conduct.”
The two sides were directed to submit proposed names of a special master by Friday.
The department said it planned to “provide its views” by that deadline, and that its filing on Friday would confirm its plans to make available to the Trump team copies of all unclassified documents taken during the search and to return personal records that were not commingled with classified materials.
The department earlier in the week said that the seized records included “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information.”
____
More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/justice-dept-appeals-judges-order-allowing-outside-review-records-trumps-florida-home/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:48Z |
Lawmakers release statements on passing of Queen Elizabeth II
(WDBJ) - Multiple Virginia lawmakers have released statements on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
Queen Elizabeth II, who was 96 at the time of her passing, was the longest reigning monarch in Britain’s history.
“Queen Elizabeth II was beloved by millions, and I mourn with the people of the United Kingdom today,” said Senator Tim Kaine. “Her Majesty visited Virginia in 2007 while I was Governor, two weeks after the Virginia Tech shooting, and she grieved with us then, giving us a moment to unite around during an incredibly difficult time. Her kindness and grace will be missed in the United Kingdom, in Virginia, and across the world.”
Our statement on the death of Queen Elizabeth II. pic.twitter.com/0n7pmVVg2w
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 8, 2022
In 2007, I had the distinct honor and pleasure of escorting Queen Elizabeth II to the Chamber of the House of Delegates during her visit to Virginia. While her stature was small, her presence was great.
— Morgan Griffith (@RepMGriffith) September 8, 2022
My thoughts and prayers go out to her family and her countrymen.
Queen Elizabeth's decades-long reign was marked by incomparable poise, a steady devotion to the people of the UK, and a deepening of the critical friendship between our nations. My thoughts are with all mourning her powerful legacy.
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) September 8, 2022
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 8, 2022
United States of America, and Former First Lady Melania
Trump: pic.twitter.com/TlPhP81ziH
Like so many of you, Michelle and I are grateful to have witnessed Her Majesty’s dedicated leadership, and we are awed by her legacy of tireless, dignified public service. Our thoughts are with her family and the people of the United Kingdom at this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/sbID222iSQ
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 8, 2022
Copyright 2022 WDBJ. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/lawmakers-release-statements-passing-queen-elizabeth-ii/ | 2022-09-09T00:43:57Z |
LGBTQ+ youth are at an increased risk of suicide: Here’s how you can help
(Gray News) – Every 45 seconds, a young member of the LGBTQ+ community attempts suicide.
That’s according to The Trevor Project, an organization that focuses on suicide prevention for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or another nontraditional orientation (LGBTQ+).
The importance of mental health has become especially prevalent in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many focus on maintaining their own mental health, some members of the community may have a more difficult time than others due to a lack of resources and support.
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24, according to The Trevor Project, and those who identify as LGBTQ+ are at a significantly higher risk.
Kollyn Conrad is the founder and executive director of Publicly Private, a nonprofit organization with the mission to provide online support and resources to people who identify as LGBTQ+. He said there are a number of factors that can contribute to an increased risk of suicide for many in the community.
Some factors include bullying in schools, cyberbullying, a lack of affirmation of personal identities, and environments that may push back against their self-expression. Many in the community may also find themselves without much in the way of real-life support where they live.
“Feeling different growing up is hard, but then you place the orientation aspect of your identity into it and … it’s not really discussed that there are different ways people can identify sexually,” Conrad said. “So that often leaves one feeling isolated.”
According to The Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide, with more than 1.8 million between the ages of 13 and 24 considering suicide every year in the U.S.
Conrad said the problem could worsen with a growing community as more and more people identify with nontraditional genders and orientations.
“So where are we gonna be at next year?” Conrad said. “We can stand up and try to help and support the community now, or we’re gonna have a huge problem on our hands in the coming years.”
As a gay man who grew up in the Bible belt of the American South, Conrad said he’s no stranger to the feelings of isolation that comes with having a different identity.
“You see that religion is a big aspect of people’s lives,” Conrad said. “So you start to kind of put the factors that it’s not being discussed to a lot of people’s viewpoints around, you are very much against anybody identifying a certain way. It leaves you in this space of feeling isolated and that you have to suppress yourself.”
Conrad isn’t without possible solutions to the growing issue. He said anyone who wants to help support the LGBTQ+ community could start by finding nonprofits that align with their values and advocate for additional studies and surveys to be conducted on the growing community.
He said schools could also contribute by implementing gay-straight alliances to create safer spaces for those who identify with the LGBTQ+ community, along with tackling in-school and online bullying.
For more immediate support, The Trevor Project can provide direct emotional support via a confidential texting service as well as a suicide hotline that specifically caters to the LGBTQ+ community.
“Those two are basically perfect for anyone that is really in a crisis moment and needs to reach someone fast,” Conrad said.
If you or someone you know is in need of help, the Suicide Prevention Hotline is available by calling 988. Additional support can be found by chatting with an online counselor.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/lgbtq-youth-are-an-increased-risk-suicide-heres-how-you-can-help/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:04Z |
Man hikes the Appalachian Trail after wife of 57 years dies
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Life’s journey takes us all down a variety of paths, and the current path for a 78-year-old Minnesota man is the Appalachian Trail.
Egon Overgaard started walking the trail in Georgia in March. By September, he had made it to Maine.
When he reached the Northeast, Overgaard took the time to reflect on not just the nearly 2,000 miles he’s hiked but also on the grief he’s trying to leave behind.
Overgaard said he spent the past few years caring for Carol, his wife of 57 years, as she battled a terminal illness.
“In my mind, she was as close to a perfect person as I knew,” he said.
When she died last winter, he said he was lost until he found a new purpose in hiking the Appalachian Trail.
He remembered the trail from his time in the Navy and thought that walking seemed like good therapy. After all, some people go for a stroll to clear their heads.
“I don’t know why it came to me, but it did,” he said.
Overgaard’s stroll took him across the eastern part of the U.S. through snow, sleet, rain and an unforgiving sun.
“I sleep in a tent most every night,” he said. “The trail is very interesting. It’s not the same ever.”
Overgaard said he has learned that the trail is very hilly, and he’s even had to scale boulders at times. Walking the entire path is like walking the equivalent of 15 Mount Everests.
“Pennsylvania was strewn with rocks and every one of them moved when you put your foot on them,” Overgaard said.
He said his favorite states hiked through have been Virginia and New Jersey.
Overgaard said there’s another reason he’s taken the trip. His Lutheran Church in Longville, Minnesota, is trying to convert to solar energy. They figure they can save money while helping the environment.
Overgaard’s trek is helping to raise funds for that project.
“I think solar power is a part of that future, so if I can do something to help that, I’m more than willing to,” he said.
Overgaard said he’s averaging 15 to 17 miles a day, and each night, he and the people traveling with him eat like it’s their job. He said he knows that every step he takes is one step closer to solar power and one step closer to closure.
Like so many others on the trail, he’s walking to heal.
“It’s a change in my life,” he said. “I guess I’m ready to embrace that.”
When Overgaard has completed his journey, he will have walked through 14 states.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/man-hikes-appalachian-trail-after-wife-57-years-dies/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:10Z |
Man who lost arm during alligator attack says it was ‘do or die’
SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB/Gray News) – Eric Merda, 43, was attacked by an alligator while swimming across Lake Manatee in Florida in July.
“I got startled and I decided to swim, she grabbed the outside of my arm, and I grabbed her,” Merda told WWSB. “I didn’t want her rolling over on me, she snapped my arm backwards and she dragged me under three times. I still got my arm on her; she got her teeth on me, and I just kicked like heck.”
Merda said he got lost in the swamp area and that’s when he decided to try and swim to safe land and back to his vehicle.
“My bone was sticking out and everything and I fought my way out of that swamp for three days,” Merda said.
Wildlife expert Justin Matthews says Merda should not have been swimming in those gator-infested waters.
“He is definitely lucky to be alive, I was surprised that he didn’t drown,” Matthews said. “He just got lucky. God must have been on his side.”
Merda spent about three weeks in the hospital. He lost most of his arm but said his recovery is going very well.
“I’m doing really good actually, high spirits, the arm is feeling great,” Merda said.
Merda says this experience has inspired him to share his story so this doesn’t ever happen to anyone else.
“It’s do or die, do you want to live or do you want to die,” Merda said. “I was given the opportunity to make a choice and obviously I chose to live.”
Copyright 2022 WWSB via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/man-who-lost-arm-during-alligator-attack-says-it-was-do-or-die/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:17Z |
MCTEC’s ‘Grow Your Own’ program aims to address teacher shortage
PRINCETON, W.Va. (WVVA) - The ‘Grow Your Own’ program is in its first year at the Mercer County Technical Education Center. It allows those in high school to receive a dual credit opportunity for Bluefield State University and New River Community College.
“They’re getting pretty much their first year, approximately a year and a half of college completely paid for. Then when they go onto their institution they’ll have to pay for their second and third year of college. Then in their fourth year which is their senior year of college, then they’ll actually come back and be under my supervision,” said instructor, Les Farmer.
Farmer says there are about 1,400 teacher openings in West Virginia. He’s hoping to expand the program to offer a paid apprenticeship and partner with more colleges in the state.
“This is a first year program so we’re trying to figure out what works best for us and our students as well as these other institutions. Once we get all the kinks and stuff figured out, especially this semester. I think this program could be even more successful,” said Farmer.
Current students say earning college credit and getting valuable teaching experience has been very helpful for them.
“I learned definitely what age group that I like to work with the most and I got to see what I liked as far as teaching strategies and what works and what doesn’t,” said Princeton High School Senior, Emma Furches.
“So far I’ve just been working with Bluefield and New River’s college, just doing a bunch of work and we’ve talked about next month we’re going to start going into classrooms and helping teachers out,” said Princeton High School Senior, Madison Robinson.
Farmer adds that interest in the program has grown and he expects the growth to continue.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/mctecs-grow-your-own-program-aims-address-teacher-shortage/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:24Z |
Memphis shooting spree killed 4; police say suspect in custody
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC/Gray News) - Ezekiel Kelly, 19, is in custody after a frightening several hours across the city of Memphis.
Police said Kelly was driving around the city, randomly shooting at people, and streaming the incidents on Facebook Live.
Police issued an alert for him in connection to many shootings around the city. He had an active warrant for his arrest for first-degree murder issued Wednesday.
He was taken into custody around 9:30 p.m. in the Whitehaven neighborhood.
Kelly is accused of killing four people and wounding three. Police said he posted live footage of himself pointing guns and shooting people on Facebook and Instagram.
Kelly’s criminal history includes charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. Those charges stem from an arrest in 2020.
Mayor Jim Strickland says Kelly was sentenced to three years in prison for those charges, but served just 11 months and was released in March.
WMC reports the first shooting happened in the early morning hours of Wednesday when a 24-year-old man was shot and killed.
The next shooting happened at 4:35 p.m. A man was found dead after being shot multiple times.
One minute later, a shooting occurred in which a woman was shot in the leg. She is in non-critical condition at the hospital.
The next shooting happened at a business. Police said Kelly ran into the store and shot a man. That victim is in critical condition.
That’s when the citywide search was launched for Kelly. Police pursued him for hours.
Three more shootings occurred before Kelly was captured. Two women were shot and killed. One of them women was also carjacked. A man was shot and taken to the hospital in non-critical condition.
Law enforcement pursued the suspect into Arkansas, where he’s believed to have carjacked a gas station customer before heading back to Memphis. Southaven Police say Kelly faces an armed carjacking charge.
During the search for Kelly, police urged people in parts of Memphis to stay indoors. Memphis Area Transit Authority was suspended, and AutoZone Park was evacuated during a Redbirds game.
Copyright 2022 WMC via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/memphis-police-search-man-driving-around-shooting-people/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:30Z |
Michigan’s high court puts abortion question on Nov. ballot
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Voters will determine whether to place abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution, the state Supreme Court declared Thursday, settling the issue a day before the fall ballot must be completed.
Abortion rights would be guaranteed if the amendment passes on Nov. 8. A 1931 state law makes it a crime to perform most abortions, but the law was suspended in May and a judge this week followed up by striking it down as unconstitutional.
Though appeals of that decision are likely, the law would be trumped if voters approve the amendment in the fall election.
There are political implications beyond the ballot question.
Democrats say the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is mobilizing voters and will help Democratic candidates this fall, when top races including governor, secretary of state and attorney general are on the Michigan ballot. They point to conservative Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly defeated a measure that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.
In Michigan, a state elections board on Aug. 31 deadlocked along party lines on whether the abortion initiative should appear on the ballot, with Republicans voting no and Democrats voting yes. The 2-2 tie meant the measure wasn’t certified for the ballot.
Supporters submitted more than 700,000 signatures, easily clearing the minimum threshold. But Republicans and abortion opponents argued the petitions had improper or no spacing between certain words and were confusing to voters.
“What a sad marker of the times,” Chief Justice Bridget McCormack said in a brief statement that accompanied the Supreme Court’s 5-2 order.
McCormack said “there is no dispute” that every word was legible and in the correct order.
Republican members of the Board of State Canvassers “would disenfranchise millions of Michiganders not because they believe the many thousands of Michiganders who signed the proposal were confused by it, but because they think they have identified a technicality that allows them to do so, a game of gotcha gone very bad,” McCormack said.
The majority was made up of McCormack, three other Democratic justices and a Republican justice. Two Republicans dissented.
The court directed state canvassers, who meet again Friday, to sign off on the ballot question. Tony Daunt, a Republican who had voted against the proposal, last week said that the board would obey a court order.
Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, hailed the decision.
“Our state Constitution provides the people with direct access to the democratic process and that access should not be limited by appointed individuals acting beyond the scope of their duty,” Nessel said.
A group called Citizens to Support MI Women and Children said it will campaign against the amendment. Right to Life of Michigan also will be a major opponent.
“Current events continue showing us that any nation that sees the next generation as an existential threat — rather than an existential necessity — has no future,” Right to Life said on Facebook.
There was no immediate comment from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is in favor of the ballot question and is seeking reelection. Her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, opposes abortion rights except to save the life of the mother.
Results of a poll published this week by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV showed abortion and women’s rights was the top issue motivating Michigan residents to vote in November, ahead of inflation and cost of living, education, and the economy and jobs. The poll also showed a majority of likely voters support a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.
In a dissent, Justice Brian Zahra said supporters of the abortion question did not have a “clear legal right” to the ballot.
“Words separated by spaces cease being words or become new words when the spaces between them are removed,” Zahra said.
___
Burnett reported from Chicago and White reported from Detroit.
___
Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/michigans-high-court-puts-abortion-question-nov-ballot/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:36Z |
Middle schooler commended for telling teacher about possible threat overheard at school
NAPLES, Fla. (Gray News) – A middle schooler in Florida was commended for reporting a threat he overheard to his teacher.
Jack Kelley, a seventh grader at Oakridge Middle School, overheard another student talking about a “possible school safety issue,” according to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.
Jack then informed a teacher, who contacted a youth relations deputy at the school.
The sheriff’s office said Jack’s actions allowed their officers to investigate and prevent any possible threat.
“Jack is a terrific example of how we can all work together to keep our schools safe and protect our children,” Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said. “If you see something of concern, don’t spread it, report it. We applaud Jack for doing that.”
Jack earned the Do The Right Thing Award from the sheriff’s office for his actions, which was presented to him and his family during a celebration at his home on Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/middle-schooler-commended-telling-teacher-about-possible-threat-overheard-school/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:43Z |
MLB set to announce pitch clocks, shift limits for 2023
NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball is set to announce a pitch clock and limits on defensive shifts next season in an effort to shorten games and increase offense.
The sport’s 11-man competition committee is set to adopt the rules changes Friday, mandating a clock that will count down 15 seconds with no runners on base and 20 seconds with runners. The MLB clock will be slightly longer than the version experimented with in the minor leagues this season: 14 seconds with the bases empty and 19 seconds with runners on at Triple-A, and 14/18 at lower levels.
“It’s something that takes a while to get used to, but I think overall the impact it had on the pace of the game was good,” said the Yankees’ Matt Carpenter, who spent April at Triple-A with Round Rock.
The shift limit will require four players other than the pitcher and the catcher to be in front of the outfield grass when a pitch is thrown, including two of the four on either side of second base,
In addition, there will be a limit during each plate appearance of two pickoff attempts or steps off the rubber, what MLB calls disengagements. If a third attempt is made and is unsuccessful, a balk would be called. The limit would be reset to two during a plate appearance if a runner advances.
Size of bases will increase to 18-inch squares from 15, promoting safety — first basemen are less likely to get stepped on — but also boosting stolen bases and offense with a slightly decreased distance.
The plans, first reported by The Athletic, were detailed by a pair of baseball officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the changes were not scheduled to be announced until Friday.
The changes will be start during spring training.
A catcher will be required to be in the catcher’s box with nine seconds left on the clock and a hitter in the batter’s box and focused on the pitcher with eight seconds remaining. Penalties for violations will be a ball called against a pitcher and a strike called against a batter.
Time between half-innings will set at 2:15 for most regular-season games, 2:40 for nationally televised games and 3:10 for postseason games. The clock will be 30 seconds between batters.
A batter can ask an umpire for time once per plate appearance, and after that it would be granted only at umpire’s discretion if request is made while in box.
The clock has reduced the average time of a nine-inning game in the minor leagues from 3:04 in 2021 to 2:38 this season. The average time of a nine-inning game in the major leagues this year is 3:06 — it was 2:46 in 1989, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“It’s slow. It’s boring,” Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia said of a TV broadcast in 2017. “Man, it’s so hard to watch if you have no interest in it.”
Shifts have been limited all season at Double-A and Class A, where teams are required to have four players on the infield, including two on each side of second base.
Use of shifts has exploded in the past decade, from 2,357 times on balls hit in play in 2011 to 28,130 in 2016 and 59,063 last year, according to Sports Info Solutions. Shifts were on pace for 71,000 this year, according to midseason data.
The big league batting average of .243 this year in on track to be the lowest since 1967, two years before the pitcher’s mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10.
Players had long resisted a clock at the major league level. Management gained the right in March’s lockout settlement to establish the 11-person committee, which includes six management representatives, four players and one umpire.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/mlb-set-announce-pitch-clocks-shift-limits-2023/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:50Z |
Naloxone Day underway; officials looking to train you
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) - Naloxone will be offered across West Virginia Thursday, September 8.
The theme for this year is “Meeting People Where They Are.”
The Save A Life Day event is meant for getting a larger portion of naloxone to people at risk of overdose by focusing distribution on high-risk areas, incorporating outreach strategies, and partnering with people who use drugs.
Pick-up sites acros the state include churches, clinics, libraries, colleges, recovery homes, gas stations, fire departments, groceries, parks, and dollar stores.
The West Virginia Drug Intervention Institute (WDII) is also providing over 10,000 fentanyl test strips across the state for free distribution at Save a Life Day events.
Attendees will receive one Narcan kit, an in-person training, and information about local resources.
You can find a statewide map of 180 events at savealifewv.org.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/naloxone-day-underway-officials-looking-train-you/ | 2022-09-09T00:44:56Z |
Narcan given away as a part of Save a Life Day.
MERCER COUNTY, W.Va. (WVVA) -
It was “Save a life” day in West Virginia.
All 55 counties joined forces to give away free Naloxone -- and to offer training on using it.
Grants Supermarket took part.
Tents were set up at the locations in Bluefield, Bluewell and Princeton today.
The nasal spray is used to treat overdoses.
Summers County hosted its own “Save a life day” booth at the old Magic Mart parking lot in Hinton.
Folks were on hand to demonstrate how to administer the Narcan nasal spray.
The theme of today was “Meeting people where they are.”
The idea is to get Naloxone to those who need it most -- by focusing on high-risk areas.
If you have any questions or have interest in getting Naloxone -- or Narcan -- you can go to wvsoar.org or community connections.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/narcan-given-away-part-save-life-day/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:03Z |
New River Humane Society given 60 days to vacate premise of Fayette County animal shelter
FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. (WVVA) - The New River Humane Society has 60 days to vacate its current location on Shelter Road in Fayetteville.
The Fayette County Commission had originally asked the non-profit to leave earlier after a breakdown in negotiations over their Memorandum of Understanding a couple months ago.
News of the breakdown has taken many Fayette County residents by surprise, including Billy Humphrey, who showed up at the shelter on Wednesday. He was there for a new rescue dog after his other dog, Juliette, died on Tuesday. He wanted to find his other dog a friend so it wouldn’t be lonely. But when he got there, he learned this may be his last visit.
“Somebody needs to explain something. I had no idea what was going on until I came up here.”
The humane society was originally scheduled to leave earlier, but was given an extension during Wednesday’s regular meeting of the Fayette County Commission. Due to the floods, Commission President Allison Taylor said they had not had the opportunity to advertise yet for new operators.
In an interview with WVVA News on Wednesday, the humane society’s director, Brooke Hutcheon, talked about factors that led to the breakdown. While she said the commission provides a reimbursement for payroll, it was not enough to keep the shelter operational. There was also a disagreement over the intake of animals.
“There’s a lot of animals that need to be saved. It would probably take more than one shelter to help all of the animals in Fayette County.”
Meanwhile, she said the society’s board of directors had not been able to secure a new location yet. “We want to help as many animals as possible. That’s why we want to transition this period of us leaving and another organization coming in to save as many animals as possible.”
While the humane society has been ordered to vacate, they have been given the opportunity to re-apply if they will agree to the commission’s terms.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/new-river-humane-society-given-60-days-vacate-premise-fayette-county-animal-shelter/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:10Z |
Powell: Higher rates won’t likely cause deep US recession
WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time the Federal Reserve faced inflation as high as it is now, in the early 1980s, it jacked up interest rates to double-digit levels — and in the process caused a deep recession and sharply higher unemployment.
On Thursday, Chair Jerome Powell suggested that this time, the Fed won’t have to go nearly as far.
“We think we can avoid the very high social costs that Paul Volcker and the Fed had to bring into play to get inflation back down,” Powell said in an interview at the Cato Institute, referring to the Fed chair in the early 1980s who sent short-term borrowing rates to roughly 19% to throttle punishingly high inflation.
Powell also reiterated that the Fed is determined to lower inflation, now near a four-decade high of 8.5%, by raising its short-term rate, which is in a range of 2.25% to 2.5%.
Even so, he did not comment on what the Fed may do at its next meeting in two weeks. Economists and Wall Street traders increasingly expect the central bank to raise its key short-term rate by a hefty three-quarters of a point for a third straight time. That would extend the most rapid series of rate hikes since Volcker’s time.
The Fed’s benchmark rate affects many consumer and business loans, which means that borrowing costs throughout the economy will likely keep rising.
Despite Powell’s assurances, many economists worry that the Fed will have to allow unemployment to rise much more than is currently expected to get inflation back to its 2% target.
The Fed has projected that unemployment will rise only to 4.1% by the end of 2024 as higher rates bring down inflation. New research released Thursday under the auspices of the Brookings Institution says that such a scenario requires “quite optimistic” assumptions and finds that unemployment may have rise much higher to bring inflation down.
Powell warned two weeks ago at an economic conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that the Fed’s inflation-fighting efforts will inevitably “bring some pain to households and businesses.” But, he added, “a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.”
Still, on Thursday, he reiterated that the Fed’s goal is to achieve a “soft landing,” in which it manages to slow the economy enough to defeat high inflation yet not so much as to tip it into recession.
“What we hope to achieve,” the Fed chair said, “is a period of growth below trend, which will cause the labor market to get back into better balance, and then that will bring wages back down to levels that are more consistent with 2% inflation over time.”
Other central bank officials have recently echoed Powell’s message.
“We’re not trying to engineer a recession,” Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said Wednesday in an interview with the newswire MNI. “We’re trying to engineer a slowdown or moderation of activity.”
At the same time, Mester acknowledged that the Fed’s rate hikes will likely lead to job losses and will be “painful in the near term.”
And Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard, also in remarks Wednesday, pointed out that there are signs that supply chain snarls are easing, which could boost factory output and moderate prices.
In addition, she noted that auto makers and retailers enjoyed hefty profit margins when goods were scarce and Americans were spending robustly. As consumers start to pull back in the face of high inflation, Brainard said, retailers and car companies may have to cut prices to boost sales. That would help slow inflation.
Yet many economists say that as borrowing rates keep rising, employers will cut jobs, consumers will slash spending and a downturn will eventually result. And some have issued starker warnings about the consequences of the Fed’s aggressive pace of rate hikes.
Larry Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, has said he thinks the unemployment rate, now 3.5%, might have to reach 7.5% for two years to reduce inflation close to the Fed’s 2% target.
The new paper released Thursday concluded that the Fed may have to lift unemployment as high as Summers has suggested to curb inflation. The research, by Laurence Ball, an economist at Johns Hopkins, and two colleagues, found that the pandemic has made the job market less efficient in matching unemployed workers with jobs — a trend that would accelerate unemployment as the economy weakens.
In addition, Americans expect higher inflation over the next few years, the research found. Typically, when that happens, employees demand higher pay, and their employers raise prices to make up for their increased labor costs, thereby fueling inflation. As prices accelerate, the Fed feels pressure to step up its rate hikes, putting the economy at further risk.
Still, not all economists accept that darker scenario. Jan Hatzius, an economist at Goldman Sachs, argued in a note earlier this week that there are “some encouraging signs” that a soft landing is still possible.
Hatzius cited slower economic growth, a decline in the number of open jobs, a downshift in hiring and a drop in the prices of oil and other commodities as factors that could lower inflation in the coming months without necessitating a recession.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/powell-higher-rates-wont-likely-cause-deep-us-recession/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:16Z |
Ronceverte music hall plans craft and vendor show
Ronceverte, W.Va. (WVVA) - Those in the Ronceverte community are working to save their music hall.
The Second Annual Fall Craft and Vendor Show will be held this weekend. Close to 30 local vendors will be set up inside the American Heritage Music Hall at Island Park, where they will be selling autumnal decorations and everyday items. Shoppers will also have the chance to win raffle drawings and free tickets to a music night at the hall.
Organizers of the event say the show is a great way to help the music hall and support local artists at the same time.
“The music hall needs the support from all of us, so this is a way that we can support them, and then everybody can come out and support all the crafters and vendors around the area.”
The craft show will be open from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday.
The show’s proceeds will help cover the cost of building maintenance and utilities.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/ronceverte-music-hall-plans-craft-vendor-show/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:22Z |
Rule of 72 helps you project your investment’s value over time
The key to growing your money is time
InvestigateTV - The Rule of 72 is a useful formula that helps you estimate the number of years it will take you to double your invested money.
Aashish Matani, a managing director of wealth management at Merrill Lynch, said the Rule of 72 is not only easy to understand, but easy to calculate.
Here’s how it works: divide 72 by the annual interest rate to determine the amount of time it takes for an investment to double.
Matani used the example of a 25-year-old who’s 45 years away from retiring. He used 8% as an annual interest rate.
When you divide 72 by 8 you get 9. So, it would take the 25-year-old nine years to double their initial investment.
If they can double every nine years and have 45 years to do it, that’s five doubles. Here is how much the money would grow in that time.
- 2022 - $5,000 – initial investment
- 2031 $10,000 first doubling
- 2040 $20,000 second doubling
- 2049 $40,000 third doubling
- 2058 $80,000 fourth doubling
- 2067 $160,000 fifth doubling
The Rule of 72 is a powerful way for you to grow wealth over time. Invest as early as you can to take maximum advantage.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/rule-72-helps-you-project-your-investments-value-over-time/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:30Z |
Scams are a danger in the community
You stand to lose thousands
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) -Gift card scams are a common occurrence, and while the scam is simple, many still fall victim. We recently learned of a couple who lost five thousand dollars to scammers who asked for gift cards over the phone.
Scams like these aren’t new but often change over time to prey on those they view as vulnerable like the elderly or the disabled. The goal of these scams is to convince the victim to buy gift cards and read the code written on the back to the person on the other end of the phone. Police say that the people who run these scams may claim to be from the lottery, the IRS or law enforcement and may even threaten their victims with legal punishment. All of this is, of course, lies. Another scam involves pretending to be a loved one begging for money. They may even try to verify this false identity using personal information gathered from Facebook. Police take action against these scammers whenever possible but say that there are steps that you can take to prevent these scams from happening to you.
“Anytime that you get one of these calls, if you’re not sure who the call is from, actually call back. If they say they’re from the IRS, get a hold of the IRS. Say, hey, before I can do anything, I need to talk to the IRS first. And just to make sure this is who this person is. Call us. Call the police department up here and tell them what’s going on and say, hey this is the person that’s trying to contact me and what do you think I should do in that situation. Always verify everything. It’s okay, it takes just a second and it will save you a lot of money in the long run.”
Police also remind viewers that the IRS will always send letters and won’t contact you by phone, and that no government agency will ever ask you for gift cards.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/scams-are-danger-community/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:36Z |
School district ‘grieving’ after bus driver dies in highway crash
PERRY COUNTY, Mo. (KFVS/Gray News) - A school district in Missouri is dealing with the death of one of its bus drivers following a crash Tuesday morning.
According to the Perry County School District 32, school bus driver James Kennedy, 72, died in a crash after authorities said his bus went into a ditch on Highway K.
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the crash happened around 6 a.m. when a school bus crossed the centerline on the highway and sideswiped a box truck traveling in the opposite direction.
The highway patrol said the force of the crash caused the bus to go off the roadway and into a ditch, killing the driver, later identified as Kennedy. The 72-year-old was not wearing a seat belt.
Authorities said the truck driver was not injured, and no students were on the bus at the time of the crash.
School district officials said the team is “grieving the loss of a beloved bus driver.”
Kennedy had been a school bus driver for the district since October 2021. He previously drove buses for the Sikeston School District and was a truck driver for 40 years.
Deputy Superintendent Dr. Fara Jones shared that Kennedy’s daughter and her partner teach at Perryville High School. He was also the uncle of Superintendent Andy Comstock.
Copyright 2022 KFVS via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/school-district-grieving-after-bus-driver-dies-highway-crash/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:43Z |
The Skin Firm has grand opening today.
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 5:18 PM EDT|Updated: 3 hours ago
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) -
A new business has opened up in Mercer County
“The Skin Firm” specializes in facials, dermaplaning, eyelash and eyebrow work
They even offer the number one facial in the world, the hydro-facial.
The owner, Lesley Lambert, has worked as a hospital nurse for over 20 years, and she feels that this is phase two for her path.
Lesley, owner:
“This is something new and exciting, and we love to bring it to Bluefield. Again, just happy, healthy, good energy, and just something fun for people to do and also be healthy and take care of themselves and their skin.”
The Skin Firm is open Monday through Friday from 10 AM until 4:30 PM, with flexible appointments available.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/skin-firm-has-grand-opening-today/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:50Z |
‘A stalwart’: World mourns Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II
LONDON (AP) — Condolences poured in from around the world Thursday after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, who became a global icon of calmness and fortitude through decades of political upheaval and social changes at home and abroad.
Elizabeth, who had been on the throne since 1952, when the nation was still rebuilding from the destruction of World War II, died Thursday afternoon at age 96 at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland.
Here are some reactions to her death:
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In India, once a British colony, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Elizabeth “a stalwart of our times.”
“She personified dignity and decency in public life,” Modi tweeted.
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Royalty across Europe mourned Elizabeth’s death.
Her life “set an example for all of us and will remain as a solid and valuable legacy for future generations,” Spanish King Felipe VI said in a telegram sent to her eldest son, now known as King Charles III.
“We will miss Her dearly,” he wrote, speaking for himself and his wife.
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden called her “a constant presence, not only in British society but internationally.”
In Norway, King Harald said that for “nearly a century, Her Majesty devoted her life to the service of the Commonwealth, following the British people through good days and bad, in times of happiness and sorrow.”
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President Joe Biden was informed of her death by senior advisers during a meeting in the Oval Office.
Elizabeth, who the White House said had met with 14 American presidents, “was a stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy who deepened the bedrock alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States,” he and first lady Jill Biden said in a statement, saying she “she defined an era.”
They later went to the British Embassy to offer condolences. “We mourn for all of you. She was a great lady,” Biden could be heard telling embassy staff.
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France, Britain’s historic rival and contemporary ally, honored Elizabeth with flags at the presidential palace and public buildings ordered lowered to half-staff Friday.
President Emmanuel Macron hailed her “immutable moral authority” and her intimate knowledge of French.
He said no other foreign sovereign had visited the presidential palace more often than Elizabeth, who knew all eight presidents of contemporary France.
“The woman who stood alongside the giants of the 20th century on the path of history has left to join them,” Macron said in a statement.
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Mourners also gathered at the British Embassy in Paris.
“She’s been a constant in my life,” said 70-year-old Robert Miller, a London resident in Paris for a conference.
“Whilst I know she was very old, she was still doing her work until yesterday,” he said. “Like anybody’s mother, you know, even if you think things are going well, at some point the end of an era comes, and you’re very sad. "
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Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to King Charles III.
“For many decades, Elizabeth II rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage. I wish you courage and perseverance in the face of this heavy, irreparable loss.”
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At the United Nations, the Security Council stood in silent tribute at the start of a meeting on Ukraine. France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere, the council president, sent condolences on behalf of its 15 members.
Queen Elizabeth II presided “over a period of historic changes both for her country and the world,” he said. “Her life was devoted to the service of her country.”
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Elizabeth was mourned across the 54-nation Commonwealth, a group built around Britain and its former colonies.
In Ghana, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recalled Elizabeth’s visits to his country and praised “the friendliness, elegance, style and sheer joy she brought to the performance of her duties.”
“We shall miss her inspiring presence, her calm, her steadiness, and, above all, her great love and belief in the higher purpose of the Commonwealth of Nations, and in its capacity to be a force for good in our world,” he said in a statement.
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“For most Canadians, we have known no other sovereign,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. He called her “a constant presence in our lives — and her service to Canadians will forever remain an important part of our country’s history.”
“I’m having trouble believing that my last sit-down with her was my last,” Trudeau said later. “I will so miss those chats.”
Elizabeth, who was Canada’s head of state, visited the country 22 times as monarch.
____
The queen’s death comes as a growing number of British territories in the Caribbean seek to replace the monarch with their own heads of state amid demands that Britain apologize for its colonial-era abuses and award its former colonies slavery reparations.
Still, Caribbean leaders from Jamaica to Bermuda and beyond mourned her death.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that for many years she visited the island every decade.
“Undoubtedly, she formed a special bond with the people of Jamaica,” he said. “We are saddened that we will not see her light again, but we will remember her historic reign.”
Bermuda Premier David Burt noted that her reign “has spanned decades of such immense change for the United Kingdom and the world.”
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Elton John said in a tweet that she was “an inspiring presence to be around, and lead the country through some of our greatest, and darkest, moments.”
The acclaimed musician reworked his hit “Candle in the Wind” as a tribute to Princess Diana when she died unexpectedly in 1997.
___
All the living former U.S. presidents issued statements soon after Elizabeth’s death.
Donald Trump said on his social media platform that Elizabeth “will always be remembered for her faithfulness to her country and her unwavering devotion to her fellow countrymen and women.”
“Melania and I will always cherish our time together with the queen, and never forget Her Majesty’s generous friendship, great wisdom, and wonderful sense of humor. What a grand and beautiful lady she was - there was nobody like her!”
Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, said she made “the role of Queen her own — with a reign defined by grace, elegance, and a tireless work ethic, defying the odds and expectations placed on women of her generation.”
He said she welcomed him and his wife — the first Black American president and first lady — to the world stage “with open arms and extraordinary generosity” and said they were struck by her ability to put people at ease.
George W. Bush called her “a woman of great intellect, charm, and wit.”
“Spending time at Buckingham Palace, and having tea with Her Majesty – and her Corgis – is among our fondest memories of the presidency,” he said in a statement.
Bill Clinton said he and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, joined people around the world “in giving thanks for her extraordinary life.”
“Throughout her remarkable 70-year reign, she led Britain through great transformations with unfailing grace, dignity, and genuine care for the welfare of all its people. In sunshine or storm, she was a source of stability, serenity, and strength,” he said in a statement on Twitter.
Jimmy Carter said in a statement that Elizabeth’s “dignity, graciousness and sense of duty have been an inspiration and we join the millions around the world in mourning a remarkable leader.”
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In Washington, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine recalled how Elizabeth had joked with him when she visited Virginia in 2007 while he was governor.
He asked the queen’s security detail whether he should offer the queen his arm while going up a steep set of Capitol steps. They assured him she’d be fine. But when she arrived a few weeks later, she looked at him and deadpanned, “they expect me to go up this?”
Kaine was momentarily flustered.
“She was just pulling my leg. She just walked up just as fast as can be,” Kaine said.
The queen’s visit came not long after a gunman at a Virginia university, Virginia Tech, killed dozens of people. The queen met with people from the university and well as grieving family members.
“That really meant a lot,” Kaine said.
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“She lived history, she made history. And with her passing, she leaves a magnificent, inspirational legacy,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said.
___
Praise even came from the fictional Paddington Bear, the beloved British children’s book character. The bear shared tea with the queen in a video shown in June during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
“Thank you Ma’am, for everything,” said a statement Thursday on the Paddington Bear Twitter feed.
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Follow all AP stories on the British royals at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/stalwart-world-mourns-britains-queen-elizabeth-ii/ | 2022-09-09T00:45:56Z |
Teen arrested after University of Kentucky shooting that left 11 injured
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 7:48 AM EDT|Updated: 13 hours ago
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT/Gray News) - A University of Kentucky student was shot at a party on the campus late Wednesday, WKYT reported.
Thursday morning, Jason Almanza-Arroyo was charged with first-degree wanton endangerment, second-degree disorderly conduct, third-degree assault and public intoxication.
The shooting happened at a house on University Avenue on the University of Kentucky campus.
Police said two uninvited people came to the house, and at least one shot was fired after an argument
A University of Kentucky spokesperson said a bullet hit one student directly. Ten other students were injured by shrapnel.
All the students are expected to recover.
Copyright 2022 WKYT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/teen-arrested-after-university-kentucky-shooting-left-11-injured/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:03Z |
Teen gives first aid to gunshot victim on her way home from school
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE/Gray News) - The quick actions of a Kentucky high school student on the way home may have saved the life of a gunshot victim.
Nylaia Carter, 16, made her father pull over when she saw the victim on the drive home from Louisville’s Central High School. She relied on emergency first aid she learned in class as a sophomore to help the man.
“I had to do something,” Nylaia Carter told WAVE. “I’m trained to stop the bleeding, so I had to do something, anything.”
Using her sweatshirt to make a tourniquet, the teenager stopped the bleeding and kept the man conscious until paramedics arrived.
“I was proud of my daughter because she told me to ‘Pull over, Dad,’” said her father, Adam Carter. “And I didn’t want to pull over. It had been a long day. I wanted to get home.”
But Nylaia Carter did not hesitate to help.
Police said the man was shot two and a half miles away. He tried to drive himself to the hospital, but the loss of blood cut his journey short, ending next to Central High School.
“Just blood. Blood everywhere,” Nylaia Carter said. “His clothes were just a mess.”
Days after leaving the scene, Nylaia Carter and her father visited the man in the hospital. They said he was grateful and surprised to find out she was only 16.
“And he remembered her being there,” Adam Carter said. “But she had a bookbag, so he thought she was the paramedic. So, we had a chance to talk to him and pray with him, and I think that she has a lifelong friend now.”
“Yeah, I did what I was supposed to do,” Nylaia Carter said. “He’s alive, and that’s all that matters.”
The 16-year-old said she hopes to earn a basketball scholarship and eventually go into the field of physical therapy.
Copyright 2022 WAVE via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/teen-gives-first-aid-gunshot-victim-her-way-home-school/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:09Z |
Teen paralyzed in ‘freak accident’ at 1st high school football game
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) - A Minnesota high school football team is coming together to support their teammate, who is recovering from a devastating injury that may have left him paralyzed.
Ethan Glynn, 15, started classes as a freshman at Jefferson High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. He took the field last Friday for what should have been the first game of a budding high school career.
But Glynn, known as “E” to his teammates, was severely injured as he made a tackle playing defense. It left him lying motionless on the field.
“It’s real, it’s fresh and it’s raw and it’s hard,” said Chad Nyberg, the high school’s activities director. “This is all just freak accident stuff, and there’s nothing that any one person did or cause of anything.”
Glynn “suffered a severe neck and spinal cord injury that … left him paralyzed from the shoulders down,” according to a CaringBridge post. He had multiple surgeries and spent time on a ventilator.
In addition to football, the 15-year-old was captain of his hockey team and loves playing baseball. His squad spent Wednesday night making signs and posters to raise his spirits.
“Some groups are doing some cards and things like that that will go to him. The football team is doing some gummy bracelets that they’re going to wear in support. The 9th grade team is getting some T-shirts made,” Nyberg said.
Glynn has a long road to recovery ahead, and even as his teammates hope to give him strength, coaches want them to know that being strong means acknowledging their own grief.
“It’s good to be vulnerable, right? And on your terms, too. Like when you feel it and stuff like that, you need to talk and process,” Nyberg said.
The freshman team will play their first game since Glynn’s injury on Thursday.
Copyright 2022 WCCO via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/teen-paralyzed-freak-accident-1st-high-school-football-game/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:17Z |
Texas woman travels for abortion after learning baby wouldn’t survive
CLEBURNE, Texas (CNN) - With abortion restrictions in place in Texas, a couple trying to start a family faced a hard choice when they learned their unborn baby would likely die shortly after birth, due to a rare chromosomal abnormality.
Kailee DeSpain, a third-grade teacher, married her husband, Cade DeSpain, right out of college. She said they wanted kids “right away,” and late last year, the couple was thrilled to learn Kailee was pregnant.
But four months later, at a doctor’s appointment, they received devastating news.
“He said, ‘This is what a normal heart looks like, but this is what your baby’s heart looks like.’ He was missing heart chambers,” Kailee DeSpain said.
Her medical records show more: the fetus had triploidy, a rare abnormality that results in an extra set of chromosomes, a severe brain defect and too-small lungs.
Kailee DeSpain’s doctor was clear about what this meant for the unborn baby.
“When he’s born, he’s going to suffocate to death. He may live for a few minutes. He may live for an hour, but he is going to die,” she said.
Her doctor said they could not perform an abortion, noting in her records that termination is not legal in the state of Texas.
“I remember being so angry and shocked in that moment that I’m being told that my child is not going to survive and that I have to carry him to term no matter what,” Kailee DeSpain said.
What’s more, carrying the baby to term could have put her own life in danger. She was at high risk for several potentially deadly pregnancy complications, such as blood clots, preeclampsia and cancer, because of an abnormal placenta.
Texas law allows for abortion if the mother “has a life-threatening physical condition” that places her “at risk of death” or substantial impairment. But lawmakers haven’t spelled out exactly what that means.
The DeSpains were forced to make a choice: Kailee could risk her life and give birth to a baby who would quickly die or go out of state to have an abortion.
“How could you be so cruel as to pass a law that you know will hurt women and that you know will cause babies to be born in pain? He was going to die a painful death. So, how is that humane? How is that saving anybody?” Kailee DeSpain said.
Ultimately, she and her husband decided to travel to New Mexico for an abortion. Since Texas law prohibits insurance companies from paying for the procedure in most cases, Cade DeSpain said he had to convince a relative to give them thousands of dollars.
“My job as a husband is to protect and love my wife. If I’m not fighting to keep her here, then I failed,” he said.
Now, still mourning the loss of her baby, Kailee DeSpain is facing yet another loss. She and her husband were both born and raised in Texas. But they want to try to have another baby, and there’s a high likelihood something will go wrong again.
“The last time that I saw my OB, she said, ‘Do not get pregnant in Texas right now.’ She said, ‘This is not safe,’” Kailee DeSpain said. “I’ve never felt more betrayed by a place I was once so proud to be from.”
The DeSpains once again have a tough decision to make: abide by the doctor’s advice and leave Texas, their families and their jobs or stay in Texas and risk Kailee’s life once again.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/texas-woman-travels-abortion-after-learning-baby-wouldnt-survive/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:24Z |
‘Thomas and Friends’ introduces first autistic character
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 11:50 AM EDT|Updated: 9 hours ago
(CNN) - The children’s TV show “Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go” is introducing its first autistic character.
His name is Bruno, and Mattel describes him as a “joyful, pun-making brake car.”
Bruno will be voiced by 10-year-old Chuck Smith in the U.S. and 9-year-old Elliot Garcia in the U.K. Both are voice actors with autism.
More than 2% of adults in the U.S. have autism, according to a 2017 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 26th season of “Thomas and Friends” starts later this month.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/thomas-friends-introduces-first-autistic-character/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:30Z |
Ukraine energy chief: Russia trying to ‘steal’ nuclear plant
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of Ukraine’s atomic energy operator accused Russia on Thursday of trying to “steal” Europe’s largest nuclear plant by cutting it off from the Ukrainian electricity grid and leaving it on the brink of a radiation disaster.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has been without an outside source of electricity since Monday and receives power for its own safety systems from the only one of its six reactors that remains operational, Enerhoatom chief Petro Kotin told The Associated Press.
“We are trying to keep this unit running as much as possible, but eventually it will have to be shut down and then the station will switch to diesel generators,” he said, adding that such generators are “the station’s last defense before a radiation accident.”
Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for shelling that has damaged parts of the plant as well as the transmission lines that connect it to Ukraine’s electricity network and provide power for the crucial cooling systems that are needed to prevent a meltdown.
The head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned the U.N. Security Council this week that “something very, very catastrophic could take place” at the plant and urged Russia and Ukraine to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around it.
Kotin said the Russians “have a crazy idea to switch the ZNPP to the Russian power system; in fact they are trying to steal the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant of Ukraine and steal all the electricity it produces.”
He said the Russians gave the plant management a 10-page plan about three or four weeks ago to connect the plant to the electricity grid in Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
On the same day, the Russians started shelling the power lines that connect the plant to the Ukrainian grid, and on Monday, the last line was cut, Kotin said.
This left the plant in “island mode,” meaning it receives power from its only operational reactor, a highly unusual and unstable way of operating a nuclear plant that he said shouldn’t last for more than two hours but has now been in effect for more than three days.
“At any moment, the unit can be stopped completely, and after that, the only power source for the entire nuclear plant will be a diesel generator,” he said. While there are 20 generators on site, “if one of these diesel generators fails, the consequences can be very deplorable and bad for the radiation danger of the ZNPP.”
Kotin said the plant has enough diesel fuel for 10 days. After that, about 200 tons of diesel fuel would need to be brought in daily for the generators, which he said was “impossible” while the plant was occupied by Russian forces.
He said connecting the plant to the Russian grid also was practically impossible given the hostilities in the area.
“There is no other solution than the de-occupation of the ZNPP, the transfer of the plant to the control of the Ukrainian side or international security organizations,” Kotin told AP.
The ZNPP was seized by Russian forces early in the war but is still run by Ukrainian engineers, who Kotin said are working under heavy psychological pressures.
“I can say that most of the people who work there are pro-Ukrainian. Anyone who openly expressed this pro-Ukrainian position was grabbed, abused, beaten,” he said.
Meanwhile, fighting continued near the plant as the towns of Nikopol and Marhanets, which face the plant across the Dnieper River, came under Russian shelling overnight that left apartment buildings, a school, some industrial facilities and power lines damaged, Dnipropetrovsk province Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.
“The nuclear threat isn’t abating because of Russia’s mad actions and we need to consider all possible scenarios, including the worst one,” Reznichenko said in televised remarks.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged residents of Russian-occupied areas near the power plant to evacuate, adding that Ukrainian authorities have urged the Russians to set up humanitarian corridors to evacuate residents but received no response.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian forces retook portions of Russian-held territory there as a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south drained some of Moscow’s resources in the area, according to a report released Wednesday.
Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region are “likely exploiting Russian force reallocation” to areas near the occupied city of Kherson in the south “to conduct an opportunistic yet highly effective counteroffensive” in the province, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said.
Ukrainian forces likely used “tactical surprise” to advance at least 12 miles (20 kilometers) into Russian-held territory in the Kharkiv region on Wednesday, recapturing approximately 155 square miles (400 square kilometers), the report said.
Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Gromov, the head of the main operational department of the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, said at a briefing Thursday that Ukrainian troops had reclaimed control of over 20 settlements in the Kharkiv region and forged up to 30 miles (50 kilometers) deep into Russian-occupied areas this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said Balakliya, a city of 25,000 and an important railroad junction, was one of the communities Ukrainian forces have recaptured.
“Everything is in its place. The flag of Ukraine in a free Ukrainian city under a free Ukrainian sky!,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
The gains came as Ukraine continued to mount a counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region.
IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
— Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed agreement on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s complaint that most of the grain from Ukraine’s reopened ports have gone to richer parts of the world. Putin said this week that practically all of the grain exported from Ukraine under a deal brokered by Ankara and the United Nations that lifted Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian ports had gone to European Union nations instead of poorer countries. Speaking in Zagreb, Croatia, on the last day of his three-day Balkan tour, Erdogan said Turkey wished for the grain “to be delivered to really poor countries,” and urged that the shipment of food and fertilizers from Russia to begin soon.
— The chief of the Ukrainian military, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyy, acknowledged in an article that explosions and fires at air bases in the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula last month were caused by a “successful series of rocket strikes on Crimean air bases.” It marked the first official acknowledgement of responsibility for the attacks by Ukrainian authorities.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/ukrainian-forces-retake-russian-held-territory-near-kharkiv/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:37Z |
United makes ‘conditional’ order for electric air taxis
DALLAS (AP) — United Airlines thinks that in a few years, plenty of big-city customers will pay $100 or more for a one-way ride to the airport in a four-seat, electric-powered air taxi.
The Chicago-based airline said Thursday that it invested $15 million in a startup manufacturer, and signed a “conditional” agreement to buy 200 of the tiny aircraft with options for 200 more.
United said it expects to receive the first taxis — which will take off and land vertically, like helicopters — from Eve Air Mobility as soon as 2026.
It’s hard to judge United’s commitment to the deal, since it wouldn’t provide terms for the order. A spokesman said the conditions are standard when buying an aircraft that hasn’t been certified by regulators, and they cover “a number of United’s business objectives.”
The stake in Eve amounts to less than 5% of United’s second-quarter profit.
But the deal fits United’s pattern of announcing interest in startups that are trying to build and win regulatory approval for air taxis, like Archer, and supersonic planes, like Boom.
Mike Leskinen, president of United’s venture-funding arm, said the eVTOLs — electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft — will be ideally suited for traffic-clogged cities where United flies, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco. He said air taxis will be faster than driving to the airport and produce fewer emissions, and trips will cost $100 to $150 each way.
“It will take time for consumers to adopt this. People are going to have some hesitancy at first,” Leskinen said. “It will feel a lot similar to a helicopter ride, it might be scary for some, but this is going to change the way we work and live.”
The Eve aircraft is envisioned to have a range of 40 to 60 miles (65 to 100 kilometers). Future designs might be slightly bigger than the currently planned four-seater, but they would not replace any planes that United flies from one airport to another, so they won’t reduce carbon emissions produced by the airline’s regular fleet.
Eve Holding Inc. is a publicly traded company formed this year by a combination of a special purpose acquisition company called Zanite and a unit of Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. It is based in Melbourne, Florida.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/united-makes-conditional-order-electric-air-taxis/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:44Z |
Blinken, in Kyiv, unveils more than $2 billion in US military aid for Europe
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Underscoring determined U.S. support, Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Thursday and the Biden administration ramped up military aid by more than $2.8 billion to Ukraine and other European countries threatened by Russia.
The new assistance came as the U.S. sought to boost momentum in Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia — and amid fears that public support is waning as the war drags on. President Joe Biden, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin all participated in meetings aimed at showing U.S. resolve to stand behind Ukraine.
In Kyiv, Blinken said the administration would provide $2.2 billion in long-term military financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors “potentially at risk of future Russian aggression.” That’s on top of a $675 million package of heavy weaponry, ammunition and armored vehicles for Ukraine alone, announced by Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier in the day.
“I thought it was particularly meaningful (to visit) at this time as Ukraine is starting this counteroffensive in the south, also in the east,” Blinken told reporters in Kyiv before boarding a train for Poland after meeting Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy and his top aides.
“It’s early days, but we’re seeing real effectiveness on the ground, and we’re proud of the fact that our support, the support of so many other countries, is helping to enable what the Ukrainians are doing and working to liberate territory seized by Russia in this aggression,” Blinken said.
He told Zelenskyy when they met, “We know this is a pivotal moment, more than six months into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, as your counteroffensive is now underway and proving effective.”
Zelenskyy replied, “We are grateful for the signal, for this enormous support that you’re providing on a day-to-day basis.”
The new funding and military weapons are designed to provide enduring training and support for what Gen. Milley called a “very deliberate” counteroffensive that Ukrainian troops have launched.
Meeting virtually, Biden and the leaders of major U.S. allies all emphasized their countries’ strong support “for Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression,” according to a White House readout.
“Russia’s weaponization of energy” and what to do about it — a major concern for this winter in Europe — was also discussed, said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Those on the call included the leaders of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, NATO, Canada and Japan and representatives from France and the European Union.
Austin and Milley announced the package of heavy weaponry, ammunition and armored vehicles for Ukraine alone at a conference in Ramstein, Germany.
“We are seeing real and measurable gains from Ukraine in the use of these systems,” said Milley. He said Russia is suffering significant equipment and troop losses. But, he added, “The war is not over. Russia is a big country. They have very serious ambitions with respect to Ukraine. So sustainment of Ukraine to continue their fight for their survival will be necessary.”
The $2.2 billion in so-called Foreign Military Financing has already been appropriated by Congress, but lawmakers, some of whom have expressed concerns about the massive amounts of money going to Ukraine, must still approve the actual allotments. Just two weeks ago, the administration had announced a $3 billion package of support for Ukraine.
About $1 billion of the total will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said.
It will help those countries “deter and defend against emergent threats to their sovereignty and territorial integrity” by enhancing their military integration with NATO and countering “Russian influence and aggression,” the department said.
Asked about continued congressional support for the massive aid packages, Austin said the administration will provide its rationale to lawmakers, and “I fully expect that it will continue to receive broad bipartisan support because our leaders recognize how important this is.”
Foreign Military Financing allows recipients to purchase U.S.-made equipment, often depending on their specific needs.
The package for Ukraine includes howitzers, artillery munitions, Humvees, armored ambulances, anti-tank systems and more to assist the country with its shorter-term needs as it presses its counteroffensive.
“The capabilities we are delivering are carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield,” Blinken said.
He will visit NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday to further emphasize coordinated support. And Austin announced the U.S. will convene a meeting of international senior leaders to discuss how their defense industrial bases can best equip Ukraine’s forces into the future.
“The war is at another key moment,” Austin said. “Now we’re seeing the demonstrable success of our common efforts on the battlefield,” he said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was attended by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s defense minister as well as officials from allied countries.
Germany and the Netherlands will provide training in de-mining to Ukrainian soldiers as well as de-mining equipment, the countries’ defense ministers said on the sidelines of the meeting with Austin. The training will be carried out in Germany. The two countries previously joined forces to send howitzers.
Thursday’s contributions bring total U.S. aid to Ukraine to $15.2 billion since Biden took office.
Fighting between Ukraine and Russia has intensified in recent days, with Ukrainian forces mounting a counteroffensive to retake Russian-held areas.
Ukrainian forces in the northeastern Kharkiv region have retaken portions of Russian-held territory as efforts in the south have drained some of Moscow’s resources in the area, according to a report from the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War.
Meanwhile, shelling continued near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, with the warring sides again trading blame amid dire warnings from the U.N. atomic watchdog, which has urged the creation of a safe zone to prevent a catastrophe.
Separately, on Wednesday, the U.S. accused Moscow of interrogating, detaining and forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia. Russian officials rejected the claim as “fantasy.”
Before leaving Ukraine, Blinken visited the devastated city of Irpin outside Kyiv where he toured damage caused by Russian forces during their 25-day occupation. He was told there that Ukrainian investigators have 30,000 open cases related to war crimes.
“There has to be accountability for those who committed atrocities” he said.
Before meeting Zelenskyy and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Blinken made a short stop at the U.S. Embassy and then the National Specialized Children’s Hospital Ohmatdyt, where he saw boys and girls injured during Russian bombardments, including Maryna, a 6-year-old from the city of Kherson who lost a leg after a rocket struck her house.
In the hospital lobby, Blinken also met Patron, a Jack Russell terrier that has helped Ukraine’s military find more than 200 mines laid by Russian forces. Blinken knelt down, petted the dog and presented him with treats, saying he was “world famous.”
In one ward, Blinken brought a basket of stuffed animals, which the children quickly dangled in front of Patron to get his attention.
Blinken told parents that “the spirit of your children sends a very strong message around the world.”
___
AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee reported from Rzeszow, Poland. Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/us-approves-up-675m-further-military-aid-ukraine/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:51Z |
US Rep. says adult animated sitcom with Danny DeVito as voice of Satan is ‘evil’
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An animated horror comedy featuring Danny DeVito as the voice of Satan is “clearly evil,” says a Republican congressman from Louisiana whose Facebook post denouncing “Little Demon” had reached millions of people by Tuesday morning.
U.S. Rep Mike Johnson objected to the sitcom aired by FX Networks. Its website says the series is about a woman and her 13-year-old daughter who are trying to live normal lives even though Satan is the girl’s father and wants custody of her soul.
A trailer for the show, which airs its fourth episode late Thursday, played during Sunday night’s TV broadcast of Louisiana State University’s football opener against Florida State.
“I couldn’t get to the remote fast enough to shield my 11-year-old from the preview, and I wonder how many other children were exposed to it — and how many millions more will tune in to the new series, owned and marketed by DISNEY,” the congressman and vice chairman of the House Republican Conference wrote on Monday.
FX Networks and Hulu, where the show is streamed, are among entertainment assets that Disney bought from Fox in a stock deal worth about $52.4 billion in late 2017.
On the show, DeVito voices the role of Satan and his daughter, Lucy DeVito, plays Satan’s daughter, Chrissy the Antichrist. Aubrey Plaza plays the mother. New episodes are broadcast at 10 p.m. Thursdays on FXX.
Disney and FX Networks did not immediately respond on Tuesday to emails requesting comment.
Johnson posted on Tuesday that more than 6.1 million people have read his earlier post — more, he said, than watched Sunday’s game, “which the latest ratings say dominated Sunday night TV with 5.87 million total viewers.”
He had written online Monday: “Our job as parents is to guard the hearts and minds of our kids. This culture has become alarmingly dark and desensitized and this is not a game. Disney and FX have decided to embrace and market what is clearly evil. STAY FAR FROM IT.”
Although many people thanked Johnson for the post and talked about boycotting Disney, many others disagreed with Johnson’s assessment. Some noted that “Little Demon” was made for and marketed to adults. Children should be in bed by 10 p.m., some wrote. Others said people opposed to the show’s existence are trying to make networks shelter their children when that’s a job for parents.
Johnson responded on Tuesday in a Facebook message and tweet that also were linked to from his House webpage.
“Free speech is an important principle, and in this country, everyone can obviously make their own decisions about what media they and their families consume,” he wrote. “But a corollary is that Christians have the freedom to fulfill our obligation to ‘speak the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15), even — sometimes most importantly — when it may not be popular.”
Johnson was first elected in 2016 to the U.S. House district that covers a large swath of western Louisiana. He was reelected in July to a fourth term when nobody qualified to run against him.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/us-rep-adult-animated-sitcom-with-danny-devito-voice-satan-is-evil/ | 2022-09-09T00:46:58Z |
VIDEO: Footage shows Eliza Fletcher’s accused abductor cleaning car after her disappearance
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC/Gray News) – New surveillance video involving the man accused of kidnapping and killing a jogger in Memphis has surfaced as police continue to investigate leads in the case.
Teacher and mother Eliza Fletcher was last seen early Friday jogging near the University of Memphis. Her body was recovered and identified several days later.
Cleotha Henderson has been charged with murder in connection to her death.
Surveillance video from the apartment complex where Henderson’s brother lives shows the accused abductor driving into the neighborhood Friday morning.
He’s seen in the video cleaning his car for two hours, at one point with the help of another unknown person.
After obtaining this surveillance video, WMC emailed the Memphis Police Department to ask if they knew who the other person was and if they have been charged.
Police responded: “This is an ongoing investigation, there is no additional information available at this time.”
Then, minutes later, they reached out to the apartment complex’s leasing office.
“I guess after they found out about the second person,” manager Shatiata Watson said.
Watson said she’s reviewed the video three times, but it’s the first time she’s been approached by police about the video.
“If they would’ve reached out to me, I would’ve given them the video. I didn’t mind because if something like that, that needs to be addressed,” she said.
At a press conference Tuesday, Police Chief C.J. Davis couldn’t say if Henderson worked alone.
“It’s still early on,” Davis said. “We’re still uncovering various leads. This is an ongoing investigation and it’s a possibility, but at this time, no one else has been charged.”
Watson said watching the surveillance video leaves her feeling worried.
“What if they would do it (the crime) to someone out here?” she said. “It’s sad that they would bring that lady way over here and do something like that.”
Police said this is an ongoing investigation and have not confirmed another suspect at this time.
Henderson’s brother, Mario Abston, has been arrested on unrelated drug charges.
Copyright 2022 WMC via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/video-footage-shows-eliza-fletchers-accused-abductor-cleaning-car-after-her-disappearance/ | 2022-09-09T00:47:05Z |
Woman, 88, befriends young man who she says saved her life
COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM/Gray News) – Barbara Kimbro, 88, met a new friend by happenstance while putting gas in her car.
She was on her way home from visiting a friend when she noticed her tank was nearly empty and pulled into the next service station she saw.
After not getting a receipt at the pump, she decided to make a quick trip inside without her walker.
Kimbro told WTVM she lost her balance and almost fell to the ground. But as she met a curb, she also met a new friend.
To her surprise, 27-year-old JaQuan Sanks came to Kimbro’s rescue, catching her before she hit the ground.
“He literally saved my life,” Kimbro said. “I just felt like it was a God moment because he couldn’t have waited another second; if he had I was on the way down.”
Sanks was holding the door open for Kimbro and happened to be in the right place at the right time.
“I didn’t think; I just reacted,” Sanks said. “My attention span towards an older person is alert when I see one period. My attention was already on Ms. Barbara.”
Kimbro bought Sanks a full tank of gas but said she knows that’s not nearly enough to thank him for saving her life.
“I didn’t grab her for the publicity or the attention we’re getting,” Sanks said. “Luckily, the person I caught in my arms, Mrs. Barbara, has a personality out of this world; it deserves to be seen.”
Despite having met a few days ago, Sanks said meeting Kimbro has changed his life.
“I’m just appreciative of just being able to be a part of her life and her being a part of mine because my life has definitely changed within a day,” Sanks said.
“I love this man; he’s just great; he’s my new son,” Kimbro said.
Sanks gifted his new “mom” a bouquet of flowers and a matching shirt for the both of them to wear.
Copyright 2022 WTVM via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/woman-88-befriends-young-man-who-she-says-saved-her-life/ | 2022-09-09T00:47:11Z |
Yellen pushes Biden economic plans in battleground Michigan
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pressed the case for Democratic economic policies during a visit Thursday to Ford’s Rouge electric vehicle assembly plant in Michigan, a battleground state in the November midterm elections.
After a production-line tour, Yellen promoted recent legislative successes for the Biden administration, saying: “After the progress we have made over the past few months, I am more optimistic about the course of our economy than I have been for quite a while and I know we are headed in the right direction.”
Yellen’s visit to Detroit was part of a monthlong tour as well as a larger White House campaign to highlight new laws intended to repair the economy, boost computer chip manufacturing, lower prescription drug prices, expand clean energy and revamp the country’s infrastructure.
She pointed to the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the “Inflation Reduction Act,” all passed and signed in the past year.
“By any traditional metric, we have experienced one of the quickest recoveries in our modern history,” she said, referencing the financial damage and stagnation caused by the coronavirus pandemic that shuttered economic systems around the world. “Our plans worked” she added.
The Treasury Department is responsible for managing a new $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit for qualifying, but the auto industry is warning that the vast majority of EV purchases won’t qualify for that much.
The European Union and other nations have threatened to file complaints at the World Trade Organization over the tax credit, claiming it would discriminate against foreign producers and break WTO rules.
Yellen has more stops planned and will give a speech next month at the 157th anniversary of the Freedman’s Bank Forum to talk about how President Joe Biden’s economic agenda “advances equity and makes our economy stronger as a result.”
Biden is set to visit Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of an Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility and go to the Detroit auto show Wednesday to talk about manufacturing electric vehicles.
At the Ford electric vehicle assembly plant in Dearborn, Yellen pointed to U.S. vulnerability to global supply shocks caused by climate change and other factors, and the need to embrace green technology. Addressing those challenges, she said, offers the prospects of new jobs.
“This includes the U.S. clean vehicle sector, where we can expect greater investment — and more good jobs, like the ones here at Ford — as we develop the supply chain here at home,” she said.
___
Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/08/yellen-pushes-biden-economic-plans-battleground-michigan/ | 2022-09-09T00:47:18Z |
Police: Remains of missing man found in ‘makeshift tomb’; woman arrested
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (Gray News) - Authorities in California have arrested a woman after investigators made a disturbing discovery at a home late last month.
The San Bernardino Police Department reports officers were called to a property on Aug. 23 after receiving a tip about possible human remains at the residence.
Police said they gathered enough information for a search warrant and found what appeared to be a “makeshift tomb” on the property.
According to the department, investigators found human remains inside the tomb that were identified as Eric Mercado, a person who was reported missing by his family in 2014.
Police said Mercado had previously lived at the property with another person, Trista Spicer. An arrest warrant was issued for Spicer’s arrest after homicide detectives said evidence found her responsible for his death.
On Sept. 2, investigators located and arrested Spicer in the city of Yucaipa. She was booked on the charge of murder.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/09/police-remains-missing-man-found-makeshift-tomb-woman-arrested/ | 2022-09-09T00:47:25Z |
Uvalde police investigating shooting at park
Published: Sep. 8, 2022 at 8:03 PM EDT|Updated: 32 minutes ago
(Gray News) - Police in Uvalde, Texas, responded to a shooting in a park Thursday evening.
Around 7 p.m. ET, the Uvalde Police Department wrote in a Facebook post: “Please AVOID the area of the Uvalde Memorial Park. The Uvalde Police Department is currently investigating a shooting with injured victims.”
San Antonio TV station KENS reports two people were shot, with their conditions currently being unknown, and that police are searching for two suspects.
On May 24, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/09/uvalde-police-investigating-shooting-park/ | 2022-09-09T00:47:32Z |
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