New Barber Shop Has Got Your Beard https://digitalalabamanews.com/new-barber-shop-has-got-your-beard/
Business
Published: Sep. 18, 2022, 7:40 a.m.
Flagship Healthcare Properties paid $4.3 million for a 10,000-square-foot Class A medical office at 2505 Old Shell Road in Mobile, according to Vallas Realty, who represented the sellers, Old Shell Medical LLC. The two-story building was built in 2020 and is fully leased to USA Health Midtown.
Dirty Rebel Barbershop has leased 1,400 square feet at The Wharf off Canal Road in Orange Beach, according to Jeff Barnes and Steadman Bethea of Stirling Properties, who represented the landlord. Dirty Rebel specializes in beard grooming and sells their own line of beard balm.
TransPak has leased 15,000-square-feet of warehouse space at 100 N. Ala. 59 in Summerdale, according to Jeff Barnes and Steadman Bethea of Stirling Properties, who represented the landlord. TransPak is an international company in the crating, packaging and logistics industry.
Watch for Muscadine Place subdivision to be developed at the northeast corner of Baldwin County 20 and Hickory Street in Foley, according to city planning. The project on 38 acres will include 182 lots according to Lennar Homes. And also on the horizon is River Oaks subdivision final phase on 16.74 acres south of Michigan Avenue and east of Hickory Street in Foley will have 68 home lots.
ANEW, a body, beauty and wellness spa, has leased 1,657 square feet of space at The Shoppes of Daphne at 2004 U.S. 98 in Daphne, according to Jeff Barnes of Stirling Properties, who represented the landlord. ANEW specializes in skin care, full body aesthetic services and customized health plans.
ACCEL Academy is looking to build a gymnasium and outdoor basketball court on a vacant lot adjacent to the Mobile Festival Centre off Airport Boulevard in Mobile, according to city planning records. ACCEL is a charter secondary school and located in the west side of the Festival Centre.
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Sarah Collins fifth Little Girl Of 16th Street Church Bombing Reunites With Nurse Who Treated Her In 1963
Sarah Collins, ‘fifth Little Girl’ Of 16th Street Church Bombing, Reunites With Nurse Who Treated Her In 1963 https://digitalalabamanews.com/sarah-collins-fifth-little-girl-of-16th-street-church-bombing-reunites-with-nurse-who-treated-her-in-1963/
When an initially blinded, and nearly lifeless, 12-year-old girl found in the rubble of a church bombing was wheeled onto the 10th floor of University Hospital in Birmingham nearly 60 years ago, one of the first people to tend to the child was Rosetta “Rose” Hughes, a nurse.
It was Hughes who stayed with Sarah Collins, the “fifth little girl” in the bombing, until a doctor arrived on that momentous Sunday, as an unforgettable chapter was being etched into the city’s history.
Hughes was on duty on Sept. 15, 1963, when a bomb demolished the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Rosamond Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14 and injuring dozens of parishioners.
One of the surviving girls was Sarah Collins, sister of Addie Mae. On that Sunday, staff at the emergency clinic at University Hospital received the bodies of the four children killed and tended to scores of others who were injured. Sarah Collins was among the wounded, and one of the first to see her was Hughes.
“When I saw her that Sunday, … she was just covered with soot and ashes (and blood),” Hughes recalled in an exclusive interview with The Birmingham Times. “(It) looked like she was gone. … I thought she wasn’t going to wake up. … She was not moving.”
That was 59 years ago.
On Thursday, Birmingham commemorated the explosion that proved to be a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, became a catalyst for change in the United States, and ultimately prompted global efforts for equality and human rights.
Hughes, who turns 101 in October and still lives in Birmingham, is believed to be one of the last remaining workers on duty at the hospital the day of the bombing.
Last month, for the first time since the bombing, Hughes and Rudolph, now 71, reunited for their first one-on-one, lengthy discussion of the events on that pivotal day in world history.
“It’s more than a blessing to meet her because she took care of me,” Rudolph said during the interview. “When I was younger, I didn’t know how she looked or anything because I was practically blind then. So, just to see her now and know her is a blessing. She’s looking real good.
Hughes recalled working on the 10th floor of University Hospital, which was known as the “Eye” floor, when young Sarah was wheeled in.
“I remember they brought her to the emergency room, and I was working on the Eye floor. We had the surgery up there, and they sent her to eye surgery. … She was on a stretcher, and I took care of her until they called the doctor to come in,” said Hughes, who recalls the doctor’s name only as “Pearson” and that he arrived with a toddler.
Medical staff from across the city were being called in to help with the influx of patients. Many of the doctors were scheduled to be off that weekend, and that likely included Dr. Pearson, who came to the hospital with his son. While Hughes could not remember the doctor’s first name, University of Alabama at Birmingham records show a “Dr. Robert S. Pearson” as a resident in ophthalmology at the facility in the early 1960s.
“It was a Sunday morning, and the doctor’s wife had gone to church, so he was watching the baby and had to bring him (to the hospital). … I babysat while (Dr. Pearson) checked on Sarah,” Hughes recalled.
“(Dr. Pearson) came back out and sent her back downstairs to the where she was examined at first. … They took her back on a stretcher. She was still asleep … and I didn’t have to do anything. I just had to watch her. She was also covered with ashes and smoke.”
Even though she was 12 at the time of the bombing, Collins-Rudolph, still has vivid memories of what happened.
“That’s one day I will never forget,” she said. “I remember, you know, when they operated on my eyes. … I remember when they took the glass out of my eyes, glass from my face. … The doctor had told me there were about 20 to 26 pieces of glass in my face altogether.
“I know when the doctor operated on my eyes, they put this bandage on it. … Maybe about a week later, they took the bandage off. At first, the doctor asked me, ‘What do you see out of your left eye?’ I told him, ‘I just see a little light.’ He asked me the same question (about my right eye). I said, ‘I can’t see anything.’ So, he said I was blinded instantly in my right eye.
“When (the doctor) was talking to my mother, I remember hearing him tell her that eventually I would start seeing out of my left eye because I was real young and the sight would start coming back. When I was getting ready to leave the hospital, I remember (the doctor) telling (my mother) to bring me back in February because they were going to have to remove my right eye, and that’s what they did. I went back in February, and that’s when they removed my right eye and fit me with a prosthetic.”
Sarah has had problems with her eyesight for the past 59 years. She developed glaucoma in her left eye and was initially given drops for the eye.
“That didn’t work too good, and they tried another drop. It didn’t work too good either, so they tried a third drop,” she recalled. “When the drops stopped doing any good, (the doctor) said he would have to operate and give me an incision in that (left) eye. They put an incision in there to drain the fluid. … If he had not done that, I would have gone blind.”
Even today, Rudolph still must visit an eye doctor every six months.
“I had to pay for that out of my own pocket,” she said. “I would always wonder to myself, … ‘I was in that bombing, and I got hurt. How come I had to foot these bills by myself when it wasn’t my fault?’”
While the state apologized to Rudolph two years ago, it hasn’t yet honored her request for restitution.
At the reunion with Hughes, husband George Rudolph, who has been at Sarah Rudolph’s side for the past two decades and knows about survival after his first tour of duty as a 19-year-old during the Vietnam War, said his wife has strength he has not seen.
“For my wife to survive what she went through and not hold any animosity toward the KKK because she forgave them, that’s a strong person,” he said. “She didn’t want to hold her hatred in her heart for those Klansmen. When she said, ‘I forgive you,’ that was such a powerful statement. Very powerful. … She is just a strong Black lady and amazing. I love my wife. I thank God for Sarah.”
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Pelosi Condemns Azerbaijan's Attacks On Armenia https://digitalalabamanews.com/pelosi-condemns-azerbaijans-attacks-on-armenia/
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes an announcement at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan, Armenia September 18, 2022. Stepan Poghosyan/Photolure via REUTERS
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Pelosi blames Azerbaijan for starting conflict
Azerbaijan says Pelosi endangering peace in Caucasus
Azerbaijan says Pelosi’s remarks unacceptable
Pelosi lauds Armenia’s ‘Velvet Revolution’
U.S. listening to Armenia on defence, Pelosi says
TBILISI, Sept 18 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday strongly condemned what she said were “illegal” border attacks by Azerbaijan on Armenia, using a visit to the Russian ally to pledge American support for its sovereignty.
Pelosi cast her trip to Armenia, a sliver of land the size of U.S. state of Maryland that is wedged between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Iran, as an attempt to strengthen support for what she cast as a beacon of democracy.
Speaking in the ancient city of Yerevan, Pelosi said her trip had significance following the “illegal and deadly attacks by Azerbaijan on Armenian territory” that triggered border clashes in which more than 200 people were killed.
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“We strongly condemn those attacks,” Pelosi said beside Armenian parliamentary speaker Alen Simonyan, who last week expressed unhappiness with the response of a Russian-led military alliance to Yerevan’s request for help. read more
Pelosi, who angered China with a trip to Taiwan last month, said it was clear that the border fighting was triggered by Azeri assaults on Armenia and that the chronology of the conflict should be made clear.
The fighting “was initiated by the Azeris and there has to be recognition of that,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi’s remarks drew an unusually strong rebuke from Baku, which said she was endangering the peace in the Caucasus.
“The unsubstantiated and unfair accusations levelled by Pelosi against Azerbaijan are unacceptable,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“This is a serious blow to the efforts to normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” the ministry said, casting Pelosi’s remarks as “Armenian propaganda”.
Such a definitive apportioning of blame for the conflict goes beyond what the U.S. State Department has so far said in public. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concerns over the fighting and called for calm but did not assign blame.
Armenia said Azerbaijan shelled at least six Armenian settlements inside the border shortly after midnight on Sept. 13, attacking civilian and military infrastructure with drones and large calibre guns. Yerevan said it was unprovoked aggression.
Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, rejects those claims. Baku says Armenian sabotage units tried to mine Azeri positions, prompting soldiers to respond. Armenia says that narrative is Azeri disinformation.
RUSSIA’S BACKYARD
Russia, which repeatedly condemned Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, considers the Caucasus as its own sphere of influence and bristles at what it casts as U.S. meddling in the region.
Moscow though, is preoccupied by the war in Ukraine which has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the height of the Cold War.
Russia is Armenia’s major military ally, has a military base in northern Armenia and peacekeepers along the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh, over which Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war in 2020.
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia had enough resources to mediate in the conflict. The latest fighting ended after a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
But after appeals for help, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led military alliance of former Soviet republics that includes Armenia but not Azerbaijan, decided on Tuesday to dispatch a monitoring mission.
Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Simonyan said he was dissatisfied with the response, likening the CSTO to a pistol that did not shoot bullets.
Speaking beside Pelosi, U.S. Representative Frank Pallone said the United States wanted to do whatever it could to be more supportive of Armenia’s security.
The United States, Pelosi said, was listening to Armenia about what its defence needs were and said Washington wanted to help and support Armenia in what she cast as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy.
“We should be using our influence, our leverage showing that Armenian democracy and sovereignty is a priority,” Pelosi said. “The velvet revolution was cheered globally.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rose to power in 2018 after anti-government protests referred to as Armenia’s Velvet Revolution.
Pelosi said it was interesting that Armenia was disappointed by the response from Russia.
“It is interesting that they were disappointed they got fact finders and not protection from that relationship and we’ll see what happens next,” she said.
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Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by William Maclean, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Alex Richardson
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Alabama Approves $348 Million In Sewer Water Repair Projects
Alabama Approves $348 Million In Sewer, Water Repair Projects https://digitalalabamanews.com/alabama-approves-348-million-in-sewer-water-repair-projects/
Alabama officials have opened the floodgates, sending a tidal wave of federal funding to address some of the state’s most dire water and sewer infrastructure needs.
The Alabama Department of Environmental Management announced that it has approved sending $348 million in federal grants and loans to “repair and upgrade crumbling, malfunctioning and overwhelmed water and sewer systems in Alabama,” according to a news release from the department.
“These funds are going to communities with the most critical needs, such as in the Black Belt, that would not otherwise be able to afford the repairs and upgrades on their own,” ADEM Director Lance LeFleur said in the release. “These projects are going to have a significant, positive effect on the lives of millions of Alabamians.”
And that $348 million is just the first round of funding. ADEM says it expects to commit $473 million this year to water and sewer systems across the state.
All told, Alabama is expecting approximately $1 billion in federal funding to address water issues over the next five years from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, both signed into law by President Joe Biden last year.
During a visit to Lowndes County last month, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan said Biden personally told them to fix the sewage crisis in Alabama’s Black Belt after reading news reports about residents dealing with sewage backing up into their yards and homes due to the unique conditions of the area. Many in the Black Belt live in areas that are too rural for large sewer lines to be cost-effective, but where the thick clay soil makes most septic tank systems ineffective.
Alabama is also contributing $111 million in grants and loans through the State Revolving Fund to water and sewer infrastructure projects. Combined, it’s the most significant investment in Alabama water infrastructure in several decades, but it won’t be nearly enough to fund all requests in the state.
ADEM, which is handling the applications and administering the funds, says it has already received $3.2 billion in funding requests from water utilities and municipalities across the state.
“We make no pretense that we can satisfy all the water and sewer infrastructure needs in the state of Alabama,” LeFleur said. “The billions of dollars in requests we have received total several times the amount of money we have available. Projects we are not able to fund this year will be considered for funding in future years.”
Of the $348 million in projects approved so far, $77 million will be directed to the Black Belt in the form of grants that do not require repayment or matching funds. The town of Hayneville in Lowndes County, often used as the prime example of the region’s sewage crisis, was awarded a $10 million grant for sewer projects and $2.9 million for drinking water projects.
But the funding isn’t just for Alabama’s poorest or least populated areas. ADEM has also approved funding for projects in Jefferson, Mobile, Madison, Tuscaloosa, Shelby, Baldwin, Houston, Lee, Morgan, Calhoun and Walker Counties, including many of the state’s largest metro areas.
So far, ADEM has approved projects in 48 of Alabama’s 67 counties.
Some water systems that have more resources — such as the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System, which will receive $41 million for sewer projects and $23 million for drinking water projects — the money is coming in the form of low- to no-interest loans and may require local matching funds.
The loans will be part of a revolving fund, so when the funds that are repaid, the money will then be used to fund other projects in the state.
Other notable funded projects include:
Birmingham Water Works Board: $43.5 million to replace lead pipes in the drinking water system
City of Florence: $15 million for drinking water system improvements
City of Tuscaloosa: $12 million for drinking water projects and $10.8 for sewer projects
City of Dothan: $12.5 million for water main replacement
Selma Water Works Board: $20.8 million for lead pipe replacement and water treatment plant improvements
Scottsboro Water, Sewer and Gas Board: $14 million for improvements to the wastewater treatment plant
ADEM has created a website, alabamawaterprojects.com, to track the applications and see brief descriptions of projects that have been approved.
AL.com will have more information on these projects as details become available.
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White Sox Minor Keys: Sept. 17, 2022 https://digitalalabamanews.com/white-sox-minor-keys-sept-17-2022/
Yolbert Sanchez (Laura Wolff / Charlotte Knights)
If you told me during the first couple months of the season that a farmhand would be getting most of the starts at second base for the White Sox in September, I probably would’ve guessed Yolbert Sánchez, especially since Romy González was fighting a two-front war against leg and tonsil problems.
Unfortunately for Sánchez, he went a few months without making much of an impact. His ability to hit for a decent average never abandoned him, but after an encouraging first month with the Knights, he hit just .271/.306/.316 over the 63 games from June through August, with an inefficient eight steals in 14 attempts.
Sánchez probably has to hit closer to .300 in Charlotte to register on the radar, and to his credit, that’s what he’s been doing this month. After a 2-for-5, three-RBI game against Norfolk on Saturday, he’s hitting .368/.410/.509 over 14 games in September, and thanks to the extended schedule for all Triple-A affiliates, he’s playing in the one level in the minors that will allow him to see it through to the end of the month if he can keep it up.
Charlotte 6, Norfolk 4
Mark Payton went 1-for-5 with a double, walk and two strikeouts.
Lenyn Sosa was 2-for-4 with an HBP.
Carlos Pérez, 2-for-5.
Rocket City 1, Birmingham 0
Luis Mieses went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.
Wilfred Veras had Birmingham’s other hit, going 1-for-3 with a double and a strikeout.
Bryan Ramos went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
Oscar Colás and DJ Gladney both were 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
Yoelqui Céspedes struck out all three trips.
Colson Montgomery went 0-for-3 with a K.
Drew Dalquist finished his season with his best work: 4 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 1 HBP, 43 of 60 pitches for strikes.
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Five Things To Know About Huntsville’s 2023 Budget https://digitalalabamanews.com/five-things-to-know-about-huntsvilles-2023-budget/
The Huntsville city council is expected to approve Thursday, with maybe a minor tweak or two, the city’s budget for the 2023 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The city’s general fund budget has been set at $281 million by Mayor Tommy Battle and his administrative staff. The city also has two capital improvement funds totaling $104.5 million that will be considered by the council.
“We have faced challenges head-on in the past 14 years of budgets and we’ve done so successfully to make our city a better place,” Battle told the council at the outset of a work session last week on the budget. “First and foremost is the challenge of a balanced budget. This year is no different from the rest. We have always had excess demand for funding over our ability to pay. We, the government, should have to make tough choices in budgets – and prioritize spending for what is essential for the city. Our administration has worked hard to do just that.”
Here are five things you need to know about the budget:
Restore Our Roads II
Battle frequently jokes that the good news is that Huntsville is building roads and the bad news is that Huntsville is building roads. Expect to hear more of that over the coming years.
The mayor said the city of Huntsville as well as the city of Madison and the Madison County Commission are moving close to formally announcing a partnership with the Alabama Department of Transportation that will divide funding among the four entities to build seven high-ticket road items expected to total about $800 million. Talks have been ongoing for at least a year to bring the funding to fruition.
It’s the sequel to the original $250 million Restore Our Roads project between Huntsville and ALDOT that led to a series of road projects in recent years – including new overpasses on Memorial Parkway, the widening of Cecil Asburn Drive as well as Research Park Boulevard.
The budget includes $15 million for Huntsville to contribute to the road building projects with more money to be set aside in future budgets. Two of those road projects will enhance traffic flow in and out of Redstone Arsenal. The seven projects:
Highway 72 east from I-565 to Shields Road
Widening Highway 53 in north Madison County from Tauras Drive to Old Railroad Bed Road
Widening I-565 from County Line Road to Wall Triana Highway
Improvements at the I-565/Memorial Parkway interchange
Widening Highway 72 west from Providence Main to County Line Road in both Huntsville and Madison
Resolute Way interchange (just west of Research Park Boulevard) accessing the arsenal
East Arsenal Connector from Sparkman Drive exit to Patton Road
Adding firefighters, police officers
A growing city (more on that in a moment) has continual demand for more public safety. The budget includes 24 new positions for police and 19 new positions for fire & rescue. The fire & rescue bump will largely be to man a new fire station to be built in west Huntsville.
But authorizing funding for the new positions, which is what’s accomplished by the budget, is not the same as filling those positions. The city continues with recruitment efforts to attract more applicants.
Huntsville’s still growing
When Huntsville became Alabama’s largest city last year, the U.S. Census put the official 2020 population at 215,006. No other city in the state had more than 200,000 people.
The growth, however, hasn’t stopped. Huntsville officials now estimate that the population is about 227,000. For the sake of comparison, Huntsville overestimated its population by about 1,400 people based on comparison to the census number.
At the same time, Huntsville’s unemployment rate is at 2.4%, which remains below the state rate of 2.6%.
About that employee pay raise
The budget also includes a 5% cost of living adjustment (COLA) for all employees in addition to any step increases some employees may be eligible for. It’s the highest raise Battle has proposed in his 14 years as mayor, topping last year’s high mark of 3%.
At the same time, insurance rates are going up for city employees. Still, Finance Director Penny Smith said that the increase would only make a small dent in the gains from the COLA.
Insurance rates will go up $6.46 for each two-week pay period. With an average salary for city employees at $50,000, the 5% COLA adds up to $2,500 in additional pay. The insurance rate hike would cut into that by $168, Smith said.
More money for road repairs
In addition to plans for new roads to be built and the widening of other roads, the budget also includes a record $19.15 million in road resurfacing, according to Shane Davis, the city’s director of urban and economic development. Davis said that represents about a 30 percent increase in road resurfacing over last year’s budget.
During the work session, council members did not ask for more road resurfacing money as they have typically done in the past. Council members often say that of all the issues in the city, road resurfacing is usually the top issue they hear about from constituents.
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Attorneys Representing More Than 30 Migrants Flown To Massachusetts Urge Criminal Investigations | CNN Politics
Attorneys Representing More Than 30 Migrants Flown To Massachusetts Urge Criminal Investigations | CNN Politics https://digitalalabamanews.com/attorneys-representing-more-than-30-migrants-flown-to-massachusetts-urge-criminal-investigations-cnn-politics/
Politics of the Day
After less than 48 unexpected hours in Martha’s Vineyard, nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants were given a warm sendoff as they embarked on next leg of their journey. Their unannounced arrival was part of a campaign by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to send migrants to “sanctuary cities” by surprise. CNN’s Miguel Marquez reports.
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In August 2022, c...
Morning Briefing: Security A Hot Topic Again This Election Season; Cars Roar Through The Streets; Phillies Cant Beat Braves
Morning Briefing: Security A Hot Topic Again This Election Season; Cars Roar Through The Streets; Phillies’ Can’t Beat Braves https://digitalalabamanews.com/morning-briefing-security-a-hot-topic-again-this-election-season-cars-roar-through-the-streets-phillies-cant-beat-braves/
Good Morning. Here are some of the top stories from around the region.
WEATHER
The humidity ticks up a little bit more today as we reach a high of about 84 degrees. Expect sun to mix with the clouds, which makes it a good day for a walk.
CLICK HERE to check your local forecast.
NEWS
Delaware County election security addressed in League of Women Voters forum
Elections and security officials outlined safeguards in place to protect Delaware County elections. Delaware County Elections Director Jim Allen, Chief Registrations Clerk Crystal Winterbottom and cybersecurity expert Kevin Skoglund, executive director of Citizens for Better Elections, presented protections already in place during a Hot Topic forum Friday hosted by the League of Women Voters of Central Delaware County entitled, “Delaware County Elections: Are they Free, Fair and Secure?” Among the issues addressed were the voting process itself, mailed ballots and the chain of custody in the election process for the county’s 410,000 registered voters.
Residents sue Chester County over drop-box ballot security
Critics of mail-in balloting procedures in recent elections have filed suit in Chester County Court asking that officials be ordered to change the security measures at two “round-the-clock” drop-boxes used in the last election, contending that people submitted multiple ballots at those locations, against rules that specify that each voter can deposit only one ballot — their own — at any time. The complaint, filed in Common Pleas Court, was submitted on behalf of four registered voters from the county, assisted by two attorneys from a prominent conservative law firm in Villanova and an organization led by former Trump administration officials, the America First Legal Foundation.
City drives action home as Coatesville Grand Prix returns
Coupled with applause and cheers, there were thunderous motorsport roars from beginning to end during the sixth annual Coatesville Invitational Vintage Grand Prix on Saturday. Vintage and historic race cars and motorcycles competed individually through a 2.2-mile course through the City of Coatesville. This was the sixth annual event. During the opening ceremony, the registered vehicles and motorcycles took part in a parade down Lincoln Highway with an escort by the Coatesville City Police Department. A member of the South Coatesville Police Department sang the National Anthem as the National Guard stood watch with flags raised.
Development plans move forward for two new mixed-use buildings along Lower Merion’s Belmont Avenue
The site formerly known as the GSB building in Bala Cynwyd is about to undergo major changes. This week, the Lower Merion Building and Planning Committee recommended approval of new construction in the One Belmont Avenue parking lots along Belmont Avenue and St. Asaphs Road. The plan for the seven-acre site calls for the construction of two new buildings in the front and side parking areas along Belmont Avenue and St Asaphs Road. The buildings will be connected through an elevated pedestrian bridge.
2 of 3 Montgomery County deputies injured during bomb training blast released from hospital
More information was released Friday about an explosion that occurred Thursday during bomb squad training at SCI Phoenix in Skippack Township Thursday morning. “Everybody’s heart sunk when we got the news” said Montgomery County Sheriff Sean P. Kilkenny during an afternoon press conference Friday, thanking the public for the prayers, well-wishes and thoughts that the department received over the last 36 hours. Five bomb technicians were wounded, including three deputies from the Kilkenny’s office, one trooper from the Pennsylvania State Police and one special agent from FBI Philadelphia.
SPORTS
Atlanta Braves’ Ozzie Albies, right, gets a high-five from teammate William Contreras (24) after scoring in the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Phils’ playoff hopes suffer another blow, courtesy of Braves’ Ronald Acuna Jr.
Ronald Acuña Jr. homered and drove in four runs off Aaron Nola and flashed some fancy defense in right field, lifting the Atlanta Braves to a 4-3 victory over the Phillies on Saturday night. The Braves’ victory was dampened because of a broken right pinky finger sustained by second baseman Ozzie Albies, who appeared to be injured sliding head-first safely into second base in the fourth inning. Albies, a two-time All-Star, could be out several weeks. He just returned from an 81-game absence Friday because of a broken left foot.
Eagles don’t seem too concerned about Reagor passing on advice
Jalen Reagor will have revenge on his mind when he checks into Lincoln Financial Field Monday with the Minnesota Vikings. Consider that a warning, Eagles secondary. At least worry a little bit if Reagor, a first-round bust with the Eagles, gets an offensive snap this week. Last week the wide receiver who was supposed to revolutionize the position when the Eagles took him off the board with the 21st overall pick in the 2020 draft returned one punt seven yards and fair caught two others in a 23-7 win over the Green Bay Packers.
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Langill Remembered For Love Of Books Writing Teaching
Langill Remembered For Love Of Books, Writing, Teaching https://digitalalabamanews.com/langill-remembered-for-love-of-books-writing-teaching/
WAUKESHA — The last chapter is often the hardest to write, according to Ross Langill. Everyone has a different memory of what happened and what was important. For those who knew and loved Ellen Langill of Waukesha, who died on Aug. 16, it was her love of family, community, education, history, writing and teaching that filled her days and her heart.
“She really believed in giving back to the community in every way she could,” Ellen’s husband Ross Langill said.
Ellen was a voracious reader and writer. Ross said at one point she was writing three books at a time. It was not unusual to find her writing at home while listening to classical music. The prolific writer authored over 40 books about the history of Wisconsin’s businesses and community service organizations. She also wrote books on businesses and organizations outside the state. She wrote a book on the history of the Waukesha Public Library, Carroll University, the Waukesha Service Club and the Women and Girls Fund. She wasn’t just a historian, but a participant who was active in the subjects she researched and wrote about.
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“It was why they (organizations) asked her to write the history,” said Ross.
He met his future wife at Grinnell College in Iowa. Ross had asked his twin sister, who also attended the college, who he should take to a social function and she mentioned Ellen. The two must have hit it off as they celebrated 50 years of marriage together and have two daughters.
Her love of history and teaching came from studying classics and Latin, focusing on the history of both subjects at Grinnell.
“She was a voracious reader, often reading a book a week. She was a speed reader,” he said.
His wife, who was in several book groups, would underline and circle various things in the books and pass them on.
Teaching and coaching
Ellen taught history for nine years at Carroll University, seven years at UW-Waukesha, and over 20 years at UW-Milwaukee.
Ross recalled a story from her time at UWM that’s funny now, but was scary then. Ellen was teaching history of the occult and she heard of a male Wiccan who owned a store in Milwaukee. Ellen asked Ross to invite him, since it was near Ross’s work, to attend and speak to her class. That evening Ellen was walking to her class and noticed the door was shut and some man was in there slamming the podium and yelling. Ellen called security immediately, and right as they arrived the Wiccan man came in, wearing his black cape.
“He looked in the classroom and thought this man screaming was the professor and she thought the man screaming was the Wicca man,” Ross said.
The screaming man, it turned out, was a veteran with PSTD who had randomly walked into her class.
Ellen was also a basketball, tennis, and field hockey coach at University Lake School.
“She loved coaching and getting to know the kids. Her basketball team ended up in Sports Illustrated,” he said.
Ross recalled a particular incident from Ellen’s basketball coaching career. It was flu season and University Lake School had to play Prairie School. The team left on a bus with just seven girls due to other players being sick with the flu. On the way down another kid got sick.
“They started the game with six girls and they were winning. In the third quarter they started fouling out but were still winning,” he said.
The Prairie team was becoming frustrated as more University Lake School players got sick. Soon there were just two girls and Prairie was having trouble catching up in the game.
“In the last few minutes of play it got down to one girl and Lake School still won the game. Ellen felt so bad for Prairie she didn’t bother to put the scores in The Freeman,” he said.
The next day Ross went to a luncheon and told a reporter about the story. The reporter loved the story and ran with it, which then ended up in Sports Illustrated.
Politics and passions
“Even though [Ellen] was interested in history, she was also interested in politics and current events and how they shaped history,” said Ross.
Ellen had many passions, including women’s rights, education and community service. She was a board member and president of many community enrichment organizations for over 40 years. The organizations included Waukesha United Way, Waukesha School Board, Women and Girls Fund of Waukesha County, Waukesha Women’s Center and Ideal Club of Waukesha.
“She was very aware of the disadvantages women had just because they were women. For a long time she was in the League of Women Voters. She was heartbroken when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump,” Ross said.
She found comfort, Ross said, in writing a book of limericks about now-former President Trump.
There was other topics that struck Ellen’s fancy, such as Pompey, the couple’s black cat. The Langills found him one winter by their apartment. The cat kept trying to come into the apartment and eventually they took him in and adopted him.
Ellen’s first book was “Pompey Poems Celebrating a Cat,” which told of the feline’s adventures. They often read the book to their children to get them to sleep at night.
“The poetry she did was actually true stories,” Ross said.
A gathering in her memory will be held from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. on Sept. 29 at Southminster Presbyterian Church, 200 Richard St. in Waukesha.
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Hike Haliburton Highlands: 15 Hikes & Lookouts For Glorious Fall Colours | To Do Canada
Hike Haliburton Highlands: 15 Hikes & Lookouts For Glorious Fall Colours | To Do Canada https://digitalalabamanews.com/hike-haliburton-highlands-15-hikes-lookouts-for-glorious-fall-colours-to-do-canada/
Hike Haliburton Highlands to experience the stunning colours of the autumn season in Ontario.
Sir Sam’s Ski & Bike
Popularly known as Haliburton Highlands, the county of Haliburton, comprised of Algonquin Highlands, Dysart et al, Highlands East and Minden Hills, is an extremely popular destination to enjoy the fall season with tree canopy ranging from deep green to soft hues of yellow and gold to bright reds depending on the time and place (type of trees present) of your visit.
While hot warm summers will lead to fall colours appearing later in the season (well into October), cooler summers will see fall colours peaking much before Thanksgiving weekend.
The fall colours that you see will also vary depending on the tree. Maple trees turn auburn because their leaves are rich in anthocyanins, a compound responsible for the glorious hues of red colour. Poplar, Birch and Tamarack (larch) trees have carotenoids and xanthophylls which results in hues of yellow, gold and orange leaf colours.
Fall in Love With Maple: Taste & Hike Through Brilliant Colours of Fall at Ontario Maple Farms
Around the fourth weekend of September, Haliburton tourism organizes a hiking festival (2022 – September 22 to 25). Hike Haliburton Festival is Canada’s largest hiking festival and includes guided hikes, and various Fall themed experiences.
While you have to register for the guided hikes, you can always head to Haliburton anytime from mid-September to late October/early November to enjoy nature during the Fall season.
Here are some of the most popular hikes in the region:
Credit: Algonquin Highlands
Dorset Scenic Tower Trail in Algonquin Highlands is a challenging 1.5 km loop that can be hiked from the top of Dorset Mountain down to the museum. Enjoy scenic views from the Dorset lookout tower. It also has a picnic area, an information centre and a gift shop.
Oxtongue River-Ragged Falls Provincial Park is a fantastic visit in the fall with its impressive short waterfall hike.
Explore Canadian Shield and hardwood forest awash with hues of gold and auburn after a ride up the ski-lift at Sir Sam’s Ski & Ride.
Haliburton Forest has over 300 km of trails including easy-to-moderate trails with a wolf centre, restaurant, logging museum and a canopy tour.
Barnum Creek Nature Reserve has varying landscape including hardwood and mixed wood forests, grasslands, marshes, swamps and Barnum Creek.
Appreciate stunning masterpieces surrounded by brilliant colours of Fall at Haliburton Sculpture Forest.
High Falls Hiking Trail is 2 km long and offers views of the rapids upstream of High Falls and downstream towards the Falls. The trail is in Algonquin Park.
The 5 km Beetle Lake Trail overlooks Oxtongue Lake and traverses active beaver ponds, bogs, hardwood hills, wildlife, birds and forests.
The 1.9 km return James Cooper Lookout Trail takes you to spectacular lookout with views of Maple Lake, Beech Lake, Boshkung and Twelve Mile Lakes.
Frost Centre has various trails ranging from 0.8 km to 3 km. You will find geological formations, bogs, cliffs, forests, and beautiful lookouts.
The 500 m Buttermilk Falls trail with its concrete sluiceway makes for a short walk to enjoy water falling into Boshkung Lake from from Halls Lake.
The Farr Road Walking Trail has a massive beaver dam and offers a venue for a great stroll with kids.
Dahl Forest’s 5.1 km hiking loop is a great woodland walk in fall.
Panorama Park and the lookout offers a perfect view of the village washed in fall colours and it is a great location for a picnic.
Minden Boardwalk and Minden Riverwalk are excellent for short walks for people of all abilities. The 0.4 km boardwalk takes you through a natural grass marsh to the 1 km Riverwalk around the Gull river.
Minden Wild Water Preserve in Harrington Park is another excellent location for the whole family and the rapids and kayakers braving the cold waters surrounded by autumn-hued trees.
The Silent Lake Provincial Park‘s 15 km trail around the lake is a must-do in fall season for those who like a serious challenge and combines views of lake backdropped by stunning forests and a woodland walk.
Explore Ontario in Fall
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Memo: Special Master Victory Buys Time For Trump https://digitalalabamanews.com/memo-special-master-victory-buys-time-for-trump/
Former President Trump won a crucial victory over investigators on Thursday. If it stands, it would slow the investigation into how sensitive documents were handled at Mar-a-Lago.
The major action in the investigation is now set to be postponed before the midterm elections until the government’s appeal filed Friday is successful – by then Trump can declare himself the 2024 presidential candidate.
In that scenario, he can be expected to argue with even greater enthusiasm that he is being victimized by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI for political reasons. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Trump dubbed the two organizations “vicious monsters.”
The victory for Trump came when Judge Ellen Cannon announced on Thursday that she would appoint Raymond Deary, a semi-retired judge proposed by Trump’s legal team, as the so-called special master in the case, which first went public with Aug. had come to the fore. The FBI raided the former president’s Florida club.
Cannon, who was a Trump appointee himself, supported the former president in other important ways as well.
The typical role of a Special Master is to evaluate documents confiscated in law enforcement raids to see if there may have been a privileged attorney-client communication – or private and without evidence.
Canon held that Deary could evaluate all documents confiscated for this purpose, including those marked classified. About 11,000 documents were taken in the raid, of which about 100 were classified marks.
The government has argued – including in its Friday appeal – that, even if Cannon insists on going ahead with the appointment of a special master, documents with classified markings should be exempted from the process.
In short, the government claims that such documents, by their very nature, cannot be Trump’s personal property and are themselves clearly germane to the investigation.
But “the Court did not consider it appropriate to accept the Government’s findings on these important and disputed issues without a prompt and systematic review by a neutral third party,” Cannon wrote.
Moving on, there are two other important aspects to Canon’s latest decision.
First, it has given the special master time till November 30 to complete his work, barring some lines of inquiry for at least six weeks.
Second, Cannon held fast to a controversial view.
She claims that pending Diary’s review, it is possible to withhold the use of confiscated documents in a criminal investigation, as well as proceed with a separate process that will assess whether national security interests may be at risk. .
Media reports have suggested that at least one seized document shows nuclear capabilities of a foreign nation. Many were classified as “TS/SCI”, an acronym that stands for “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartment Information”.
Cannon took an unquestioning jibe at investigators in his Thursday decision, noting that the main national security threat so far in the case stems from “unnecessary disclosures.” [in] leaked to the media Later implicit seizure. ,
The government had argued that the two aspects being examined – national security implications and potential criminality – could not be separated.
If the DOJ does not prevail in its appeal, legal experts say investigators face significant problems.
Investigators cannot currently access the contents of any documents seized in interviews with potential witnesses. In practice, this would seriously nullify the investigation.
“If you still can’t share the material, how do you investigate the issues related to those documents from an intellectual standpoint?” Mark Zaid, a DC-based attorney who specializes in matters related to national security.
“The first question, let’s say to a member of staff at Mar-a-Lago, might be, ‘Where did you see the classified document?’ And they say, ‘Which one?’ And the answer is, ‘We can’t tell you.’ The FBI runs out of steam within two questions.”
Zaid said, however, that this does not necessarily remove all the legal threats facing Trump or those close to him.
Previous filings have shown that obstruction is one of the possible crimes being investigated.
A case can be made that such offense was committed without reference to the actual contents of the documents.
The chronology of events, including the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, shows that Trump and those around him were summoned to produce all documents bearing classified markings and that they did so, while Actually he didn’t do that.
It can be seen as evidence of a crime, regardless of what is in the document.
In the real world, however, the DOJ may be reluctant to prosecute a former president at that stage, when it might otherwise wait for the Special Master’s review to finish.
Meanwhile, some legal observers are vehemently against Cannon’s decision.
“Judge Cannon was not only leaning in Trump’s direction, but falling at his feet,” said former US Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Littman.
Dearie has directed counsel for the parties concerned to appear in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, NY on Tuesday for a “preliminary conference.”
Complicating matters further, Cannon allows Dearie to evaluate the documents to see if Trump can reasonably exercise executive privileges — not just attorney-client privileges — on any of them.
The specifics of legal arguments do not hide the underlying realities.
A Trump-appointed judge has placed a significant speed-barrier in the way of the investigation.
The impediment can be removed on appeal.
If it isn’t, prosecutors face a frustratingly slow road ahead.
Memo is a column reported by Niall Stanage.
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Editorial: Rob Bonta Is Right About Amazon California Globe
Editorial: Rob Bonta Is Right About Amazon – California Globe https://digitalalabamanews.com/editorial-rob-bonta-is-right-about-amazon-california-globe/
Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
The California Globe has not found much opportunity to praise elected California Democrats. But Attorney General Rob Bonta is right to sue Amazon for its anti-competitive, unfair, and just plain piggish policies. Conservatives ought to join liberals who are finally taking the forceful stand against the tech monopolies that conservatives have promised for years, but seldom delivered.
The Globe has quite a bit of personal experience here.
Google routinely demonetizes legitimate stories from the California Globe for no discernible reason. Obviously, Google does not want its advertisers to see their brands placed next to nude photos or foul language or images of graphic violence. We understand that (and agree). We painstakingly follow their published rules, since Google holds a near monopoly in the business of serving network ads. A site like ours cannot stay in business if it fails to remain in the good graces of the tastemakers at Google.
So why was a story like this one demonetized? It’s about ultra-late-term abortion, but included no graphic images, no foul language, nothing outside the rules. Unless, apparently, you happen to support the practice of late-term abortion. There’s no appeal, no second chance, you just get a notice that says you’ve been demonetized, and the message is clear: Don’t run stories like this if you want to remain in business.
This California Globe story was demonetized because it included the point of view that late-term abortion is equivalent to infanticide.
Facebook is another constant scold. During our wildly successful bumper sticker campaign against the outrageous excesses of the lockdowns, our ads were constantly declined. No reason given. The luck of knowing a few higher-ups at Facebook was the only thing that stood between the Globe and permanent banishment.
And now it’s been revealed that Facebook was actually scanning the private messages of people it suspected of wrongthink regarding January 6. Does anyone realize how troubling it is to have private companies tattling on Americans’ private conversations?
It would possibly be believable that these were the innocent overreactions of rogue individuals. Except that these breaches of our civil liberties always go in the same direction. It’s always liberals policing, demonetizing, scolding, de-platforming, and shadow-banning conservatives. Why weren’t the private messages of people plotting 100 nights of BLM riots in Portland similarly shared with the authorities? You know why, and so do we. Because the people at Facebook consider the riots in Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis righteous, while the riot at the Capital represents an existential threat to democracy. These distinctions are in the eye of very few beholders, and they all work in Silicon Valley.
Which brings us to Bonta’s decision to file what is so far the biggest and most meaningful threat to Amazon’s, incredibly unethical business practice of forcing its vendors not to sell their wares cheaper elsewhere.
At a news conference on Wednesday, AG Bonta said, “If you think about Californians paying even just a little bit more for every product they purchased online over the course of a year, let alone a decade, which is what is at issue here, the collective magnitude of harm here is very far-reaching. … The ‘everything store’ has effectively set a price floor, costing Californians more for just about everything.”
What that means is that if a rival e-commerce company came up with, say, a cheaper way to deliver, and could thus sell diapers more cheaply than Amazon, Amazon’s contract would force that vendor to raise the price at the cheaper site or else be banned from Amazon. That just seems unfair on its face, but it’s doubly so when you consider exactly how dominant Amazon has become in the e-commerce marketplace, and how it got that way.
Let’s take a look at books, the original category killer.
Books are now a trivial portion of Amazon’s business, and an increasingly trivial part of the public discourse as the populace gets stupider and stupider. But it’s an instructive example, because of the way Amazon’s business practices completely unraveled an industry that plays a meaningful role in the intellectual life of our citizenry.
The company that owns California Globe, Sea of Reeds Media, also owns a site devoted to books, Book and Film Globe, and also the type of small, quaint, independent bookstore that every town should have — The Book House in Millburn, New Jersey.
Jared Kushner’s memoir, Breaking History, hit No. 1 on the New York Times list of bestsellers.
The founder of this company played a small role in the process of Breaking History, the White House memoir of former Trump senior advisor Jared Kushner (buy it here!). The team was thrilled when the book hit No. 1 on the New York Times best seller list. A feat made all the more delicious considering the shockingly personal pan it received in the Times itself. Not to mention an outright lie by California Congressman Eric Swalwell, who falsely accused Ivanka Trump of misstating that the book had been No. 1 on Amazon. (The world still awaits the congressman‘s apology, but the same groups that constantly fact check California Globe apparently aren’t as interested in the truthfulness of our elected representatives.)
Any independent bookstore has a hard time competing against Amazon. But here’s some data for you. The list price of Breaking History is $35. The best price The Book House can get from its distributor is $20.30. So if the store marks it up $5 — a razor thin 24% profit margin — it sells for $25.30. Amazon sells the book for $21.12 — its retail price is only 82 cents higher than an indie’s wholesale price.
This upends the model of retail stores that’s existed since the dawn of money.
The nicest thing one could say about Amazon’s monopolistic, hog-like behavior is that it’s not ideological. Amazon bullies the left and right equally. So at least there is that.
But it’s long overdue that elected officials like Bonta, who are in office to protect both our commercial interests and broader societal interests like access to a wide variety of ideas, are finally doing their job.
It is ironic that conservatives, who have been crying for a decade about Big Tech’s obvious progressive lean, got virtually nothing accomplished on this front. It’s the liberals who are finally taking a look at Section 230 and other Clinton-era Big Tech pantsings. Obviously, progressives leading the charge now portray it as some sort of heroic stand against people who put on Viking hats and march on the capital. Rather than, for instance, the total de-platforming of the leader of the opposition party. But whatever. At least they’re doing something, and hopefully these changes will benefit all sides.
For now, Godspeed to Attorney General Bonta, and let’s hope Amazon embraces the idea that everyone, including Amazon workers and customers, will benefit if stores other than Amazon survive.
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YOUR OPINION: President Or Dictator https://digitalalabamanews.com/your-opinion-president-or-dictator/
Daniel Kliethermes, New Bloomfield
Dear Editor,
The speech President Biden gave Thursday night was a slap in the face to the American people, especially Republicans who are still wanting change in America, the way President Trump did in his four years in office.
Biden never talked about the problems surrounding his administration, but he blames them on the previous administration that supposedly cause this mess. During President Trump’s four years in office, this country flourished and was on the right track to be great again. Of course there were riots in the streets after the Floyd killing that had no way of being stopped; most of the rioters broke into businesses and were not even part of the protesters but stole items instead of being part of the protest. In Biden’s administration, we have high inflation, high gas prices and high interest rates; we have killings in the streets of major cities that are mostly run by Democrats; we have fentanyl killing American kids and adults, defunding the police which now has a low morale because their treated like criminals especially if they shot a black man or woman trying to defend themselves. The Democratic regime is not doing a damn thing about it and, in my opinion, they just don’t care because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
His speech was full of hate for Trump supporters and called them MAGA extremist and fascist, I don’t know what he is trying to accomplish, but I guess he is trying to scare the Republican voters into voting for the Democrats. Well, he’s just wasting his breath. He approved 89,000 more IRS agents to help catch taxpayers who make over $400,000 that try to cheat on their taxes. Now I don’t know the percentage of the people that make that much, but we don’t need those IRS agents. It is a possibility that he will you use these agents to harass Republican voters and audit them because they cannot afford an attorney like big businesses and harass you with search warrants and subpoenas. Trust me they can find out if you’re a Republican when you file your taxes. This could happen to every Trump supporter when you file your taxes. This is not far from being a dictatorship to control their people. Be prepared if the Democrats keep control, keep that in mind. God help us.
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Serbia Police Clash With Right-Wing Protesters At LGBTQ March
Serbia Police Clash With Right-Wing Protesters At LGBTQ March https://digitalalabamanews.com/serbia-police-clash-with-right-wing-protesters-at-lgbtq-march/
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BELGRADE, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Police clashed with right-wing protesters on Saturday as several thousand people joined an LGBTQ march in Serbia to mark the end of EuroPride week, an event staged in a different European city each year.
Police clashed with two right-wing groups trying to disrupt the march, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said, adding that 10 police officers were slightly injured, five police cars damaged and 64 protesters arrested.
“I am very proud that we managed to avoid more serious incidents,” Brnabic, who herself is Serbia’s first gay prime minister, told reporters.
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Following protests by nationalists and religious groups, the government had banned the march last week. But faced with calls by European Union officials and human rights activists, it allowed a shortened route for the march.
Anti-LGTBQ protesters shout slogans in front of St. Marco church during the European LGBTQ pride march in Belgrade, Serbia, September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Zorana Jevtic
Those participating walked several hundred metres to the Tsmajdan stadium where a concert took place.
The United States’ ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, and the European parliament’s special rapporteur for Serbia, Vladimir Bilcik, joined the march.
Previous Serbian governments have banned Pride parades, drawing criticism from human rights groups and others. Some Pride marches in the early 2000s met with fierce opposition and were marred by violence.
But recent Pride marches in Serbia have passed off peacefully, a change cited by EuroPride organisers as one reason Belgrade was chosen as this year’s host. Copenhagen was the host in 2021.
Serbia is a candidate to join the EU, but it must first meet demands to improve the rule of law and its record on human and minority rights.
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Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Christina Fincher
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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NFL Draft Profile: Kris Abrams-Draine, Cornerback, Missouri Tigers https://digitalalabamanews.com/nfl-draft-profile-kris-abrams-draine-cornerback-missouri-tigers/
NFL Draft profile scouting report for Missouri CB Kris Abrams-Draine
#14Pos: CBHt: 5112Wt: 179DOB: 10/4/2001Hometown: Mobile, ALHigh School: Spanish FortEligibility: 2023
Kris Abrams-Draine Missouri Tigers
One-Liner:
An Apex defender that shines in underneath coverage, Abrams-Draine can separate himself if he progresses in his ability to carry vertical route concepts
Evaluation:
Primarily a slot corner with responsibility over the number two receiver to the field. Uses active hands both at the line of scrimmage and within the legal area to disrupt route timing. Holds up vs shifty slot receivers with functional short area quickness. Defends slants, shallow crossers, and quick outs with pace and timing. Occasionally used as a Blitzer from depth, typically in overload situations. Not a volume tackler but few mistakes in that area, showing fluid fundamentals. Good length but a little slight, thus his role in the slot. Too many missed assignments on tape caught looking at others after chunk plays. Footwork is his primary liability. Way too flat-footed in both man and zone, leaving voids in coverage or free releases for pass catchers. Doesn’t blow you away with hip fluidity or long speed, more of a quicker than fast player. Abrams-Draimne plays one of the most challenging positions in football as a slot corner in a predominately single high defense. He’s more than capable of underneath man coverage but he must continue to progress in his deep coverage skills to prevent down-field targets.
Grade:
3rd Round
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Quotes:
“Instincts and ball skills are two standout traits on Kris Abrams-Draine’s film. He’s a former WR, who did really well in the SEC at a young age last year. Easy to project Abrams-Draine to be one of the best cornerbacks in the SEC next season.”
Jack Borowsky on Twitter. Scout and Writer for the NFL Draft Bible on Sports Illustrated.
Background:
Kris Abrams-Draine has made the transition from offense to defense and he made an impact right away. Coming out of high school as a four star receiver prospect, he played in five games in 2020 at the position but made the move to the secondary in 2021 and started ten of the thirteen games for Missouri. Abrams-Draine was the fifty eighth best receiver in the nation and was also a piece of their special teams unit returning kicks and punts. Abrams-Draine offers his team versatility and the willingness to play several positions. In the classroom, he is currently Majoring in Business.
In This Article (2)
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Real Estate Transactions https://digitalalabamanews.com/real-estate-transactions/
Playtime Partnership, LLC., to LL Ark. Properties, LLC., L4, Glenn Ridge Crossing, $5,700,000.
Valen Harris, Inc., to Foxden Capital, LLC., L13, The Village At Rahling Road, $3,750,000.
Greshman Properties, LLC., to SH Warehouse, LLC., 6801 Scott Hamilton Drive, Little Rock. Tract 69, Little Rock Industrial District, $3,500,000.
Doyle W. Rogers, Jr.; Barbara Josephine Rogers Hoover; Doyle W. Rogers, Sr. And Josephine Ray Rogers Joint Revocable Trust to FW Holdings Research Properties, LLC; Karen Flake L2, Medical Plaza West, $3,355,682.
Womob Fresenius Little Rock, LLC., to SMBC Leasing And Finance, Inc., L1R, Fumic, $3,047,805.
Eagle Bank & Trust Company to Rogers River Holdings, LLC., L9RR, Maumelle Curve Business Park, $2,350,000.
Westwood Real Estate Development Company, LLC., to AA Properties, LLC., Valley Crest Court, Little Rock. L33, Valley Falls Estates Phase IV; L34R, Valley Falls Estates Replat, $1,850,000.
ZTB Development Co, LLC., to Keltner Properties Corp., 15620 (a.k.a. 15616) Alexander Road, Alexander. L1, PBGH (Alexander) Replat-Town Of Alexander, $1,396,760.
John Downes; Elizabeth Downes to Roderick Romilly; Shirley Romilly; The Rod And Shirley Romilly Living Trust, L14 B57, Pleasant Valley, $1,225,000.
Riverside Bank to James Raney Cain; Leslie Ann Cain, 5421 Hawthorne Road, Little Rock. L6 B9, Newton, $1,200,000.
A. Wycliff Nisbet, Jr.; Alexis Nisbet Reid; Alexis O. Nisbet; Adam D. Reid to Mary Ruth Stewart; Trenton Lee Stewart, 1729 N. Spruce St., Little Rock. Ls40-41, Cliffewood, $854,500.
Robert T. Deton; Amanda W. Denton to Mimi Myer Hurst; Mimi Myer Hurst Trust Ls88-89, Shadowlawn, $740,000.
Hartness Construction Company, Inc., to Marcus Jones; Carrie J. Jones, 4 Corlay Drive, Little Rock. L14 B66, Chenal Valley, $639,000.
Michael F. Kuhn; Jamie Kuhn to Derrick Surratt; Viola Surratt, 109 Jacob Court, Little Rock. L33 B15, The Villages Of Wellington, $630,000.
Jemeca Edwards; Jemeca Edwards Revocable Trust to Joshua W. Neal; Hollyann Neal, 14106 Overcreek Pass, Little Rock. L4 B18, Woodlands Edge, $610,000.
Gloria Gary Futrell; Gloria Gary Futrell Revocable Trust to Michael Sizemore, L11 B1, Chardeaux Court, $610,000.
Philip S. Anderson to Jake T. King; Margaret L. King, 4716 Crestwood Drive, Little Rock. L33, Cliffewood, $600,000.
Dale J. Roberts; Lisa Marie Roberts; Tracey Roberts; Donna Ruth Gilbert (dec’d); Kellie Gilbert (dec’d) to Phuc Pham; Dung Thi Lai, 207 Lake Valley Drive, Maumelle. L50 B6, Maumelle Valley Estates, $597,000.
Ronald Mark Curtis; Cynthia A. Curtis; Curtis Family Trust to Bharatbhai Hamirani; Mina B. Hamirani, L6 B19, Woodlands Edge, $555,000.
Jake King; Margaret M. King to Byron Nicholas Wilkes, 5116 P St., Little Rock. L21 B3, McGehee, $550,000.
JWJ Investments, LLC., to Aziz Lalani; Rahim Matani. L6 & Tract A, Phillips, $550,000.
Downen Rental Properties, Inc., to Abwein Village Retail, LLC., Blk 31, CO Brack; Pt NW 18-1N-12W, $550,000.
Ronnie Hines; Debra Hines; Gregory S. Harrington; DeLinda A. Harrington, 214 Lake Valley Drive, Maumelle. L51 B12, Maumelle Valley Estates, $525,000.
Liberty Enterprise Group, LLC., to Atlas Ventures, LLC., 5120 W. 65th St., Little Rock. L1R, SM Thom Replat-Cresthills/Leigh And Butler Acres, $525,000.
Ollie Jack Hartsell, III to Ryan Michael Kiernan, 7100 Beck Road, Little Rock. L1R, O. Jack Hartsell, III Inc. Replat, $499,999.
Peter Michael Nelson; Melanie Nelson to Wyze Buy & Hold, LLC., L24, Robinwood Unrecorded $496,000.
James Bryan Dunlap; Kelley M. Dunlap; Dunlap Living Trust to Chad Taylor; Hayley Taylor, L30 B16, Chenal Valley, $480,000.
Randy James Construction Company, Inc., to Derek Hollowoa; Brooke Hollowoa, 40 Copper Circle, Little Rock. L68 B2, Copper Run Phase III, $468,000.
Sam M. Richardson, III; Sara Miller Richardson; Richardson Family Revocable Trust to John Andrew Richardson, 615 Epernay Place, Little Rock. L7 B78, Chenal Valley, $451,400.
Robert Leacock; Stefanie Leacock to Alyssa Farmer; Daniel Binder, 120 Crystal Court, Little Rock. L3 B17, Midland Hills, $450,000.
Darlene Lackey to Alex Lee Winfrey; Julie Winfrey, 11809 Timber Creek Road, North Little Rock. Pt NW SW 30-3N-12W, $445,000.
Susan Jeter to Thomas N. Rose, Jr.; Thomas N. Rose, Jr., Trust No. 1, 224 Schoolwood Lane, Cammack Village. L25, Jefferson Heights-Cammack Village, $430,000.
Karen Leigh Dinger; Michael Scott Dinger to Katie Elizabeth Keese; David Thomas Clayton, 6 Deer Valley Cove, Maumelle. L58 B6, Maumelle Valley Estates, $429,900.
Michael F. Weiner; Kimberly A. Weiner; The Weiner Family Revocable Living Trust to Amelia Barnes, 14 Perdido Circle, Little Rock. L142, St. Charles, $412,500.
Ian Hinkler; Noressa Kennedy Hinkler to Jake L. Johnson; Joyce M. Johnson, 104 Bouriese Circle, Maumelle. L1053, The Country Club Of Arkansas, $412,000.
Jacob E. Hall to William C. McKinney, Jr.; Alice J. McKinney; The McKinney Family Trust ,5 Saffron Circle, Little Rock. L41 B2, Parkside At Wildwood, $395,000.
Nadia Davignon to Brady Cox; Madison Cox, 12607 Meadows Edge Lane, Little Rock. L2 B7, Woodlands Edge, $390,000.
Edward Turner Womble to Matthew Harmon; Kristen Brooke Thomsen, 25 Inverness Circle, Little Rock. L10 B12, Pleasant Valley, $386,000.
Derek R. Taylor; Kristine K. Taylor to Craig Bryan Watson; Michele Brown Watson, 45 Duquesne Drive, Little Rock. L119 B48, Chenal Valley, $384,900.
Benjamin H. Krain; Summer E. Krain to Daniel Patton Russell; Jessica Leigh Russell, 23 Blue Mountain Drive, Maumelle. L37, Edgewater, $380,000.
Commissioner In Circuit to Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB, 8 Norfork Cove, Maumelle. L24R, Riverland Heights Single Family Detached, $380,000.
Menco Construction, LLC., to Elvin Zapata; Nagenena Zapata, 9833 Meadow Creek Drive, Sherwood. L4, Millers Glen Phase 6, $379,900.
Virginia Boheler; Lutheran S. Boheler (dec’d) to Austin Carter; Mandy Carter, 9423 Bridge Creek Road, Sherwood. L47, Bridge Creek Farms, $375,000.
Krisoula B. Faller; Virginia L. Branting Revocable Trust to Charles Stein; Mary Kathryn Stein L8 B31, Park View, $375,000.
Tyler Diven Osborne; Sara Elizabeth Osborne; Sara Elizabeth Richmond to Barkley Stuart Thompson; Hill Benson Thompson, 8600 Evergreen Drive, Little Rock. L182, Leawood Manor 2nd, $375,000.
Jared L. Averitt; Jennifer L. Averitt to Marlon Johnson; Tiffany Johnson, 10 Windsor Valley Court, North Little Rock. L19 B7, Windsor Valley, $374,900.
Peggy D. Kerin; Peggy D. Kerin Revocable Trust to Dennis Anderson; Victoria Anderson L174, St. Charles, $372,000.
Tommy Pruss; Sharon Pruss to David S. Blackburn; Joann D. Blackburn, 3108 Southern Cove, Cabot. L15, Westbrook, $365,000.
Michael A. Pew; Tracey L. Pew to Kodi Liddell, 134 Cabanel Drive Maumelle. L1216, The Quarters-The Country Club Of Arkansas PRD Phase 20, $361,525.
Steven Anthony Nichols; Natasha Nichols to Quentin Connell; Jennie Connell, 6500 Jim Hall Road, Jacksonville. Pt SW 33-4N-11W, $355,000.
John Wright Construction Co, Inc., to Anjali A. Patel; Ajaykumar A. Patel; Trusha A. Patel, 76 Lucia Lane, Maumelle. L1682, The Country Club Of Arkansas Phase 24B, $352,294.
JV Choice Properties, LLC., to Carl Quist, 7922 Kanis Pines Drive, Little Rock. L43R, Kanis Village Phase I Replat, $350,000.
Jeffrey D. Hall to Kyler Depriest; Amanda Depriest, 336 W. Maddox Road, Jacksonville. Pt N/2 SE 6-3N-10W, $349,000.
Daniel Scott Construction, LLC., to Joseph Sitzman; Mackenzie Sitzman, 3024 Rock Ridge Drive, Sherwood. L64 B11, Stonehill Phase VI, $345,000.
Opal Investments, LLC., to Steven Matthew Saunders; Sarah Ann Saunders, 3103 Ridge Pass Road, Little Rock. L146, Echo Valley 1st, $340,000.
Henry C. Kelly to FW Holdings Research Properties, LLC; Karen Flake, L2, Medical Plaza West, $335,579.
James T. Kincannon; John A. Kincannon Revocable Trust to Barbara E. Stone, 11540 Crystal Bay Circle, North Little Rock. L1 Blk N, Riverbend On The Arkansas River, $325,000.
Brennan Barkley; Sarah Taylor-Barkley to Emily Reams, 4209 B St., Little Rock. L9 B3, Pinehurst, $325,000.
John Edward Murphy to Luke Reilly; Haley Reilly, 2415 Blackwood Road, Little Rock. L83, Kingwood Place, $322,500.
Jeffery Ryan Mack; Joana Marie Mack to Jason Williams; Leshala Denise Williams, 14 Cherryhill Cove, Little Rock. L39 B4, Cherry Creek, $320,000.
Graham Smith Construction, LLC., to Mark Galen Johnson; Nancy Lynn Johnson, 28 Saffron Circle, Little Rock. L21 B3, Parkside At Wildwood, $315,000.
Jennifer Jones to Eric McCaskey, 710 N. Harrison St., Little Rock. Ls15-16 B16, Lincoln Park, $315,000.
Brett Michael Harris to Prathyusha Bagam; Vijay Bhaskar Hari, 4110 Forest Dale Drive, Little Rock. L18, Charleston Heights Phase I, $310,000.
Carla Price; Leah Hobson to Lindsey Nicole Hatfield; David Andrew Hatfield, 6931 Park Meadows Drive, Sherwood. L38 B2, Gap Creek, $310,000.
Osiris Gamiochipi to Shelbe Sullivan; Patrick Barnett, Jr., 10510 Sardis Road, Mabelvale. Ls9-10 B36, Town Of Mabelvale, $305,000.
Stephen Bradley Weeks; Lori Weeks to Mike Wojtkowski; Tammy Wojtkowski, 11 Saint Thomas Drive, Maumelle. L6, St Thomas 2nd, $305,000.
Michele R. Hutchison to Kevin Patrick Waltermire; Rebecca Liegh Bona, 3412 I St., Little Rock. Ls7-9 B6, East Pulaski Heights, $300,000.
Meagan Elizabeth Davis to Jordan Patterson Johnson, Sr.; Angela Staley Johnson; The PKS Trust, 223 N. Palm St., Little Rock. L26 B7, Elmhurst, $299,000.
Lee Butler Jackson; Pamela Gazette Jackson to Barlo Ross Hardin, II, 2920 Youngwood Road, Little Rock. L473, Kingwood Place, $298,500.
Graham Smith Construction, LLC., to Angela Johnson, 30 Saffron Circle, Little Rock. L20 B3, Parkside At Wildwood Phase II, $290,000.
Daniel M. Rankin; Kimberley A. Rankin to Martha McWilliams, 225 E. B Ave., North Little Rock. L6 B10, Park Hill NLR, $285,000.
Randy James Construction Company, Inc., to Susanna L. Chance, L12 B3, Parkside At Wildwood, $279,000....
With Another Sept. 11 Passed Lets Dedicate Ourselves To Faith Without Fear In Kansas And World Kansas Reflector
With Another Sept. 11 Passed, Let’s Dedicate Ourselves To Faith Without Fear In Kansas And World – Kansas Reflector https://digitalalabamanews.com/with-another-sept-11-passed-lets-dedicate-ourselves-to-faith-without-fear-in-kansas-and-world-kansas-reflector/
Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Inas Younis was born in Mosul, Iraq, and emigrated to the United States as a child. She is a writer and commentator who has been widely published in various magazines, websites and anthologies.
Twenty-one years later, I can still recall with faithful clarity where I was that morning. The disintegration of the aircraft through the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, marked a terrible loss. Not just a loss of life, which was devastating enough, but also the loss of sanctuary and order.
In time, I came to the realization that terrorism is not just an event but the commencement of an insidious process. It is a kind of biological warfare designed to alter the expression of a nation’s genetic code.
We only feel safe to the extent that there is some rhyme or reason to why and how violence occurs. When violence of this magnitude takes place outside of a war zone, our instinct is to take actions in response to our worst fears.
As an American Muslim of my generation, the actions of those 19 hijackers altered my life in ways that I am still struggling to understand. It took me longer than most to register the implications. I had my own personal challenges at the time. I was nine months pregnant with my youngest son, and my middle son had just been diagnosed with a serious neurological condition. I was, for a whole host of personal reasons, already in survival mode. Initially, I tried to seek consolation in my faith, until that too began to crumble under the weight of so much interrogation and public scrutiny.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Muslims were forced to evolve in complicated ways. Many rushed to the podium promising a protestant-style revolution. Others packaged the rhetoric of female emancipation with everything from terrorism control to Islamic reform.
But these self-appointed leaders failed to have any genuine impact because they had almost no grounding in religious tradition or any understanding of the people they professed to represent.
Meanwhile, the demonization of Muslims continued. Haunted by Islamophobia, we scrambled to demonstrate our humanity to fellow Americans. Social justice became a serious rallying cry in the Muslim community. The traditionally conservative gravitated left, which was understandable considering that Democrats, historically the champions of social justice causes, opened their arms to the Muslim community in ways that made us want to “burn our bras” while still clinging to our headscarves.
I struggled with this embrace. I found the idea of empowerment through an admission of powerlessness theoretically problematic, a kind of Catch-22. For me, the plot was lost when the phrase “moderate Muslim” quickly devolved into a kind of moral and political agnosticism.
But the shifting political landscape that started with 9/11 and continued up until the Trump presidency has forced many Muslims to press the fast forward button on what should have otherwise been a decades-long process. We found ourselves scrambling to define who we are, with religion as a kind of hurried footnote.
The shifting political landscape that started with 9/11 and continued up until the Trump presidency has forced many Muslims to press the fast forward button on what should have otherwise been a decades-long process. We found ourselves scrambling to define who we are, with religion as a kind of hurried footnote.
– Inas Younis
We skipped the growing pains of slowly steadily defining ourselves and our community, as so many other minorities in America had done in the past, and to paraphrase novelist Toni Morrison, we kept explaining ourselves and our reason for being, over and over again.
While my faith was being weaponized by extremists and mischaracterized by the news media, Muslims labored to disabuse others of the misconceptions surrounding our faith. But despite our efforts, people continued to think the worst of us.
This was frustrating but not surprising. An extremely profitable industry was evolving around anti-Muslim political activity. A study titled “Fear, Inc.” revealed that 40 million dollars from eight foundations was going to a small network of misinformation experts, including Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson.
Their anti-Muslim rhetoric was then disseminated by a host of grassroots organizers and activists, including Brigitte Gabriel, David Horowitz and Pamela Geller, whose claim to fame was a series of bus ads with slogans like “Yesterday’s moderate is today’s headline.”
This heavily funded enterprise continued to fuel the delusion that moderate Muslims were not speaking out against extremism because they were concealing their true identities as radicals. This of course was not only absurd but demoralizing. For many of us, speaking out against extremists had become a full-time job.
I was routinely cross-examined for not speaking out enough. It was dehumanizing and exhausting. In fact, on one occasion, I spoke out so passionately at a rally near the World War I memorial in downtown Kansas City that I ended up hyperventilating. I read the remainder of my speech sitting down, clasping a paper bag.
At some point, the apology tour had to come to an end. At some point, it dawned on me that I too was acting in response to my worst fears; that my own genetic code was being altered by the strain of so much gaslighting. It dawned on me that enemies of liberty wanted “moderate” Muslims persecuted to the extent that the values of life and liberty would be reduced to abstractions, which no longer applied to us.
The American model is precious to me. It’s a place where faith and freedom not only survive but can also thrive.
But as an American who aspires to lead her life with intellectual honesty, I cannot help but wonder if the rise in hate crime, the deep partisan divides, the extremism taking root in our homeland and the ensuing culture war, was not precisely what the foreign enemies of America were determined to inspire with their reign of terror. It has always been the strategy of foreign engineers to reinforce their malevolent view of humanity by proving that people, even the freest people on earth, will rush toward illiberalism when properly threatened.
When Trump’s signature campaign issue of banning Muslims and creating a Muslim registry made the headlines, I opted for moral clarity — not moral panic. As an heir to the American experiment, I was not going to allow my freedom to be conditioned on the actions of foreign governments or any group of people.
To be American meant that we judge one another as individuals, not as members of some tribe. We judge based on actions, not the actions of others. As Americans, we don’t believe in collective punishment or privilege. To be American means we are not bound by herd, but by a commitment to principles.
Ironically, America remains the one place where my faith was allowed to flourish. Many Muslims, myself included, only discovered our identities after we leaving Muslim majority countries. I grew up in Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, where secularism, not religion, was forcibly enforced and shoved down our throats.
America was our first introduction to faith without fear, and for that I will forever be grateful.
God bless America.
Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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Opinion | The GOP's American Psychosis Didn't Start With Trump. It Won't End With Him Either.
Opinion | The GOP's American Psychosis Didn't Start With Trump. It Won't End With Him, Either. https://digitalalabamanews.com/opinion-the-gops-american-psychosis-didnt-start-with-trump-it-wont-end-with-him-either/
This piece has been adapted from “American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy,” by David Corn.
Nelson Rockefeller stared into a sea of hate.
Standing at the podium of the Republican National Convention of 1964, the 56-year-old patrician politician who symbolized dynastic American power and wealth was enveloped by waves of anger emanating from the party faithful. Delegates and activists assembled in the Cow Palace on the outskirts of San Francisco hurled boos and catcalls at the New York governor.
He was the enemy. His crime: representing the liberal Republican establishment that, to the horror of many in the audience, had committed two unpardonable sins. First, in the aftermath of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, these turncoat, weak-kneed Republicans had dared to acknowledge the need for big government programs to address the problems and challenges of an industrialized and urbanized United States. Second, they had accepted the reality that the Cold War of the new nuclear age demanded a nuanced national security policy predicated on a carefully measured combination of confrontation and negotiation.
Rockefeller’s crime: representing the liberal Republican establishment that, to the horror of many in the audience, had committed two unpardonable sins.
Worse, Rockefeller had tried to thwart the hero of the moment: Barry Goldwater, the archconservative senator from Arizona, the libertarian decrier of government, the tough-talking scolder of America’s moral rot, and the hawkish proponent of military might who had advocated the limited use of nuclear arms.
Rockefeller, a grandson of billionaire robber baron John D. Rockefeller, had competed for the presidential nomination against Goldwater, but his campaign had been subsumed by the right wing’s takeover of the party. Still, at this late stage, on July 14, the second night of Goldwater’s coronation, Rockefeller and other moderate Republican dead-enders were praying for a last-minute political miracle that would rescue their party from the conservative fringe — the kooks, as they were widely called. This evening they were taking one final stab at keeping those kooks at bay.
Clenching his square jaw, Rockefeller had hit the stage with an immediate task: to speak in favor of a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform denouncing extremism, specifically that of the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the ultraconservative, red-baiting John Birch Society. The platform committee, controlled by Goldwater loyalists, had rejected this resolution. Yet the moderates hadn’t given up. On the opening night of the convention, Gov. Mark Hatfield of Oregon had declared, “There are bigots in this nation who spew forth their venom of hate. They parade under hundreds of labels, including the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society. They must be overcome.”
That was not the predominant sentiment within the Cow Palace. Hatfield was met with a barrage of hisses and boos. He later called the response “frightening” and reflected, “It spoke to me not merely of strong political disagreement, but of a spiteful kind of enmity waiting to be unleashed to destroy anyone seen as the enemy — domestic or foreign.”
The delegates were strident anticommunists — many feared evil reds were subverting the government and the nation’s most revered institutions — and for them, Goldwater was the leader of a do-or-die crusade against leftism. They would eagerly back a resolution reviling commies. And though the Grand Old Party — founded a century earlier by antislavery politicians — was now actively moving to court racist Southern voters opposed to desegregation and civil rights, they might disavow the Klan. But including the John Birch Society in this lineup of extremists to be deplored was a not-subtle-at-all dig at Goldwater and his fanatic followers. Everyone in the room knew what — and who — this resolution was aimed at.
Founded in 1958 by Robert Welch, a onetime candy manufacturer, the John Birch Society was the most prominent exponent of right-wing conspiratorial paranoia. It proselytized that the commies were everywhere, in secret control of the U.S. government and subverting many of America’s most cherished organizations: schools, churches, the media and PTAs. Though many Americans might have looked upon it as a fringe outfit — the kookiest of the kooks — the John Birch Society and its members were mightily assisting the Goldwater effort as volunteers and funders.
The Goldwater zealots in the Cow Palace — a project of FDR’s Works Progress Administration originally built as a livestock pavilion — were sure as hell not going to let Rocky and those establishment Republicans vilify and ostracize this crucial component of the Goldwater coalition.
It was late in the evening when Rockefeller hit the rostrum for his allotted five minutes. As he had walked toward the stage, people threw paper at him.
At least he was now showing the world the true nature of this new Goldwater-bewitched GOP.
As soon as Rockefeller proposed adding the anti-Bircher amendment to the platform, the crowd shouted, “No! No!” A rumbling of boos resounded through the hall. Rockefeller pushed on: “It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrine —” Another cascade of jeers interrupted him. He smiled and waited for it to subside. At least he was now showing the world the true nature of this new Goldwater-bewitched GOP. In Goldwater’s command center, top campaign aides dispatched a message to their delegates: Knock it off.
A defiant Rockefeller continued, assailing “any doctrinaire militant minority, whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan, or Bircher.” The booing got louder. Rockefeller noted that Eisenhower, addressing the convention two hours earlier, had called on the GOP to reject radicalism of the left and right. He quoted himself — from a speech he had given a year before — warning that the Republican Party “is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed, highly disciplined” minority that was “wholly alien to the sound and honest conservatism.” More boos. He was clearly referring to the Birchers, and he urged his fellow Republicans to heed “this extremist threat” and “its danger to the party.”
As veteran political correspondent Theodore White, who was present, later put it, Rockefeller “was the man who called them kooks, and now, like kooks, they responded to prove his point,” and the “kooks” were “hating and screaming and reveling in their own frenzy.” A call for reasonableness, a plea to spurn the paranoid, irrational, and conspiratorial tenets of the far right — this was not what Goldwater’s people wanted to hear. Some reporters feared Goldwater supporters were about to storm the stage and physically attack the governor.
Maintaining a wry and cocky smile, Rockefeller told the audience, “This is still a free country, ladies and gentlemen,” and he condemned the “infiltration and takeover of established political parties by Communist and Nazi methods.” He added, “Some of you don’t like to hear it … but it’s the truth.” He declared, “The Republican Party must repudiate these people.”
The Republican Party — those then in control of it — thought otherwise. On a voice vote, the nays overwhelmed. “God save the Union,” Sen. Tom Kuchel, a moderate Republican, remarked.
About noon on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump took the stage at a “Save America” rally on the Ellipse, south of the White House, and surveyed a crowd seething with rage and animated by paranoia. Trump had lost his bid for re-election to former Vice President Joe Biden two months earlier. Yet in the intervening weeks, he had insisted that the results were fraudulent and that he had been denied a second term by a nefarious plot with a global reach.
Trump had long been a purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories, and, in defeat, he was not going to stop. His volatile presidency had been marked by his never-ending promotion — through tweets and other statements — of dark, misleading, and false claims: The Deep State was out to destroy him. The investigations of Moscow’s attack on the 2016 election were a plot to subvert his presidency. News outlets were an unrelenting enemy conniving to crush him. Trump had painted a Manichean picture of the world for his supporters, asserting an array of sinister forces was bent on sabotaging his presidency. The 2020 election was the latest chapter in this saga, and during this post-election period, Trump had fed the paranoid right and his fellow Republicans outlandishly bogus claims of a stolen election.
Millions of Americans believed him — including many far-right extremists: white supremacists, Christian nationalists (who thought the United States should be identified and organized as a Christian state), neo-Nazis, and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Trump had long been a purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories, and, in defeat, he was not going to stop.
Certainly, among the people gathered for this rally — which was organized by a bevy of right-wing outfits controlled by Trump backers working in close coordination with the White House — were Republicans and Trump supporters who did not identify with QAnoners, Nazis, Christian bigots, and racists. These outraged people simply bought Trump’s guff about a rigged election. But hate and paranoia — nurtured by Trump — pervaded the air. Members of self-styled right-wing militias had come to town ready for action, responding to Trump’s tweet of December 19: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” One of these groups, the Oath Keepers, stashed weaponry at a Comfort Inn outside Washington, should Trump call on ...
Comment: Banning Books Is No Way To Prepare Young Minds | HeraldNet.com
Comment: Banning Books Is No Way To Prepare Young Minds | HeraldNet.com https://digitalalabamanews.com/comment-banning-books-is-no-way-to-prepare-young-minds-heraldnet-com/
By Stephen L. Carter / Bloomberg Opinion
Banned books are back in the news. This time around they include not only the usual suspects (Toni Morrison, “The Diary of Anne Frank”) but also the Bible (“any variation”) which, we’re told, was written by “Men who lived a long time ago.” All are on the list of volumes plucked from library and classroom shelves in the Keller Independent School District in Texas, where a newly elected board of education has decided to move every book that’s been recently challenged, even by a single person, to the library’s “parental consent area.”
This is not, technically, book banning. Pending the implementation of a new policy on how to handle challenges, the volumes can still be accessed, as long as the students have a parent’s permission. Still, I’d suggest that the district is handling a genuine concern in the worst way possible.
I’m against book burning. Er, banning. In principle, I suspect that just about everyone is. But the instinct to keep certain tomes out of the hands of the young is ever-present. It stems from the same source as the equally ever-present instinct to keep dangerous ideas away from adults.
A lack of trust in potential readers.
Keeping truth from the masses: The journalist Ian Leslie, in his excellent book on the importance of curiosity, argues that popular accounts of Galileo’s battle with the Catholic Church misunderstand the moral of the story: “It wasn’t that the church was incurious about the true nature of the cosmos; it’s that they believed such knowledge should remain the exclusive province of those who were able to handle it; that is, people like themselves.”
In particular, the church was angry that Galileo published his findings not in Latin but in Italian. Everybody had access.
Oversimplification of a complex event? Perhaps. But the claim also states a literal truth. In order to condemn Galileo’s views, the inquisitors first had to read them. Their own minds obviously weren’t changed; but they worried that others would be. They distrusted potential readers.
I’ve long argued that when we speak of what adults can access, acting on this mistrust — even in so high-sounding a cause as protection against “misinformation” — represents an affront to democracy. But a degree of worry makes sense when we’re speaking of young children of impressionable mind. How we handle that distrust is what leads to so many controversies.
With kids, our sensible habit is to increase their knowledge bit by bit. We don’t teach calculus in kindergarten. (Though maybe we should.) And few if any parents want their children to read every book that sits somewhere in the house, say nothing of the school.
‘De-selecting’ books: In general, I trust parents to make judgments about what their own children should be exposed to. The practical problem is implementation. The public school should certainly respect my desire to shield my own kids from a particular book. But my concerns about what my own children should read is hardly an argument to remove the offending volume from the curriculum. Certainly my fears shouldn’t be enough to force the school — in the current argot — to “de-select” the book.
Nowadays, schools are pressured from across the spectrum. There are religious parents who want to control how sexuality is presented to their kids, there are parents of color who worry that their children will come across offensive words, there’s even a librarian who was fired for allegedly burning books by Donald Trump and Ann Coulter.
But although parents should take an interest in what their children read, Keller’s new board of education has the solution exactly backward. In a library the default should be availability, not unavailability. No special archive requiring parental permission should exist. Parents should have to opt children out, not in, perhaps via a digital popup during the checkout process. Absent a parental choice, however, children should be permitted and even encouraged to wander the shelves library as they please.
Feeding kids’ curiousity: The young are naturally inquisitive. We might call them curiosity machines. Leslie quotes the psychologist Michelle Chouinard: “Asking questions is a central part of what it means to be a child.” When they’re small, they ask for information. As they grow older, “their questions become more probing”; they want explanations. Even in our days of diminished interest in books, a library remains a place where the young should be free to give rein to their natural and proper desire to know.
True, no library can include everything. Choices have to be made, and they will always reflect the political culture of the era. I remember from my own youth the many patriotic books lining school shelves. I also recall how a massive volume grandiloquently titled “The Human Body: What It is and How it Works” turned out to offer little information on how babies are made. Even the classics were often bowdlerized to avoid any mention of sex; an act of literary vandalism of which I was unaware until college, when I read the unabridged versions.
Such choices, however well intentioned, represented an effort to restrict young people to a particular view of what matters, even of what they should think or believe. But a library’s job is exactly the opposite; to expand not limit children’s understanding of the world and its possibilities.
Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Yale University, he is author, most recently, of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”
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Joel Keith Roberson https://digitalalabamanews.com/joel-keith-roberson/
IRON CITY, TENNESSEE — Joel Keith Roberson of Iron City, TN passed away September 12, 2022 at Laurelwood Healthcare Rehabilitation Center in Jackson, TN at the age of 62 following an extended illness.
Keith was born January 7, 1960 in Florence, AL to Elvis and Eva Mae Butler Roberson who preceded him. His brother, Kenneth Roberson and wife, Gina, also preceded him in death. He was also preceded by his stepmother, Jewel Dean Hubbard Rhodes Roberson.
Keith worked for several years for Union Switch and Signal Railroad all over the United States. Keith loved animals, working in the yard, and relaxing by the creek at Elvis’s place. He never met a Coke or Dr. Pepper he didn’t like, though he seldom finished one. Although he claimed to be an Auburn fan, he would root for Alabama (Kenneth, Nancy, and Jackie’s team) and Tennessee (Michael’s team). He loved his family more than anything in the world.
Those left to remember Keith are his brother, Michael Roberson (Sandy Freeman); his sisters, Nancy Roberson Gray and Jackie Roberson Wallace (Roy); stepsister, Glenda Rhodes; seven nieces and seven nephews, as well as many more family and friends who loved Keith no matter what.
Pallbearers will be Keith’s family and friends.
Graveside services will be held on Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. at Railroad Cemetery in Iron City, TN with Dennis Hanvey officiating. Shackelford Funeral Directors of Wayne County assisting the family.
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Its All Magic And Other Enchanting Quotes Of The Week
‘It’s All Magic’ And Other Enchanting Quotes Of The Week https://digitalalabamanews.com/its-all-magic-and-other-enchanting-quotes-of-the-week/
“This defendant surreptitiously injected heart-stopping drugs into patient IV bags, decimating the Hippocratic oath.” — U.S. Attorney Chad E. Meacham, describing the charges against Dr. Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr., 59, who was arrested Wednesday. Police say Ortiz compromised IV bags for at least 10 patients. (Thursday, The Dallas Morning News)
“It’s always warmer, and you’re outside more. There’s the way we dress and the Southern sweetness that comes off as possibly flirting. … The next thing you know, you’re out in the parking lot at lunch and bad things are going on.” — Tommy Habeeb, the Dallas resident and former host of the reality television show Cheaters, presenting his theory on why Dallas topped a list of “most unfaithful cities” in the U.S., according to an analysis by a U.K.-based dating website. (Thursday, The Dallas Morning News)
“It’s all magic. We use the same principles in aerospace. At some point the magic has to happen.” — Joel Lagrone, an aerospace engineer at Lockheed Martin, who will be the new Santa Claus at NorthPark Center, on explaining flying reindeer to children. (Thursday, The Dallas Morning News)
“I’ve done a lot of research on this, and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen.” — Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, in a reversal of his campaign message two days after winning the primary. (Thursday, Fox News)
“President Trump had solved this, and Biden decimated everything that President Trump had done to fix the border. This is Biden’s fault. Pure and simple.” — Gov. Greg Abbott on the border crisis. (Tuesday, Fox News)
“There is no truth in this coverage. The advice being circulated is that all funerals booked for the 19th September proceed as arranged.” — Brendan Day, secretary of the U.K.’s Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities, responding to rumors that the government had canceled all private funerals on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral. (Tuesday, The Associated Press)
“You took a lifetime of memories away from me. … He will never walk me down the aisle. He will never meet my kids. He will never meet my future husband. … He’s gone, … I forgive you, Jaime.” — Shelby Houston, daughter of slain Mesquite police officer Richard Houston II, speaking to Jaime Jaramillo, who was convicted of murdering her father. (Thursday, The Dallas Morning News)
“It’s exactly what we dreamt of … Look at all the children.” — Nancy Best, a longtime Klyde Warren Park board member, while children and families played in the water at the official opening of a water feature that bears her name. The $10 million interactive fountain is boasted to be the only one of its kind in the country. (Wednesday, The Dallas Morning News)
“Earth is now our only shareholder.” — Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, 83, in a letter announcing that he and his family had given away the multibillion-dollar outdoor apparel business, transferring ownership to a trust and a nonprofit organization focused on combating climate change. (Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal)
“Definitely from Austin!!!” — TikTok user robertm7575, one of hundreds who commented on a viral video of a woman swimming in the San Antonio River along the River Walk. Swimming is illegal there. No word on the identity of the swimmer nor whether she suffered fines or dysentery. (Monday, TikTok)
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.
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In Avoiding Extremism, Dallas Gets It Right https://digitalalabamanews.com/in-avoiding-extremism-dallas-gets-it-right/
Like many North Texans, I am amazed — and frustrated and angry — at the craziness we’re witnessing in Washington D.C. and many parts of the country. The extremes on both ends of the political spectrum have produced paralysis and division, leaving sanity in the dust.
I see a political system working wonderfully for both national political parties. The extreme positions and casting the other as the “enemy” are great for raising money. But that system and those parties are not working for you and me.
Revered institutions that we once trusted and still need have been reduced to little more than political machinations. In many places in the country, we see business leaders melt in the face of political pressure, and schools, at every level, becoming little more than social experiments run by political activists.
Against this backdrop, I am pretty happy with where I live and have raised my family. While being far from perfect or totally inoculated from the extremes we see in other parts of the country, we seem to be more the exception than the rule today.
So, I want to share some observations, and a hope, about our part of the world.
Soon, the Dallas region will be the third largest in the nation. Even though we don’t have a lot of mountains or an ocean or other geographic reasons for existing, people and businesses are moving here in big numbers. According to data from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, more than 8 million people now live in our area.
And with as much diversity as any place in the nation — more than 230 languages are spoken here — it seems we focus better on the worth of a person than the group they represent. We value each other. People still count more than politics.
We have gotten to this point because people and businesses take a pragmatic and balanced approach. We aren’t a city of extremes. Right here in the middle of the continent, we are a city of common ground. Instead of gridlock, you see a “can do” spirit.
Police
As an example of this pragmatic approach, there is an interesting comparison with our current mayor, Eric Johnson, and me. We come from different parties, but in the most fundamental responsibility of local government, there are amazing parallels.
Across the country, we are seeing politics and extreme agendas trump responsibility. Let’s be honest, “defund the police” and all that goes with it is political posturing, not a serious policy approach.
When I was mayor (back in the “dark ages”), we substantially increased police resources, expanding the force by 20%, the largest increase by a city of any size in decades. We saw the largest drop in crime in the nation, and we saw our city radically improve relative to other major U.S. cities.
Today, Johnson is similarly increasing police resources. At a time when many cities led by extreme policies are seeing dramatic increases in crime, particularly violent crime, we stand nearly alone in witnessing declining crime.
I took great pride in watching our current police chief, Eddie García, testify recently in Washington D.C. with other large-city chiefs. While those other chiefs were dancing on eggshells, trying to be politically correct, he was no-nonsense. To paraphrase him: We are going to do our job, do it well with the highest standards and focus on reducing crime in Dallas, period.
Schools
I’m passionate about education. Schools across the country, from elementary to those of higher learning, seem more interested in promoting social agendas than educating our kids. Meanwhile, other countries (read China) are reinforcing the fundamentals of a future world: math, communications, science, technology.
Losing focus on the real function of schools cannot end well.
Except for a few isolated suburbs, the divisions between parents and schools seem to be much less dramatic here. Educators seem to be much more interested in improving education rather than conducting social experiments.
Public-private cooperation
While there is always a natural friction between the public and private sector, they actually work pretty well together in North Texas.
Think of the impact of Klyde Warren Park, an infrastructure project made possible by significant private donations. Think of the AT&T Performing Arts Center, substantially funded by private donations. Think of the city and private sector working together to change the operations of the Dallas Zoo, and the difference that has made. And think of the convention center hotel, which needed public impetus but has put our hospitality industry back on top, with private sector jobs and an explosion of private hotel business, in spite of the naysayers at the time.
It is amusing to see business leaders across the country myopically following extreme political agendas. Many sway back and forth, reacting to small, extreme constituencies.
Here, by contrast, I know a CEO that runs a high-profile Fortune 500 company. He makes decisions based on real economics and a future perspective devoid of politics and a Wall Street crowd ignorant of the importance of long-term capital investment.
He takes a reasonable, but rare, approach to the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement. ESG is a corporate philosophy that focuses companies on environmental and sustainability issues. It’s a viewpoint that has merit, but has been overtaken by politics and special-interest agendas. This CEO ignores all that and uses common sense, making real improvements but tying them to the needs and performance of his business and its people. His company is a leader in diversity too, not because there are television cameras around but because it’s the right thing to do and it makes sense. And he is investing locally because he knows that makes the most sense for our country and his business.
My sense is that he is pretty representative of our business leaders here. They don’t knee-jerk to the political extremes, different from what we see of many business leaders on the coasts.
And while we can easily criticize the local media, I think it’s different here. Think of a large East Coast newspaper that penalizes its staff for even thinking of opposing views. Here, we still have folks who will actually engage and encourage real, thoughtful debate. (They may even publish this!) In office, I often disagreed with journalists, but there was never a time the local press didn’t thoughtfully hear me out.
Working together
I play golf with a retired surgeon. Politically, we agree on almost nothing. In the close confines of a golf cart, we can spend four hours discussing, debating and arguing many issues, and laughing about the crazies on both our sides. At the end, though, we have enormous respect for each other, both wanting a great country and city that actually work, and we know we need to work together to accomplish that.
And this brings me to the hope I’d like to offer.
My hope is that we, here in North Texas, will continue to be pragmatic, figure out what works and actually put the interest of our neighbors ahead of political goals and personal agendas. That will be very different than we see elsewhere.
Tom Leppert was mayor of Dallas from 2007-2011 and former chairman/ CEO of The Turner Corporation, a general building company, and Kaplan Inc., an education provider. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.
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Canelo Álvarez Defeats Gennadiy Golovkin By Unanimous Decision
Canelo Álvarez Defeats Gennadiy Golovkin By Unanimous Decision https://digitalalabamanews.com/canelo-alvarez-defeats-gennadiy-golovkin-by-unanimous-decision/
How to watch Canelo Álvarez vs. Gennadiy Golovkin III
Canelo Alvarez, left, and Gennady Golovkin pose during a ceremonial weigh-in Friday in Las Vegas.
(John Locher / Associated Press)
Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez’s fight against Gennadiy Golovkin can be streamed on DAZN pay-per-view. You need either a $19.99 monthly subscription or a $149.99 yearly subscription to DAZN to have the ability to purchase the fight for an extra $64.99.
The pay-per-view portion of the event begins at 5 p.m. PDT. Preliminary bouts are scheduled to start at 1:45 p.m.
PPV.com is also carrying the event for $84.99. The event can also be purchased for $84.99 through cable and satellite operators in the United States.
DAZN has also partnered with Barstool Sports to provide an alternative broadcast.
Tickets are still available to attend the trilogy tilt in person at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Joe Hand Promotions has a complete list of bars and restaurants that will be carrying the fight across the country.
Fathom Events will be screening the PPV portion of the event in movie theaters across select markets in the United States.
Canelo Álvarez defeats Gennadiy Golovkin and thanks him ‘for three great fights’
Canelo Álvarez celebrates after defeating Gennadiy Golovkin in their super middleweight title fight in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
(John Locher / Associated Press)
LAS VEGAS — Canelo Álvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin, rivals for a half-decade atop the boxing world, dropped their gloves once the final bell sounded Saturday. They embraced in the center of the ring at T-Mobile Arena. They exchanged words. Golovkin kissed Álvarez on the cheek.
The animosity between the fighters, after squaring up for 36 rounds since 2017, abruptly had vanished.
“I told him, ‘Thank you for everything,’” Álvarez said in Spanish, “because we gave the fans three great fights.”
Álvarez, 32, wore a gold crown and a smile. He had Golovkin wait four years, until after the Kazakh’s 40th birthday, to complete their trilogy and he ended it with a convincing, unanimous-decision victory to remain the undisputed super-middleweight champion despite fighting with a broken left hand that he said will require surgery.
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Judges score Canelo Álvarez as clear winner
The trilogy has come to a close — Canelo Álvarez scores a unanimous decision win over Gennadiy Golovkin with scores of 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113.
Round 12: Golovkin tries to rally, but it likely isn’t enough
Round 12: After cruising through the first seven rounds, Golovkin continues to show the sense of urgency required to close the fight in style to pull off the upset. He needs a KO to deliver a stunner, but with each second that goes by, it becomes obvious it won’t be in the cards. Golovkin came on strong to finish the fight … but it just wasn’t enough. We go to the cards to get the official ruling.
Round 11: Golovkin tries to mount late rally
Round 11: Golovkin clearly knows he’s behind on the scorecards and desperately tries to kickstart his offense with several combinations. At 40, however, the proposition is a tall task. Canelo Álvarez uses his speed to dodge most of the barrage. Three minutes to go until the bitter rivalry reaches its conclusion.
Round 10: Golovkin lands more punches, Canelo gets cut over right eye
Round 10: The tit-for-tat battle picks up a bit more, as Golovkin is still able to fire off his pistol-like jab. The action begins to resemble the first two fights — even if it is a diet version.
A clash of heads occurs in the final seconds of the round. Referee Russell Mora rules it an accidental headbutt. Canelo’s face is starting to redden, and he has a cut over his right eye.
Round 9: Golovkin delivers his best round
Round 9: Golovkin uses the momentum from round eight to rock Canelo Álvarez several times with right hands. We have a fight all of a sudden!
GGG’s confidence is clearly alive — even though he ate uppercuts and right hands for his efforts. He has the best sequences of the fight and finally wins a round.
The big drama event is showing signs of life.
Round 8: Golovkin finally shows signs of life
Round 8: Did Golovkin just wake up? The action finally picks up and Golovkin forces the issue and lets his hands go. He has his best round of the fight and lands with mean intentions a handful of times. It’s a close round that you could make the argument Golovin won. But Canelo Álvarez is too quick with his counters and combinations. He does not appear to be in any danger.
Round 7: Canelo Álvarez continues to dominate
Round 7: Barring a knockout or a string of unforeseen knockdowns, there shouldn’t be a judging controversy in this one. Canelo Álvarez is increasingly distancing himself from all of the doubts from the first two fights — but it’s coming four years too late.
He wins the round again, albeit in unremarkable fashion. The flare and sizzle from the first two fights simply aren’t there.
Round 6: Golovkin deliver late punches, but they lack power
Round 6: Canelo Álvarez has outlanded Golovkin 25 to 11 in power punches through five rounds. Clearly a determined fighter after suffering his second career loss in May, Álvarez has been a hawk in the fight so far. Golovkin starts to muster offense with an uppercut in the final minute of the round.
But the debilitating jab he’s been famous for throughout his middleweight reign is nowhere to be found. If the first two fights had seesaw action, this has been a one-way swing so far. Álvarez again wins the round.
Round 5: Canelo Álvarez continues to control the bout
Round 5: As Golvkin’s face increasingly reddens, Canelo Álvarez starts attacking the body. Then toward the end of the round, he connects with a resounding right hand and left hook combination that shakes Golovkin — the best sequence so far from Álvarez in the fight.
It’s open season for Canelo so far. He is doing anything that he wants. You have to start wondering what is exactly is Golovkin’s gameplan. There really isn’t anything there. A shutout so far through five.
Round 4: Golovkin begins to press, but Canelo continues to bring more energy
Round 4: Canelo Álvarez is patiently marching forward and unleashing jabs and right hands. Halfway through the round, GGG begins to press the action a bit more, but there is no substantial offense.
Canelo notices the change of temp and counters with a big right hand that makes Golovkin reconsider plans. GGG fails to land anything of consequence, yet again. The fight is one-third complete and the drama is lacking so far.
Round 3: Canelo’s blows start to make an impact
Round 3: Canelo’s crushing left jab is beginning to make a mark on Golovkin’s forehead. Red hues begin to cover the Kazakh KO artist’s face. Canelo’s activity is simply stalling any offensive attack Golovkin had in mind. Golovkin’s animosity that had bubbled over the last four years simply is not on display so far. Surely age and deteriorating skills has something to due with that. Canelo is cruising through the first three rounds so far.
Round 2: Canelo Álvarez remains more active, but isn’t causing much damage
Round 2: Canelo lands a looping left hook 20 seconds into the round, which ends up being the best punch of the fight. Neither fighter is targeting the body. The head hunting continues from both sides as they trade jabs. The 40-year-old Golovkin is starting off slow, much like he did in has last fight in April. He’s not getting severely touched, however. Canelo is more active, even though he is missing most of his attack. Another close round, but Canelo Álvarez is simply the more active fighter so far.
Round 1: Canelo Álvarez is the early aggressor
Round 1: The trilogy finale four years in the making is finally underway! Ten seconds pass before the first punch is thrown which is a Gennadiy Golovkin jab that misses. The first minute of the fight is a tense one.
It’s round 25 between the two, but they are still taking a wait-and-see approach. GGG is more tentative than Canelo Álvarez.
Canelo unleashes a lopping right hand that barely connects. Canelo is the aggressor who is marching forward picking and choosing one punch at a time. Not much action, however. A calculated first round comes to a close, with Canelo doing just more to edge it.
A look at Canelo Álvarez’s entrance
Canelo Álvarez enters the ring accompanied by Mexican singer Alejandro Fernández.
Jesse Rodriguez outlasts Israel Gonzalez to defend 115-pound WBC title
Jesse Rodriguez, right, fights Israel Gonzalez in a super flyweight title boxing match Saturday in Las Vegas.
(John Locher / Associated Press)
The youngest world champion in boxing proved yet again he has poise of a much more seasoned fighter.
Breakout star Jesse Rodriguez (17-0, 11 KOs) leveraged his newfound marquee stage as a co-main event attraction during one of the biggest fights of the year to score a unanimous decision against Israel Gonzalez (28-5-1, 11 KOs).
“Bam” Rodriguez used his speed and fleet feet to display a high level of boxing to outlast the experienced Gonzalez, receiving scores of 118-109, 117-110 and 114-113 from the judges.
Rodriguez, 22, defended the WBC super flyweight title the southpaw won earlier this year for the second time. Gonzalez gave Rodriguez everything he could handle in the seesaw, mostly even affair.
CompuBox had Rodriguez landing 288 out of 812 punches to Gonzalez’s 200 of 766. Rodriguez used a deft jab for most of the fight to keep Gonzalez at bay.
Rodriguez improved to 3-0 this year. He previously knocked out a pair of former world champions, Carlos Cuadras in February and former pound-for-pound stalwart Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in June.
Rodriguez is based in San Antonio and coached by Los Angeles native and former world titlist Robert Garcia.
The 25-year-old Gonzalez was no stranger to t...
Column: Election Integrity Is At Risk https://digitalalabamanews.com/column-election-integrity-is-at-risk/
“Nobody knows anything.”
That’s the first line in “Adventures In the Screen Trade,” William Goldman’s excellent book about writing scripts for Hollywood films. He continues:
“Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
Goldman’s assessment of the movie business could as well apply to the November elections. The educated guess — in that particular performance venue — is that Republicans will take control of both House and Senate this year. In normal times, the party that loses the presidential election bounces back in the off-year vote. But these are not normal times.
The Supreme Court’s scuttling of Roe v. Wade has women registering to vote in unusually high numbers. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill to set a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks has unsettled his colleagues. In Republican Kansas, a ban on abortions was overwhelming rejected by voters. Could that one issue change the odds?
After two years of trying to reason with two holdouts, the Democratic Party was finally able to pass President Biden’s signature bill to deal with climate change and address economic and healthcare issues. It was a steep drop from the initial plan, further weakened by the need to make concessions to Senate holdouts, Krystal Sinema and Joe Manchin. Messy, but politics often is.
Those two actions have somewhat clouded early, confident election forecasts. The usual assumption may not be a certainty.
Aware of changing circumstances, GOP activists across the country are doing everything they can to snarl the electoral process. The 2020 election may have been accurate and error-free, but we can’t be sure about the one some seven weeks away.
Most Republican-dominated states have enacted laws to discourage or limit voting. Citizen volunteers have been organized to visit county clerks to make a variety of strange demands (which they seem not to understand themselves) and to threaten lawsuits. A flood of Freedom of Information requests is being made across the country to tie up employees in an effort to impede election preparations.
The Washington Post recently reported that David Clements, a New Mexico business school teacher who lost his job for refusing to wear a mask, is on a mission to convince rural audiences that Trump’s big lie is actually true. Last June, he aroused enough people in his native state to delay the certification of primary votes. Since then, he has been visiting other communities, spreading discord.
Not much is being said about what role the most radical elements of the Trump coalition will play, But you can presume the White Nationalists, QAnon fanatics, and Proud Boys (who aren’t in jail) will be harassing voting lines on election day.
Few of these discontents seem to know much about how elections are actually conducted. Those of us who have been through the process understand that it would take a massive collaboration between workers of both parties across the land to corrupt an election. Representatives of both parties are always present, carefully checking to be sure things are proceeding in order. It would take an official in charge of the overall process to mess it up. And a number of zealots are running for such posts this year to do exactly that.
Goldman is the author of another quote that is more familiar than the one first cited. It comes from his Oscar-winning script for “All The President’s Men.” It doesn’t appear in the book on which the movie was based. It’s his own inspired phrase:
“Follow the money.”
If you follow the money that is awash in politics this year, you will note the huge increase in dark money focused on a Republican victory. Democrats have been accumulating funds, too, but huge chunks are coming from the narrow top of our economic pyramid, anxious to preserve the three enormous tax breaks received since 1980 from Republican administrations.
One that came to light this week was a $1.6 billion gift from Chicago electronics company executive Barre Said to the little-known Marble Freedom Trust. That’s double the amount raised by Donald Trump in his 2020 campaign.
Marble is a non-profit led by Leopold Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society and the man who dictated Trump’s supreme court choices, turning the country’s higher court into a right-wing hammer. Leo is as deeply invested in dark money groups as Charles Koch.
Who knows where that enormous amount will be expended? If you can find a way to follow that money, I doubt you will see it invested in feeding the poor.
It appears the wherewithal to shape voters’ thinking is heavily tilted to the right. Yet, there is this feeling that the odds are evener than the pundits suspect. It may well be true that, in politics this year, “nobody knows anything” for sure.
Don Wooten is a former Illinois state senator and a regular columnist. Email him at: donwooten4115@gmail.com.
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Family And Friends Seek Answers Justice 4 Months After Murder Of UAB Researcher
Family And Friends Seek Answers, Justice 4 Months After Murder Of UAB Researcher https://digitalalabamanews.com/family-and-friends-seek-answers-justice-4-months-after-murder-of-uab-researcher/
Family and friends seek answers, justice 4 months after murder of UAB researcher
FALL TO HIS DEATH. WELL, IT HAS BEEN ALMOST FOUR MONTHS SINCE UAB RESEARCH DAVID WESTBROOK WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN BIRMINGHAM’S WOODLAWN COMMUNITY. WVTM 13 CHIP SCARBOROUGH SPOKE WITH A CLOSE FRIEND ABOUT THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS AND JUSTICE. HE ALWAYS LOOKED AT LIFE AS A GLASS HALF FULL. DAVID WESTBROOK HAD JUST FINISHED WALKING HIS DOG AT A SOCCER FIELD ON THE NIGHT OF MAY 23RD WHEN AUTHORITIES SAY SOMEONE APPROACHED HIS CAR AND SHOT HIM AS HE WAS BACKING OUT OF A PARKING SPACE. THIS WAS A BIG SHOCKER. AND PART OF IT IS BECAUSE DAVID KNEW THE AREA HE WAS IN. IT WAS AN AREA THAT HE FREQUENTED QUITE OFTEN. WESTBROOK, A RESEARCHER AT UAB, WAS INVOLVED IN A NUMBER OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS AND ORGANIZATIONS, INCLUDING THE SIDEWALK FILM FESTIVAL AND AIDS, ALABAMA. AND THERE’S SEVERAL FRIENDS THAT TALKED TO DAVID ON A DAILY BASIS THAT JUST THEY’RE THERE IN SO MUCH PAIN. DAVID WESTBROOK IS ONE OF MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE IN THE CITY OF BIRMINGHAM LOST TO GUN VIOLENCE SO FAR IN 2022. HIS FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES CAN’T IMAGINE WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO HARM HIM. YOU. HE WOULD GIVE YOU THE SHIRT OFF HIS BACK AND YOU COULD. I HAVE A SON WITH SPECIAL NEEDS AND WE MET EACH OTHER PLAYING POKEMON GO. AND MY SON CAN BE A CHALLENGE TO PLAY GAMES WITH. AND DAVID WAS ALWAYS VERY KIND AND THOSE CLOSEST TO WESTBROOK ARE LEFT HOPING AND PRAYING. SOMEONE COMES FORWARD WITH THE INFORMATION NEEDED TO MAKE AN ARREST IN THE CASE. THERE’S SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS THAT GO DOWNTOWN AND TRY TO PUT UP FLIERS AND HAVE SEEN PEOPLE TEARING THEM DOWN AND LAUGHING. AND, YOU KNOW, THIS ISN’T FUNNY. THIS THIS WAS SOMEONE WHO WAS IMPORTANT TO THE COMMUNITY. CRIME STOPPERS OF METRO ALABAMA IS OFFERING A CASH REWARD OF UP TO $20,000 FOR INFORMATION THAT LEADS TO AN ARREST IN THE CASE. THE NUMBER TO CALL. IS 2052547777. YOU CAN REMAIN ANONYMOUS. BACK
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Family and friends seek answers, justice 4 months after murder of UAB researcher
It’s been nearly 4 months since UAB researcher David Westbrook was shot and killed in Birmingham’s Woodlawn community. Watch the video above to hear from a close friend about the search for answers and justice.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
It’s been nearly 4 months since UAB researcher David Westbrook was shot and killed in Birmingham’s Woodlawn community. Watch the video above to hear from a close friend about the search for answers and justice.
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Thunderous Trump Rocks Area Faithful https://digitalalabamanews.com/thunderous-trump-rocks-area-faithful/
Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Supporters rally as former President Donald Trump speaks at the Save America Rally Saturday at the Covelli Centre in downtown Youngstown.
YOUNGSTOWN — Former President Donald Trump took aim at U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, calling him a “militant left winger who is lying to your faces” during a Youngstown rally for J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate for the seat.
Ryan is “pretending to be a moderate so he can get elected and betray everything that you believe in,” Trump said Saturday at the Covelli Centre. “He is not a moderate. He’s radical left.”
Trump spent most of his speech airing past grievances, including falsely claiming the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him.
Trump was in Youngstown primarily as part of a rally to support Vance while also backing Republicans running for House seats throughout Ohio.
Trump said when he was president, “I was always fighting (Ryan). I never liked him that much.”
Trump said Ryan’s moderate approach during this Senate campaign is a lie as the congressman has voted 100 percent of the time with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump said when he was president, Ryan voted with him only 16 percent of the time.
Trump urged those in attendance to back Vance, calling him a “tough cookie.”
Trump said of Vance: “This is a very important race. This is a great person who’ve I’ve really gotten to know. Yeah, he said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me and then he fell in love.”
Trump later said that Vance “kissing his ass” would help him beat Ryan.
He criticized Ryan for saying he’d end the filibuster, for supporting abortions and for “being an energy extremist.”
Trump spent much of his speech complaining about the 2020 election falsely contending he didn’t lose to Biden and that the election was “rigged and stolen.”
He also went after Biden, saying he was a terrible president who doesn’t know what he’s doing and if Trump was running the country, there wouldn’t have been a Russian invasion of Ukraine, high gas prices and inflation.
The only reason gas prices are going down, Trump said, is that Biden and other Democrats are doing that to win the Nov. 8 election and that those prices will rise after that.
There were about 5,500 people at Saturday’s rally with most of the back section of the Covelli Centre empty though there was a full crowd at the front of the facility. The last time Trump campaigned at the arena, on July 25, 2017, there were about 7,000 people in attendance.
During his Saturday speech, Vance said: “We need to get back to the policies of the real Donald Trump, not fake Tim Ryan pretending he’s someone he’s not.”
Vance said Ryan tries to come across as a moderate in his “nonstop fraudulent television commercials,” but it’s a lie.
Vance said there’s “two Tims out there. A D.C. Tim that votes 100 percent of the time with Joe Biden, and there’s campaign Tim who pretends he’s a moderate.”
“We need to kick D.C. Tim to the curb, make him go back home and get a real job for once.”
Polls indicate a close race between Vance, a venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and Ryan, a 10-term House member who represents much of Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
In a campaign fundraising email after the rally, Ryan wrote: “Republicans are panicking about losing here. And Trump knows how important winning Ohio is. Him wading into our race means more attack ads, more dark money and a tougher environment in an already competitive race.”
At a Youngstown event Friday, Ryan criticized Vance for having a rally Saturday at the same time as the Ohio State-University of Toledo football game, saying it shows his opponent is out of touch with Ohioans.
As for the rally in the heart of his congressional district, Ryan said: “They’re trying to cut into my vote, which is a political tactic. The fact is J.D. Vance can’t carry his own political message.”
In addition to the Saturday rally with Trump, Vance had Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, campaign Aug. 19 at the Metroplex Expo Center in Liberty, also in Ryan’s district.
“He needs Ron DeSantis, he needs Donald Trump and he needs everybody else to come in and make the case for him because he can’t make the case for himself,” Ryan said.
Ryan added: “Ohioans don’t want someone who’s got to rely on someone else to carry their message for him or to buttress or support them in some way I’m out here. I’m scrapping. I’m clearly the underdog here with all this money coming at us.”
Asked to comment after Saturday’s rally, Jordan Fuja, a campaign spokeswoman, said: “I was too busy watching football, but I’m sure whatever San Francisco phony J.D. Vance and his out-of-state allies tried to talk about in a half-empty stadium would’ve rang hollow with all the Ohioans who were also busy tuning into the Ohio State-Toledo game.”
Though Trump failed to win re-election in 2020, he was only the third Republican presidential candidate since 1936 to win Mahoning County. He beat Democrat Joe Biden by 1.9 percent.
Trump did even better in Trumbull County.
He was the first Republican candidate to win that county in two consecutive presidential elections since Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932 before Trumbull and Mahoning counties started consistently voting for Democrats in 1936.
He beat Biden by 10.56 percent in Trumbull two years ago and beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 6.22 percent.
Trump’s victories were key parts of a changing political trend in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.His success helped some Valley Republicans win elections and made a number of other races a lot more competitive than they had been in previous years.
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China Values UN Relationship Despite Human Rights Criticism
China Values UN Relationship Despite Human Rights Criticism https://digitalalabamanews.com/china-values-un-relationship-despite-human-rights-criticism-2/
A Chinese translator works during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters ahead of the General Assembly, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
BEIJING — As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva.
Chinese diplomats are speaking out and lobbying others at an ongoing session of the Human Rights Council to thwart a possible call for further scrutiny of what it calls its anti-extremism campaign in Xinjiang, following a U.N. report on abuses against Uyghurs and other largely Muslim ethnic groups in the western China border region.
The concurrent meetings, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, illustrate China’s divided approach to the United Nations and its growing global influence. Beijing looks to the U.N., where it can count on support from countries it has befriended and in many cases assisted financially, as a counterweight to U.S.-led blocs such as the Group of Seven, which have grown increasingly hostile toward China.
“China sees the U.N. as an important forum that it can use to further its strategic interests and goals, and to reform the global order,” said Helena Legarda from the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
While holding up the United Nations as a model of multilateralism, China rejects criticism or decisions that the ruling Communist Party sees as counter to its interests. Its diplomats struck back at the report published last month by the U.N. human rights office raising concerns about possible “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang — vowing to suspend cooperation with the office and blasting what it described as a Western plot to undermine China’s rise.
China had pushed hard to block the report on Xinjiang, delaying its release for more than a year. In the end, the information did come out — but just minutes before embattled U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet left office.
Like the United States, China feels a certain freedom to ignore U.N. institutions when it wants: The Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the Human Rights Council in 2018, accusing it of anti-Israel bias. The Biden administration jumped back in this year, and has made a priority of defending Israel in the 47-member-state body.
Also like the United States, China leverages its influence to get its way — effectively stymieing an investigation by the U.N.’s World Health Organization into whether China was the birthplace of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ken Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Chinese President Xi Jinping is trying to redefine what human rights are, in part by casting economic development as a key criterion. China, Roth said, “more than any government in the past, is trying to undermine the U.N. human rights system” — by pressuring U.N. officials, retaliating against witnesses and trying to bribe governments.
“One of their top priorities right now — maybe after Taiwan — is to avoid condemnation by the Human Rights Council,” Roth said. The self-governing island of Taiwan is claimed by China as its sovereign territory, an issue that the Beijing government is vociferous about internationally.
Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Renmin University in China, said advocating for the U.N.’s role in maintaining the international order doesn’t mean that China agrees with every U.N. body, citing the COVID-19 origins study and the recent Xinjiang report.
“When the U.N high commissioner for human rights issues such a report, in the eyes of China, it is the same as all organizations in the world, no matter official or private, that defames China,” Shi said.
But China doesn’t want its pique toward the rights office, which falls under U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, to spill over to its deepening relationship with other parts of the world body that deal with refugees, climate, the internet, satellites, world hunger, atomic weapons, energy and much more.
China wields power as one of the five veto-holding members of the Security Council, helping it build relationships with the United States and others who needed China’s support for past resolutions on Iran and North Korea.
That influence has diminished somewhat with the overall deterioration of U.S.-China ties, Shi said. Subsequently, both China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-backed resolution in May to impose new sanctions on North Korea.
Under Xi, who came to power 10 years ago, China has expanded its U.N. involvement from primarily international development early on to political, peace and security issues, Legarda said.
She noted how China has had its concepts and language worked into U.N. resolutions and used the U.N. system to promote a “Global Development Initiative” proposed by Xi in a video address to last year’s General Assembly.
“This is a reflection of China’s more assertive and ambitious foreign policy under Xi,” Legarda said.
China has stepped into a diplomatic void created by a lack of U.S. leadership, said Daniel Warner, a Geneva-based political analyst. Former President Donald Trump shunned many international institutions, Warner said, and successor Joe Biden has been preoccupied with domestic issues.
Chinese hold the top jobs at three of the U.N.’s 18 specialized agencies: the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Industrial Development Organization and the International Telecommunications Union, where the United States has put up a candidate to succeed outgoing chief Houlin Zhao. A Chinese official headed the International Civil Aviation Organization until last year.
For China, it’s a matter of prestige as well as influence, Warner said.
“The United States and the Western countries were very much involved in the initial United Nations,” he said. “China doesn’t want to have that kind of leadership. They’re not talking about liberal values, but they want to make sure that their interests are defended in the U.N. system.”
Chinese diplomats spearheaded a joint statement — which it said was backed by 30 countries including Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela — that blasted “disinformation” behind the U.N. report on Xinjiang and the “erroneous conclusions” drawn in it. And China’s ambassador in Geneva said Beijing could no longer cooperate with the human rights office — without specifying how.
Sarah Brooks, a China expert at the International Society for Human Rights advocacy group in Geneva, said China could hold up its funding for the office — which lately has come in at $800,000 a year, far less than Western countries that give tens of millions.
Still, Brooks said it would be a “huge blow” if funding from China were to stop, in part because many countries appreciate and support the causes that Beijing helps pay for.
“The optics of it are really damaging,” she said. “You have a country that says, ‘Hi, I want to be responsible, but I’m so thin-skinned … I’m still going to lash out at the organization that drafted it.'”
Keaten reported from Geneva. Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
FILE – China’s President Xi Jinping remotely addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in a pre-recorded message, Tuesday Sept. 21, 2021, at UN headquarters. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool, File)
FILE – The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building during an emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022, at the United Nations Headquarters, in New York. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
FILE – Zbigniew Rau, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Poland addresses the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 2, 2022. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (Denis Balibouse/Pool via AP, File)
FILE – A tour guide stands near a display showing images of people at locations described as vocational training centers in southern Xinjiang at the Exhibition of the Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Urumqi in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on April 21, 2021. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE – A security guard watches from a tower around a detention facility in Yarkent County in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on March 21, 2021. As world leaders gather in New York at the annual U.N. General Assembly, rising superpower China is also focusing on another United Nations body that is meeting across the Atlantic Ocean in Geneva. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
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US-UK Relations Enter New Chapter As New PM King Settle In
US-UK Relations Enter New Chapter As New PM, King Settle In https://digitalalabamanews.com/us-uk-relations-enter-new-chapter-as-new-pm-king-settle-in-2/
President Joe Biden waves as he stands at the top of the steps of Air Force One before boarding with first lady Jill Biden at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, as they head to London to attend the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II. To commemorate the U.S. Air Force’s 75th Anniversary as a service the Bidens are wearing Air Force One jackets. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
LONDON — President Joe Biden arrived in London to pay his respects to Queen Elizabeth II at a time of transition in U.S.-U.K. relations, as both a new monarch and a new prime minister are settling in.
The hawkish approach of Prime Minister Liz Truss to Russia and China puts her on the same page as Biden. But the rise of Truss, 47, who once called the relationship “special but not exclusive,” could mark a decidedly new chapter in the trans-Atlantic partnership on trade and more.
Of high concern for Biden officials in the early going of Truss’s premiership is her backing of legislation that would shred parts of the post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland. Analysts say the move could cause deep strain between the U.K. and the European Union, and undermine peace in Northern Ireland. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the move “would not create a conducive environment” for crafting a long-awaited U.S.-UK trade deal coveted by Truss and her Conservative Party.
“She’s signaled that she’s willing to go to the mattresses on this and that’s going to cause a rift not just between the U.K. and EU, but the UK and the U.S.,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration. “It’s one that’s going to keep the White House up at night.”
Biden arrived in London late Saturday and had been set to meet with Truss on Sunday, but the prime minister’s office said Saturday they would skip the weekend hello, opting instead for a meeting in New York at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, though Truss still planned to gather with other world leaders converging on London for the royal funeral. The White House confirmed the U.N. meeting just as the president boarded Air Force One.
The two close allies now find themselves in a period of political uncertainty on both sides of the Atlantic. Not unlike his fellow septuagenarian Biden, King Charles III faces questions from the public about whether his age will limit his ability to faithfully carry out the duties of the monarch.
Charles, 73, and Biden, 79, discussed global cooperation on the climate crisis last year while both attended a summit in Glasgow, Scotland. They also met at Buckingham Palace in June 2021 at a reception the queen hosted before a world leaders’ summit in Cornwall.
Truss finds herself, as Biden does, facing questions about whether she has what it takes to lift a country battered by stubborn inflation borne out of the coronavirus pandemic and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unleashing chaos on the global energy market.
All the while, Britain — and the rest of Europe — is carefully watching to see what the upcoming U.S. midterm elections will bring for the Democratic American president after he vowed upon taking office that “America is back” to being a full partner in the international community after four years of Republican Donald Trump pushing his “America First” worldview.
“It certainly is a time of change and transformation in the U.K.,” said Barbara A. Perry, presidential studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. She added, “We don’t know what will happen in our midterms. We don’t know what will happen in 2024.”
Truss, a former accountant who was first elected to Parliament in 2010, hasn’t had much interaction with Biden. The U.S. president called her earlier this month to congratulate her. Truss, as foreign secretary, accompanied her predecessor, Boris Johnson, on a White House visit last year.
It’s been more than 75 years since Winston Churchill declared there was a “special relationship” between the two nations, a notion that leaders on both sides have repeatedly affirmed. Still, there have been bumps along the way.
Tony Blair was derisively branded by the British tabloids as George W. Bush’s “poodle” for backing the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq. David Cameron and Barack Obama had a “bromance,” but Obama also had his frustrations with the Brits over defense spending and the U.K.’s handling of Libya following the 2011 ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan forged a close alliance in the midst of the Cold War, with the prime minister once telling students that the Republican president’s “really good sense of humor” helped their relationship. But there were difficulties too, such as when Thatcher and members of her Cabinet bristled at the Reagan administration’s initial neutrality in the Falklands War.
The White House wasn’t expecting Truss’s announcement in May, when she was foreign secretary, that the government would move forward with legislation that would rewrite parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. The agreement was part of the U.K.’s 2020 Brexit withdrawal from the EU that was designed to avoid a hard north-south border with Ireland that might upset Northern Ireland’s fragile peace.
Now, in the first weeks of Truss’s premiership, Biden administration officials are carefully taking the measure of the new British leader. Analysts say there is some trepidation in the administration that undercutting the Northern Ireland protocol could plunge Europe into trade turmoil at a moment when Biden is working mightily to keep the West unified in confronting Russia over its aggression against Ukraine.
“Brexit could once again become the issue — the issue that can make it difficult for all of Europe to work together at a time when it is critical for Europe to work together,” Bergmann said. “If you’re the Biden administration, this is not the time for the two of your closest partners getting into fights.”
To be certain, there were areas of friction between Biden and Johnson, who had a warm rapport with former President Donald Trump.
Biden staunchly opposed Brexit as a candidate and had expressed great concern over the future of Northern Ireland. Biden once even derided Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone” of Trump.
Johnson worked hard to overcome that impression, stressing his common ground with Biden on climate change, support for international institutions and most notably by making certain Britain was an early and generous member of the U.S.-led alliance providing economic and military assistance to Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian invasion.
The former prime minister also unsuccessfully pressed Biden starting days into his administration to begin negotiations on a new U.S.-U.K. trade deal just as the U.K. regained control over its national trade policy weeks before Biden took office and following the end of a post-Brexit transition period.
But Biden largely kept focus on his domestic to-do list in the early going of his presidency– passing trillions in spending on coronavirus relief, infrastructure, and more — and put negotiations on trade deals on the back burner.
Elliot Abrams, chairman of the conservative foreign policy group Vandenberg Coalition, said that Truss needs Biden to make a new U.S.-U.K. trade deal a priority. Queen Elizabeth’s funeral won’t be the setting for tough bilateral conversations, but it still marks a moment for the two leaders to begin taking stock of each other.
Truss, who succeeded Johnson after he was forced to resign in the face of a string of scandals, has lagged in the opinion polls. She also won her election with a smaller margin than her recent predecessors and is looking for an early win.
“I think if I were (Truss), I want recognition of the leading role Britain’s played, far more than any other country outside the United States in supporting Ukraine,” said Abrams, who served in senior national security and foreign policy roles in the Trump, George W. Bush and Reagan administrations. “And I think I’d want some positive economic message to give the British people, which could be that the free trade agreement negotiations are starting.”
——
Madhani reported from Washington.
This combination of photos shows U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on Aug. 24, 2022, in Washington, left, and Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss at Westminster Hall, in the Palace of Westminster, in London on Sept. 12, 2022. The prime minister’s office said Biden and Truss will meet on Sunday, Sept. 18, at 10 Downing Street, one of several meetings that the new prime minister plans to hold with world leaders converging on London for Monday’s royal funeral. (AP Photo)
FILE – Britain’s Prince Charles, left, greets the President of the United States Joe Biden ahead of their bilateral meeting during the Cop26 summit at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 2, 2021. Charles and Biden discussed global cooperation on the climate crisis last year while both attended a summit in Glasgow, Scotland. (Jane Barlow/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, greets U.S. President Joe Biden , at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 1, 2021. (Christopher Furlong/Pool via AP, File)
FILE – President Donald Trump meets with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE – U.S. President Barack Obama sits next to British Prime Minister David Cameron before the first working session of the North Atlantic Council at the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, July 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, F...
What James Franklin Said And Players Said After Win Against Auburn
What James Franklin Said And Players Said After Win Against Auburn https://digitalalabamanews.com/what-james-franklin-said-and-players-said-after-win-against-auburn/
Auburn’s 41-12 loss against Penn State disappointed the majority of the nearly 88,000 fans in Jordan-Hare. However, there was a group of several thousand who stayed around after the Nittany Lions took a 38-12 lead with 14:27 left in the game.
Penn State fans donned in white danced and sang while Auburn fans wearing orange exited the stands. Auburn’s hopes of paying back Penn State for last season’s 28-20 loss at Beaver Stadium. Instead, it’d be Nittany Lion head coach James Franklin and his squad celebrating a more decisive victory.
Franklin addressed reporters after the win. Here’s some of what he said.
Opening Statement.
“We always appreciate you guys coming out to cover Penn State football. We talked about the stats we talk about all the time. We won the field position battle. The story of the game was the turnover battle. Four turnovers to zero. We’ve got to get more points off of those turnovers. That had a huge factor in the game when you talk about time of possession and field position. We did not win the penalty battle. Then the explosive play battle. Although our offense reached their goal, we gave up too many on defense, specifically on third and long. Overall, there hasn’t been too many Big Ten teams in the history of the Big Ten to come on the road and get a win in the SEC. So, we’re very, very proud of that. I also think we’ve had a very challenging schedule to open the season. On the road in Big Ten then a home game and then on the road again. This team here has five home games to start the season. So proud of our guys. We will enjoy this win for a couple hours and then get back to work tomorrow.”
Franklin on improvement along the offensive front.
“We’re getting better up front and at tight end. We’re doing some things speed-wise to help them. The ability to be more balanced and take pressure off the passing game, I think it’s been really important for us. We also have some dynamic backs that help create some explosive plays. Whether that is Keyvone (Lee) or Kaytron (Allen) or Nick (Singleton). Love to see Devyn Ford get in there. Devyn Ford is one of my favorites. I shouldn’t have favorites. The way he’s handled his entire Penn State career, he’s one of our MVPs. He’s on special teams right now. Got a nice role on offense and really proud of him.”
Franklin on limiting Auburn’s rushing attack and tackling.
“We emphasize that all week long. We’re able to make it one-dimensional, to a degree. Obviously, there are some things that we got to get cleaned up in the passing game. But overall, that was the plan. This quarterback put him in a position where he has to beat us. I think they did that. They have two guys that are challenging. The starter is 6′7, 250 pounds. He’s hard to bring down. We got a bunch of sacks today. It could have been more. But he’s hard to bring down. And then the other guys is as dynamic as it gets. The game really played out the way we hoped that would have played out, offensively and defensively.”
Landon Tengwall, OL
On set plays for the run game…
“I do not think anything was set specifically. But we came out and established the run and we knew we had the momentum. We knew we needed to take over the game and I think we really did that. When you run for that many yards, that is a great day for an offensive line. Those are things you dream of, watching those big guys running up and down the field. It is really fun to watch, and this was a 29-point win against a national program.”
On what statement the win was.
“It was a big win, but we must move on to next week. We are going to celebrate this win tonight, and then we must get back to work tomorrow. We must prepare for next week.”
Sean Clifford, QB
On what the win meant to him.
“It was just a great team win. I am just so proud of this team, and I thought we had a good week at practice to prepare. We were confident coming into this game. We just went about our business and that was why I was so happy. Just to be able to see a full team win come full circle. It was passing, rushing, offensive line, defense, and it was just Penn State football.”
On the hit he took in the first quarter.
“It’s football. They have good players and that guy rocked me. I saw the video too, and it looked even worse than it felt. It is just football, and we take hits and we have to bounce back.”
Nubyjas Wilborn covers Auburn for Alabama Media Group.
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