AP News Summary At 3:29 P.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-329-p-m-edt-2/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Kremlin stages votes in Ukraine, sees protests in Russia
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions of Ukraine to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow. In Russia, hundreds were arrested on Saturday while trying to protest President Vladimir Putin’s order to mobilize more troops to fight in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19.
West works to deepen sanctions after Putin heightens threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
Dissident: ‘Iranian women are furious’ over headscarf death
NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian activist Masih Alinejad says the videos and messages she’s been receiving in recent days from women in Iran are showing how angry they are following a young woman’s death in police custody over a violation of the country’s strict religious dress code. The spur for this latest explosion of outrage was the death earlier this month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young woman was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely in violation of strictures demanding women wear the Islamic headscarves in public. She died in custody. Protests have been going on around the country for days. Alinejad would love to see more support from those in the West, as well.
Fiona washes houses away, knocks out power in Canada
TORONTO (AP) — Strong rain and winds are lashing the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona hits as a powerful post-tropical cyclone. Canadian forecasters are warning it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday after transforming from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters caution that despite the change, Fiona still has hurricane-strength winds and will bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada are affected by outages. Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea.
DeSantis declares emergency as storm expected to hit Florida
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in Florida as Tropical Storm Ian gathers strength over the Caribbean and is expected to bring heavy rains and intense hurricane winds to the state next week. DeSantis initially issued the emergency order for two dozen counties but on Saturday expanded the warning to the entire state. He is encouraging residents and local governments to prepare for a storm that could lash large swaths of Florida as forecasters track its path. The National Hurricane Center said Ian is forecast to rapidly strengthen in the coming days before moving over western Cuba and approach Florida in the middle of next week with major hurricane force.
Georgia voting equipment breach at center of tangled tale
ATLANTA (AP) — A breach of sensitive voting equipment data from a rural county in Georgia spilled into the public light last month when documents and emails produced in response to subpoenas revealed the involvement of high-profile supporters of former President Donald Trump. Since then, a series of revelations about what happened in Coffee County have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used throughout Georgia have been compromised. The tale involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to Trump and a cast of characters from an area that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
Biden administration launches environmental justice office
WARRENTON, N.C. (AP) — Forty years after a predominantly Black community in Warren County, North Carolina, rallied against hosting a hazardous waste landfill, President Biden’s top environment official has returned to what is widely considered the birthplace of the environmental justice movement to unveil a national office that will distribute $3 billion in block grants to underserved communities burdened by pollution. Joined by civil rights leaders and participants from the 1982 protests, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced Saturday that he is dedicating a new senior level of leadership to the environmental justice movement they ignited. The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will merge three existing EPA programs .
Sri Lankans describe abuse as Russian captives in Ukraine
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Seven Sri Lankans held captive by Russian forces in an agricultural factory in eastern Ukraine say they were beaten and tortured for months before escaping on foot as the Russians withdrew from the Kharkiv region. One said he was shot in the foot; another says he had his head slammed with the butt of a rifle. The Sri Lankans recounted their ordeal to reporters on Saturday. Four of the seven were medical students in the city of Kupiansk and three were working there when Russian forces poured across the border in late February. They said they were captured at a checkpoint and held in the factory near the Russian border with around 20 Ukrainians.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly are spotlighting Russia’s war in Ukraine. A few are prodding the world not to forget everything else. While no one is dismissing the importance of the conflict, some comments quietly speak to some unease about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, says the ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult to tackle other longstanding issues including inequality, nuclear disarmament and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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AP News Summary At 3:29 P.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-329-p-m-edt/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Kremlin stages votes in Ukraine, sees protests in Russia
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions of Ukraine to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow. In Russia, hundreds were arrested on Saturday while trying to protest President Vladimir Putin’s order to mobilize more troops to fight in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19.
West works to deepen sanctions after Putin heightens threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
Dissident: ‘Iranian women are furious’ over headscarf death
NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian activist Masih Alinejad says the videos and messages she’s been receiving in recent days from women in Iran are showing how angry they are following a young woman’s death in police custody over a violation of the country’s strict religious dress code. The spur for this latest explosion of outrage was the death earlier this month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young woman was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely in violation of strictures demanding women wear the Islamic headscarves in public. She died in custody. Protests have been going on around the country for days. Alinejad would love to see more support from those in the West, as well.
Fiona washes houses away, knocks out power in Canada
TORONTO (AP) — Strong rain and winds are lashing the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona hits as a powerful post-tropical cyclone. Canadian forecasters are warning it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday after transforming from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters caution that despite the change, Fiona still has hurricane-strength winds and will bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada are affected by outages. Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea.
DeSantis declares emergency as storm expected to hit Florida
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency in Florida as Tropical Storm Ian gathers strength over the Caribbean and is expected to bring heavy rains and intense hurricane winds to the state next week. DeSantis initially issued the emergency order for two dozen counties but on Saturday expanded the warning to the entire state. He is encouraging residents and local governments to prepare for a storm that could lash large swaths of Florida as forecasters track its path. The National Hurricane Center said Ian is forecast to rapidly strengthen in the coming days before moving over western Cuba and approach Florida in the middle of next week with major hurricane force.
Georgia voting equipment breach at center of tangled tale
ATLANTA (AP) — A breach of sensitive voting equipment data from a rural county in Georgia spilled into the public light last month when documents and emails produced in response to subpoenas revealed the involvement of high-profile supporters of former President Donald Trump. Since then, a series of revelations about what happened in Coffee County have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used throughout Georgia have been compromised. The tale involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to Trump and a cast of characters from an area that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
Biden administration launches environmental justice office
WARRENTON, N.C. (AP) — Forty years after a predominantly Black community in Warren County, North Carolina, rallied against hosting a hazardous waste landfill, President Biden’s top environment official has returned to what is widely considered the birthplace of the environmental justice movement to unveil a national office that will distribute $3 billion in block grants to underserved communities burdened by pollution. Joined by civil rights leaders and participants from the 1982 protests, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced Saturday that he is dedicating a new senior level of leadership to the environmental justice movement they ignited. The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will merge three existing EPA programs .
Sri Lankans describe abuse as Russian captives in Ukraine
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Seven Sri Lankans held captive by Russian forces in an agricultural factory in eastern Ukraine say they were beaten and tortured for months before escaping on foot as the Russians withdrew from the Kharkiv region. One said he was shot in the foot; another says he had his head slammed with the butt of a rifle. The Sri Lankans recounted their ordeal to reporters on Saturday. Four of the seven were medical students in the city of Kupiansk and three were working there when Russian forces poured across the border in late February. They said they were captured at a checkpoint and held in the factory near the Russian border with around 20 Ukrainians.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly are spotlighting Russia’s war in Ukraine. A few are prodding the world not to forget everything else. While no one is dismissing the importance of the conflict, some comments quietly speak to some unease about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, says the ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult to tackle other longstanding issues including inequality, nuclear disarmament and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Tropical Storm Ian Strengthens In The Caribbean And Tracks Toward Florida
Tropical Storm Ian Strengthens In The Caribbean And Tracks Toward Florida https://digitalarizonanews.com/tropical-storm-ian-strengthens-in-the-caribbean-and-tracks-toward-florida/
(CNN)The ninth named tropical storm of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season has formed across the central Caribbean Sea, and is forecast to turn into a hurricane before hitting Florida next week. If it does, it will be the first major hurricane to impact the state since 2018.
Tropical Storm Ian was located about 270 miles south-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, as of 2 p.m. Saturday and moving west at 16 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. “Significant strengthening is forecast during the next few days,” the center said.
The forecast shows Ian “as a major hurricane over the eastern Gulf when it is approaching the west coast of Florida,” after briefly passing over Cuba at or near major hurricane strength, the center said Friday. Much of the Gulf Coast of Florida, including the eastern Panhandle, could be at risk.
Forecast models on Saturday afternoon vary on where Ian may make landfall on Florida’s coast. The European model shows landfall near Tampa on Thursday morning, while the American model shows landfall near Pensacola Friday morning.
The official hurricane center track splits the difference between the models, showing landfall north of Tampa on Thursday morning.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday expanded an emergency order from 24 counties to include the whole state, citing “foregoing conditions, which are projected to constitute a major disaster.”
“The Florida Division of Emergency Management, working together with the National Hurricane Center to evaluate weather predictions, has determined there is a continuing risk of dangerous storm surge, heavy rainfall, flash flooding, strong winds, hazardous seas, and isolated tornadic activity for Florida’s Peninsula and portions of the Florida Big Bend, North Florida, and Northeast Florida,” the order states.
Tropical storm-force winds could begin to affect southwest Florida early Tuesday, with landfall possible on Wednesday or Thursday.
After strengthening overnight, the storm — earlier known as Tropical Depression Nine — has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 km/h) and is forecast to reach hurricane status within the next two days as it approaches the Cayman Islands by early Monday. Further strengthening is anticipated as the system approaches and crosses western Cuba by Monday evening.
“Ian is likely to be near major hurricane intensity when it approaches western Cuba,” the hurricane center said. “Since Ian is not expected to remain over Cuba long, little weakening is expected due to that land interaction.”
If it strengthens to a Category 3 or higher before reaching Florida, it would be the first major hurricane to make landfall there since Hurricane Michael in 2018, which was a monster Category 5 storm when it collided with the Florida panhandle. Michael also underwent rapid intensification before it made landfall, a phenomenon which has been made more likely as ocean temperatures warm due to the climate crisis.
A hurricane warning was issued for Grand Cayman, and a tropical storm watch is in effect for Little Cayman and Cayman Brac in the Cayman Islands and for Jamaica.
DeSantis on Friday requested federal emergency assistance in anticipation of the threat when he declared the state of emergency for two dozen counties. Under the state-level emergency order, members of the Florida National Guard will be activated and on standby awaiting orders.
The governor urged those in the potential path of the storm to prepare.
“This storm has the potential to strengthen into a major hurricane and we encourage all Floridians to make their preparations,” DeSantis said in a news release. “We are coordinating with all state and local government partners to track potential impacts of this storm.”
Forecasters urge for residents to prepare
It has been a slow start to what was forecast to be an above-average hurricane season. Only one storm has made landfall in a US territory, and no hurricane has made landfall or threatened the contiguous states.
Now, a week past the peak of hurricane season, the tropics seem to have woken up, and forecasters are concerned people have let down their guard.
“After a slow start, the Atlantic hurricane season has ratcheted up quickly,” Phil Klotzbach, research scientist at Colorado State University, tweeted.
“People tend to lower their guard and think, oh, yeah, we’re out of the woods,” Maria Torres, hurricane center spokesperson, told CNN. “But in reality, the season continues. We are still in September; we still have October to go. Anything that forms over either the Atlantic or the Caribbean is something that we need to keep monitoring very closely.”
The Atlantic hurricane season ends November 30.
No matter what, if you live in the Caribbean, Florida and other states along the Gulf Coast, pay attention to the updated forecasts this weekend into early next week.
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Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale
Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale https://digitalarizonanews.com/georgia-voting-equipment-breach-at-center-of-tangled-tale-5/
Kate Brumback | Associated Press
Atlanta – The tale of breached voting equipment in one of the country’s most important political battleground states involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a cast of characters from a rural county that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
How they all came together and what it could mean for the security of voting in the upcoming midterm elections are questions tangled up in a lawsuit and state investigations that have prompted calls to ditch the machines altogether.
Details of the unauthorized access of sensitive voting equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became public last month when documents and emails revealed the involvement of high-profile Trump supporters. That’s also when it caught the attention of an Atlanta-based prosecutor who is leading a separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the state.
Since then, revelations about what happened in the county of 43,000 people have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia have been compromised.
The public disclosure of the breach began with a rambling phone call from an Atlanta-area bail bondsman to the head of an election security advocacy group involved in a long-running lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines.
According to a recording filed in court earlier this year, the bail bondsman said he’d chartered a jet and was with a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office when they “imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment.”
That happened on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and two days after a runoff election in which Democrats swept both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
The trip to Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment was directed by attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies, according to deposition testimony and documents produced in response to subpoenas.
Later that month, security camera footage shows, two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states spent days going in and out of the Coffee County elections office.
The footage also shows local election and Republican Party officials welcoming the visitors and allowing them access to the election equipment. The video seems to contradict statements some of the officials made about their apparent involvement.
The new information has made Coffee County, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote two years ago, a focal point of concerns over the security of voting machines. While there is no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment in 2020, some Trump supporters have spread false information about machines and the election outcome.
Election security experts and activists fear state election officials haven’t acted fast enough in the face of what they see as a real threat.
The copying of the software and its availability for download means potential bad actors could build exact copies of the Dominion system to test different types of attacks, said University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Philip Stark, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the voting machines lawsuit.
“This is like bank robbers having an exact replica of the vault that they’re trying to break into,” he said.
Stark said the risks could be minimized by using hand-marked paper ballots and rigorous audits. Dominion says its equipment remains secure.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group that sued over the state’s voting machines, said the state has been slow to investigate. She was on the receiving end of the phone call from the bail bondsman.
The state, she said, has been “repeatedly looking the other way when faced with flashing red lights of serious voting system security problems.”
State officials say they’re confident the election system is safe. All Coffee County election equipment that wasn’t already replaced will be swapped out before early voting begins next month, the secretary of state’s office said Friday.
State officials also noted they were deluged by false claims after the 2020 election.
“In retrospect, you can say, well what about this, this and this,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “In real time, no, there was no reason to think that.”
In late January 2021, a few weeks after the computer forensics team visited, security video shows a secretary of state’s office investigator arriving at the Coffee County elections office. He and the elections supervisor walk into the room that houses the election management system server. Seconds later, Jeff Lenberg, who has been identified by Michigan authorities as being part of an effort to gain access to voting machines there, is seen walking out of that room.
Asked whether Lenberg’s presence in the room with sensitive election equipment raised concerns for the investigator, secretary of state’s office spokesperson Mike Hassinger said the investigator was looking into an unrelated matter and didn’t know who Lenberg was.
Security video also showed another man, Doug Logan, at the office in mid-January. Logan founded a company called Cyber Ninjas, which led a discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. In May 2021, Coffee County’s new elections supervisor raised concerns with the secretary of state’s office after finding Logan’s business card by a computer. The election supervisor’s concerns were referred to an investigator, but he testified that no one ever contacted him.
Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office responds to allegations when they are raised but that “information about unauthorized access to Coffee County’s election equipment has been kept hidden” by local officials and others.
Much of what is known was uncovered through documents, security camera video and depositions produced in response to subpoenas in the lawsuit filed by individual voters and the election security advocacy group. The suit alleges Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are not secure and seeks to force the state to use hand-marked paper ballots instead.
The recently produced evidence of a breach wasn’t the first sign of problems in Coffee County, which caused headaches for state election officials in the hectic weeks following the 2020 election. It’s likely that turmoil helped open the door for Trump’s allies.
In early December 2020, the county elections board declined to certify the results of a machine recount requested by Trump, saying the election system had produced inaccurate results. A video posted online days later showed the former county elections supervisor saying the elections software could be manipulated; as she spoke, the password to the county election management system server was visible on a note stuck to her computer.
At the end of December, Cathy Latham, the Coffee County Republican Party chair who also was a fake elector for Trump, appeared at a state legislative committee hearing and made further claims that the voting machines were unreliable.
Within days of that hearing, Latham said, she was contacted by Scott Hall, the bail bondsman, who had been a Republican observer during an election recount. Latham testified in a deposition that Hall asked her to connect him with the Coffee County elections supervisor (who later was accused of falsifying timesheets and forced to resign).
A few days later, on Jan. 7, Hall met with a computer forensics team from data solutions firm SullivanStrickler at the Coffee County elections office. The team copied the data and software on the election management system server and other voting system components, a company executive said in a deposition. The company said it believed its clients had the necessary permission.
Invoices show the data firm billed Powell $26,000 for the day’s work.
“Everything went smoothly yesterday with the Coffee County collection,” the firm’s chief operating officer wrote to Powell in an email. “Everyone involved was extremely helpful.”
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Westwood's Jessica Deiter Stands Out During Day 1 Of Girls Mesa City Championship
Westwood's Jessica Deiter Stands Out During Day 1 Of Girls Mesa City Championship https://digitalarizonanews.com/westwoods-jessica-deiter-stands-out-during-day-1-of-girls-mesa-city-championship/
Westwood’s Jessica Deiter tees off at the par-4 16th hole on Friday. (Taylyn Hadley photo/AZpreps365)
Taylyn Hadley is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Westwood High School for AZPreps365.com.
Mesa – The Westwood Warriors had hopes of placing as a team but did not meet the minimum requirement of four players after a player had to scratch at the 10th hole due to a heat-related illness. The remaining three ended their rounds shooting a total of 320-over par at the Girls Mesa City Championship at Viewpoint Golf Resort on Friday.
The Warriors completed a full round of 18 holes while playing from the white tees, accounting for a par 71 at the Viewpoint Golf Resort.
Mountain View came out on top of the five schools that competed on Friday, shooting a team total of 327. Red Mountain was second (375) followed by Skyline (456) and Mesa High (514).
The fourth teammate of the Warriors who had to forfeit during hole 10 was given 20’s for the holes that she did not complete. This pushed the Westwood Warriors to a team score of 516.
In a City Championship that could have determined whether the girls would secure an early spot at the Division One State Championship, the Warriors fell short.
Coach Ellie Reiks was still impressed by her girls’ tenacity as they powered through their struggles.
“They knew they were not going to win (after the front nine) but they still kept going,” Reiks said. “I am just proud of them for playing hard and finishing through this heat and having a good attitude the whole time.”
Teams are required to play at least seven rounds in order to qualify for the state tournament. With Westwood playing more than seven rounds this season, they are able to choose which seven scores they want to submit for placement. Reiks believes that the girls will improve their scores.
“Today, it does not look like these scores are going to help,” Reiks said. “But we are going to continue to get out of our heads, take it stroke by stroke, hole by hole, and just play our game.”
Westwood’s Jocelyn Phillips tees off at the par-4 16th hole on Friday. (Taylyn Hadley photo/AZpreps365)Of Westwood’s usual lineup of five girls, only three finished all 18 holes.
Junior Jessica Deiter shot 20-over par and finished with a 91. Senior Jocelyn Phillips shot 32-over par and finished with a 103. Junior, Zoe Hernandez shot 55-over par and finished with a 126.
Deiter is the only returning Warriors player who competed in last year’s Division One Championship where she placed 60th overall. She plans on making it back there by focusing on herself.
“I don’t have to worry about everyone else,” Deiter said. “I am just playing my own game.”
Deiter admitted to struggling throughout the front nine but found her stride on the back nine when she birdied the par-5 18th hole.
“(The front nine) took me a few holes to get in the rhythm,” Deiter said. “My drives (on the back nine) looked nice.”
Lone senior Jocelyn Phillips hopes to make her championship debut this season. After recently coming off of a personal best score of 44 over nine holes, Phillips needs to keep her momentum going.
“This morning (I) actually changed my swing,” Phillips said. “I changed it and it worked really well for me. I was hitting really good shots today. I just couldn’t putt or chip.”
Before Friday’s round, Phillips was on the brink of qualifying as an individual for state if the Warriors do not qualify as a team.
The Warriors start off next week with their Senior Night facing Higley and A.L.A Gilbert on Monday at Apache Wells Golf Course. They then play Perry and Highland at Superstition Springs Golf Resort on Wednesday. The week will cap off with day two of the Girls Mesa City Championship on Friday at Dobson Ranch Golf Course.
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AP News Summary At 2:24 P.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-224-p-m-edt/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Kremlin stages votes in Ukraine, sees protests in Russia
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions of Ukraine to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow. In Russia, hundreds were arrested on Saturday while trying to protest President Vladimir Putin’s order to mobilize more troops to fight in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19.
West works to deepen sanctions after Putin heightens threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
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House GOP Presses Former Top FBI Official For Interview On Agencys Political Bias Biden Cover-Up
House GOP Presses Former Top FBI Official For Interview On Agency’s Political Bias, Biden Cover-Up https://digitalarizonanews.com/house-gop-presses-former-top-fbi-official-for-interview-on-agencys-political-bias-biden-cover-up/
Top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, requesting a transcribed interview and the preservation of all existing and future documents related to his role in the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
The Washington Times first reported Mr. Thibault resigned from his post after a 30-year career at the FBI late last month amid revelations about political statements he made while leading the public corruption unit.
The request, written by Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, ranking member of the committee, Darrell Issa of California and Mike Johnson of Louisiana, comes at a time when multiple whistleblowers are giving their disclosures about the FBI to the committee.
Several of the disclosures describe how the Washington, D.C., field office, in which Mr. Thibault worked, urged FBI agents to track and monitor subjects they have reclassified as “domestic violent extremists” based on conservative activism or ideology.
“Brave whistleblowers have informed us that as an Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the Washington Field Office, you pressured line agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even though there was minimal, circumstantial evidence to support a reclassification,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter sent Friday.
“Other whistleblowers have come to Congress alleging that you were part of a scheme to undermine and discredit allegations of criminal wrongdoing by members of the Biden family,” the letter continued. “Accordingly, we believe that you possess information relating to our investigation and we request your assistance with our inquiry.”
Kyle Seraphin, a suspended FBI agent of six years who worked in multiple field offices in the counterterrorism division, told The Times that the bureau’s investigations targeting alleged white supremacists and right-wing extremists are mostly “entrapment” operations.
The FBI responded that Mr. Seraphin’s accusation was “inaccurate and represents a clear misunderstanding of the policy.”
Another FBI whistleblower who stepped forward was Stephen Friend, who told the New York Post he filed a complaint late Wednesday with the Justice Department inspector general revealing the Washington field office exaggerated the threat of domestic terrorism and used an “overzealous” investigation of events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights.
Republican lawmakers have scrutinized Mr. Thibault for making anti-Trump statements in social media posts in 2020. At that time, GOP lawmakers said he was helping lead the FBI’s probe of Hunter Biden, whose father, President Biden, was making his bid for the White House.
“Mr. Thibault’s blatant partisanship undermined the work and reputation of the FBI,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said in a statement to The Times when Mr. Thibault left the bureau. “This type of bias in high-profile investigations casts a shadow over all of the bureau’s work that he was involved in, which ranged from opening an investigation into Trump based on liberal news articles to shutting down investigative activity into Hunter Biden that was based on verified information.”
In February and September of 2020, Mr. Thibault liked separate Washington Post opinion pieces criticizing Attorney General William P. Barr for not more aggressively prosecuting former President Trump’s political allies and close associates.
Mr. Thibault also retweeted a post by the Lincoln Project, a Republican group that called Mr. Trump “a psychologically broken, embittered and deeply unhappy man.”
During recent testimony before the Senate, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray dodged questions about Mr. Thibault and his social media posts, calling them “ongoing personnel matters.”
According to reports, an attorney for Mr. Thibault denied that he supervised the investigation of Hunter Biden, “which, as confirmed by the FBI Director on Aug. 4, 2022, is being handled by the Baltimore Field Office.”
“In particular, Mr. Thibault was not involved in any decisions related to any laptop that may be at issue in that investigation, and he did not seek to close the investigation,” the attorney’s statement said.
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Fiona Slams Canada's Atlantic Coast Knocking Out Power For Thousands And Damaging Homes
Fiona Slams Canada's Atlantic Coast, Knocking Out Power For Thousands And Damaging Homes https://digitalarizonanews.com/fiona-slams-canadas-atlantic-coast-knocking-out-power-for-thousands-and-damaging-homes/
(CNN)Fiona is ripping through Canada’s eastern seaboard at hurricane strength after making landfall in Nova Scotia on Saturday, slamming the area with fierce winds and storm surge, sapping power for hundreds of thousands and washing away or collapsing some coastal homes.
Fiona, now a post-tropical cyclone, had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph — still the power of a Category 1 hurricane — around 2 p.m. ET Saturday, with its center over the Gulf of St. Lawrence and heading toward eastern Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Some coastal homes have collapsed — and a few toppled structures even fell into the sea or were surrounded by floodwater — in Newfoundland and Labrador, pictures sent from the province Saturday morning showed.
In the province’s coastal Channel-Port aux Basques town, “we’ve already had houses … and things that are washed away,” Mayor Brian Button said in a Facebook video Saturday morning. Dangerous storm surges — ocean water pushed onto land — had been expected, forecasters said.
A collapsed building in Channel-Port aux Basques was surrounded by seawater at the shoreline, and splintered wood and other debris were scattered across town, pictures taken by area resident Terry Osmond showed.
“Never in my lifetime” has there been “so much destruction … in our area,” Osmond, 62, wrote to CNN.
A woman in town was rescued from water Saturday afternoon after her home collapsed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. She was taken to a hospital; the extent of her injuries wasn’t immediately known, police said.
About a 30-minute drive to the east, several buildings were blown apart In the coastal Newfoundland community of Burnt Islands, video posted to Facebook by Pius Scott showed. Homes — or parts of them — collapsed in heaps, and debris littered the ground and seawater.
Power outages were reported for more than 540,000 utility customers in Atlantic Canada early Saturday afternoon, including more than 391,000 in Nova Scotia and nearly all of Prince Edward Island’s 87,000 tracked customers, according to Poweroutage.com.
The storm made landfall in the darkness of early Saturday as a powerful post-tropical cyclone in eastern Nova Scotia, between Canso and Guysborough, and crossed over the province’s Cape Breton Island. Officials in the Cape Breton area declared an emergency and asked people to shelter in place.
“Across the province, we’re hearing reports of damaged trees and power lines as the storm continues to pass through,” the Nova Scotia Emergency Management Office tweeted.
West of landfall, in Nova Scotia’s capital, Halifax, an apartment complex’s roof collapsed, forcing about 100 people to leave for a shelter, Mayor Mike Savage told CNN Saturday.
“A lot of uprooted trees — power outages all over the place. Our bridges, our connections to transit, are all closed out,” Savage said.
In the Prince Edward Island capital of Charlottetown, police tweeted photos of damage including a home’s collapsed ceiling.
“Conditions are like nothing we’ve ever seen,” Charlottetown police tweeted early Saturday.
After passing through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Fiona should reach Quebec’s lower north shore and Newfoundland and Labrador by late Saturday, the Canadian Hurricane Centre said.
Hurricane-force gusts were reported Saturday morning across parts of Maritime Canada, generally ranging from 70 to 95 mph (110 to over 150 kph). A top gust as of mid-morning was 111 mph (179 kph) in Arisaig, Nova Scotia, according to Environment Canada.
Rainfall could total up to 10 inches in some places, and significant flooding is possible, forecasters said.
Officials along Canada’s Atlantic seaboard had urged people to prepare for the storm, which has already claimed the lives of at least five people and shut off power for millions as it battered islands in the Caribbean and the Atlantic this week.
Fiona “could be a landmark event for Canada in terms of intensity of a tropical cyclone,” and it could even become Canada’s version of Superstorm Sandy, Chris Fogarty, Canadian Hurricane Centre manager, said before Fiona hit. Sandy in 2012 affected 24 states and all of the eastern seaboard, causing an estimated $78.7 billion in damage.
An unofficial barometric pressure of 931.6 mb was recorded Saturday at Hart Island, which would make Fiona the lowest pressure land-falling storm on record in Canada, according to the Canadian Hurricane Centre.
Similarities with 2012’s Superstorm Sandy
Fiona had been a Category 4 storm early Wednesday over the Atlantic after passing the Turks and Caicos and remained so until Friday afternoon, when it weakened on approach to Canada.
It became post-tropical before making landfall — meaning instead of a warm core, the storm now had a cold core. This does not affect the storm’s ability to produce intense winds, rain and storm surge — it just means the storm’s interior mechanics have changed.
Fiona approached Canada at the same time as a trough of low pressure and cold air to the north — much like Sandy did, according to Bob Robichaud of the Canadian Hurricane Centre.
“Sandy was larger than Fiona is expected to be even. But the process is essentially the same — where you have two features kind of feeding off each other to create one strong storm like we’re going to see,” he said Friday.
As of 2 p.m. Saturday, hurricane-force winds extended up to 115 miles out from Fiona’s center, while tropical-storm-force winds reached up to 405 miles out, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
Large swells generated by Fiona could cause life-threatening surf and rip currents along not only Atlantic Canada, but also the US Northeast coast and Bermuda, the hurricane center said.
CNN’s Allison Chinchar, Hannah Sarisohn, Sharif Paget, Derek Van Dam, Haley Brink, Aya Elamroussi, Theresa Waldrop and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
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Inside Trump's Plot To Send Rapists And Killers To 'Destabilize' Liberal Cities
Inside Trump's Plot To Send Rapists And Killers To 'Destabilize' Liberal Cities https://digitalarizonanews.com/inside-trumps-plot-to-send-rapists-and-killers-to-destabilize-liberal-cities/
Years before Ron DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt, the then-president asked his team to take migrants suspected of violence and bus them to blue states and metropolitan areas
Donald Trump is privately fuming over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flying migrants from the Texas border to Martha’s Vineyard, telling confidants the potential 2024 rival stole “my idea” for weaponizing immigrants. Turns out, Trump was right — but his plans were more extreme than anything DeSantis has come up with to date.
In early 2019, three people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone, the then-president workshopped a plan to bus migrants suspected of violent crime from the border to liberal metropolitan areas. The plan, two of the sources say Trump explicitly told staff, was to “punish” his political rivals in Democratic controlled areas.
“I was in the Oval Office for a meeting in March, 2019 in which [Trump] got more specific than just dump[ing] them in blue states,” says former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.
“He said, ‘I want you to get the worst of the worst’ — criminals, actual ‘murderers,’ and actual ‘rapists’ — who cross the [southern] border, and round them up. He did not want to expel them, which is what you’re supposed to do in those situations,” Taylor says. “He specifically said that he wanted us to put them on buses … to, and I quote, ‘destabilize’ those sanctuary cities.”
Taylor recounts the then-president listing Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and New York City among the metropolitan areas Trump wanted his administration to target.
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Taylor is the former administration official who wrote the famous Trump-bashing “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times. His account of Trump’s plan elaborates on a comment he made on CNN this week. Taylor is a persistent Trump critic, but even people still in good standing in Trumpworld recall the president proposing plans to target his political enemies with suspected violent migrants.
A former top Trump aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in part to preserve their standing with the former president, recalls Trump raising the proposal at a dinner circa early 2019.
“I don’t remember the [former] president mentioning ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers,’ but I do remember him saying we should load buses up with ‘MS-13,’” the source says, referencing the violent gang with roots in Los Angeles and El Salavador. Trump, the source says, wanted to take MS-13 members “crossing the border and send them to cities like San Francisco [where Nancy Pelosi lives, and also to]…New York.”
These ideas largely went nowhere, because administration lawyers and other officials could not stomach, nor legally justify, such actions.
Trump’s aides also noted at the time that bringing in violent people was the exact opposite of Trump’s stated goal of keeping “immigrant crime” out of the country. Trump launched his first presidential campaign with a speech claiming, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” He, along officials such as policy adviser Stephen Miller and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, worked for four years to convert that xenophobia into government action.
On the plans to bus allegedly violent migrants, staff in the White House and DHS generally predicted (or hoped) that the mercurial president, with the extremely limited attention span, would forget about it and move on.
On that day in March 2019 when he first heard Trump talk about his horrifying plan to “destabilize” these American cities, Taylor says he remembers the mood in the room being one of “total exasperation” from officials who were mostly content to “let Trump cry it out.” The then-president would be “spitting, screaming, repeating himself, and you would let him go through all of that,” Taylor says.
Despite never enacting his plan to sicc “the worst” foreign and violent criminals on the people living in blue states, Trump did talking about his more general migrant bussing plans in public.
And in the post-Trump years, Republican governors took up his mantle. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has now spent more than $12 million bussing migrants from Texas to democratic enclaves like New York and Washington D.C., and DeSantis has set aside an equivalent amount within Florida’s budget to transport migrants out of the state.
The programs however, have drawn legal and ethical scrutiny, including following this month’s attempt by DeSantis to troll the residents of Martha’s Vineyard by unceremoniously dumping fifty asylum seekers on the island resulted in allegations that the migrants had been lied to about the destination of the transport they were offered, and what resources would be available to them if they accepted the flights.
The migrant transportation programs — and the more grotesque iteration of them imagined by Trump — represent one of the central pillars guiding the GOP’s attitude toward immigration. The officials portray migrants as an undesirable, destabilizing force, rather than as people seeking sanctuary or opportunity after leaving places that provided neither. Under the GOP vision of migrants as an inherent threat, those who welcome them should be punished.
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AP News Summary At 1:37 P.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-137-p-m-edt/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Kremlin stages votes in Ukraine, sees protests in Russia
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes took place in occupied regions of Ukraine to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow. In Russia, hundreds were arrested on Saturday while trying to protest President Vladimir Putin’s order to mobilize more troops to fight in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19.
West: More sanctions, isolation if Putin carries out threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly are spotlighting Russia’s war in Ukraine. A few are prodding the world not to forget everything else. While no one is dismissing the importance of the conflict, some comments quietly speak to some unease about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, says the ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult to tackle other longstanding issues including inequality, nuclear disarmament and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Georgia voting equipment breach at center of tangled tale
ATLANTA (AP) — A breach of sensitive voting equipment data from a rural county in Georgia spilled into the public light last month when documents and emails produced in response to subpoenas revealed the involvement of high-profile supporters of former President Donald Trump. Since then, a series of revelations about what happened in Coffee County have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used throughout Georgia have been compromised. The tale involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to Trump and a cast of characters from an area that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
Fiona washes houses away, knocks out power in Canada
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — Strong rain and winds are lashing the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona hits as a powerful post-tropical cyclone. Canadian forecasters are warning it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday after transforming from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters caution that despite the change, Fiona still could have hurricane-strength winds and will bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada are affected by outages. Ocean waves pounded the town of Channel-Port Aux Basques on the southern coast of Newfoundland, where entire structures were washed into the sea.
DeSantis declares emergency as storm expected to hit Florida
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for 24 counties as Tropical Storm Ian gathers strength over the Caribbean and is expected to bring heavy rain and hurricane-force winds to the state next week. DeSantis issued the order Friday encouraging residents and local governments to make preparations as the storm moves toward the state. He has also requested a federal pre-landfall emergency declaration. The National Hurricane Center said Ian is forecast to approach southern Florida early next week with major hurricane strength.
China on Taiwan: ‘External interference’ won’t be tolerated
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China has underscored its commitment to its claim to Taiwan. Its foreign minister told world leaders that anyone who gets in the way of its determination to reunify with the self-governing island would be “crushed by the wheels of history.” The language was forceful but well within the realm of normal for Chinese leadership. China vehemently defends its claim on Taiwan. The island separated from the mainland after a 1949 civil war and now functions with its own government. A recent visit to Taiwan by the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives markedly ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Dissident: ‘Iranian women are furious’ over headscarf death
NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian activist Masih Alinejad says the videos and messages she’s been receiving in recent days from women in Iran are showing how angry they are following a young woman’s death in police custody over a violation of the country’s strict religious dress code. The spur for this latest explosion of outrage was the death earlier this month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young woman was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely in violation of strictures demanding women wear the Islamic headscarves in public. She died in custody. Protests have been going on around the country for days. Alinejad would love to see more support from those in the West, as well.
South Dakota investigation weighs Noem’s use of state plane
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is under investigation for using a state-owned airplane to fly to political events and bring family members with her on trips. But the decision on whether to prosecute the Republican governor likely hinges on how a county prosecutor interprets an untested law that was passed by voters in 2006. State law allows the aircraft only to be used “in the conduct of state business.” But Noem attended events hosted by political organizations. State plane logs also show that Noem often had family members join her on in-state flights in 2019. It blurred the lines between official travel and attending family events, including her son’s prom and her daughter’s wedding.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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This Man Will Decide On Trump's Facebook Reinstatement
This Man Will Decide On Trump's Facebook Reinstatement https://digitalarizonanews.com/this-man-will-decide-on-trumps-facebook-reinstatement/
(Newser) – Before Britain’s May 2015 election, Nick Clegg was leader of the Liberal Democrats party and the country’s deputy prime minister. Now, he’s in charge of deciding whether another former political leader will be allowed back on Facebook. Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Thursday that allowing Donald Trump back on the social media platforms will be a decision that “I oversee and I drive,” the Guardian reports. The former president was banned from the platforms indefinitely on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol riot. Clegg, speaking at a Washington event hosted by news organization Semafor, said the company has been debating reinstating Trump’s accounts.
“It’s not a capricious decision,” Clegg said. “We will look at the signals related to real-world harm to make a decision whether at the two-year point—which is early January next year—whether Trump gets reinstated to the platform.” Clegg said that while the decision is up to him, he will consult Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s board of directors, and outside experts, Politico reports. “We’ll talk to the experts, we’ll talk to third parties, we will try to assess what we think the implications will be of bringing Trump back onto the platform,” he said.
Clegg said that if Trump is reinstated and violates policies, he could be kicked off Facebook and Instagram—but the company doesn’t plan to fact-check his statements. “It’s not about truth and lies,” he said. “Political speech is not an exercise in scientific accuracy. Politicians are there to sketch out a visual of what they want to see—they’re not there to provide statistical precision.” Clegg stepped down as party leader after the 2015 election and quit politics after losing his seat in Parliament in the 2017 election. The following year, he moved to the US and was hired as a Facebook exec. He was promoted to his current role earlier this year. (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
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Tropical Storm Ian May Hit Florida Next Week As A Major Hurricane
Tropical Storm Ian May Hit Florida Next Week As A Major Hurricane https://digitalarizonanews.com/tropical-storm-ian-may-hit-florida-next-week-as-a-major-hurricane/
Tropical Storm Ian, which formed late Friday night over the southern Caribbean, is set to intensify into a powerful hurricane during the next few days.
The big picture: The storm could become a major hurricane, crossing portions of Cuba and then turning northward into Florida by midweek.
Ian has an abundant supply of deep, warm water ahead of it, which computer models show is likely to help the storm rapidly intensify.
In addition, starting later today, little significant wind shear is forecast to affect the storm.
Shear occurs when winds blowing in different directions or speeds with height, and it can prevent a tropical storm from intensifying.
Zoom in: As of 11 a.m. ET, Tropical Storm Ian was located about 250 miles south-southeast of Kingston Jamaica, and was moving west-southwest at 15 mph. Maximum sustained winds were at 45 mph.
A hurricane watch is in effect for the Cayman Islands, while a tropical storm watch is in effect for Jamaica.
“Ian is forecast to move near or over western Cuba and approach the west coast of the Florida peninsula at or near major hurricane strength early next week, where there is increasing confidence in multiple life-threatening hazards: storm surge, hurricane-force winds and rainfall flooding,” the National Hurricane Center said in its forecast update about the storm.
Threat level: While computer models disagree on the track and precise intensity forecast beyond Monday, this storm poses a significant threat to Florida.
The prospect of a major hurricane striking Florida in the next several days raises alarm bells, particularly because of the array of decisions that leaders must make in order to successfully evacuate vulnerable areas, such as the Florida Keys.
In response to the approaching storm, NASA scrubbed its plan for Tuesday’s Moon rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday. It takes three days to move the massive rocket into the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has already declared a state of emergency for 24 counties that may be affected by the storm.
Between the lines: On average, hurricane track forecasts for days four and five have errors of about 150 and 200 miles, respectively, the Hurricane Center noted Saturday morning.
The differences between computer models concern the strength and placement of a dip in the jet stream, also known as a trough, forecast to develop across the Central and Eastern U.S. early in the week.
The European model has consistently shown the storm gaining strength and curving to the north-northeast over time, across western Cuba and into central or southern Florida late Tuesday into Wednesday and Thursday.
Computer model projections for Tropical Storm Ian as of Sept. 24. The solid lines are the means of the major computer model runs, while the circle indicates the range of potential tracks. (Tomer Burg)
The main American model, known as the GFS, has been depicting another scenario, with a weaker Ian making a later turn, and threatening areas further to the north in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are flying research aircraft into and around Ian to feed more data into the computer models, hoping to hone in on an accurate prediction.
Yes, but: The uncertainty notwithstanding, forecasters are urging Floridians to prepare this weekend for a potentially significant hurricane impact, with heavy rains, damaging winds and storm surge flooding.
Millions of Floridians who flocked to the state in recent years may have never experienced a direct hit by a major hurricane, of Category 3 intensity or greater, particularly in vulnerable cities such as Tampa and Miami.
Context: Hurricanes are becoming more intense and damaging from human-caused climate change, which is enabling them to shed heavier amounts of rainfall and stay stronger further north.
Sea level rise from melting ice sheets makes a hurricane’s storm surge more harmful.
In addition, there is an observed trend toward a greater share of storms in some ocean basins that reach the higher end of the intensity scale, and that rapidly intensify as well. However, the overall number of tropical storms and hurricanes is not expected to increase in a warming world.
So far, the dire predictions for this Atlantic hurricane season have not panned out in terms of storm activity, but that seems to be changing, fast.
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Gilbert AZ Invisalign Clear Aligner Teeth Correction Orthodontics Therapy Update Digital Journal
Gilbert AZ Invisalign Clear Aligner Teeth Correction Orthodontics Therapy Update – Digital Journal https://digitalarizonanews.com/gilbert-az-invisalign-clear-aligner-teeth-correction-orthodontics-therapy-update-digital-journal/
Snow Family Dentistry (480) 982-7289 near Gilbert AZ announces details the practice’s commitment to the highest levels of Invisalign care, diagnosis, and design process involved in the fitting of orthodontic teeth aligners.
Mesa,United States – September 24, 2022 —
Snow Family Dentistry’s latest launch provides state-of-the-art Invisalign plastic trays to correct unsightly and problematic tooth growth issues. The aesthetically subtle, clear plastic braces offer a discreet alternative to traditional metal models.
More details can be found about this Invisalign practice here https://www.snowfamilydentistry.com/services/cosmetic-dentistry/invisalign-mesa-az/
The announcement details the practice’s commitment to the highest levels of patient care, outlining the consultation, diagnosis, and design process involved in the fitting of Invisalign teeth aligners. Snow Family Dentistry’s experienced dental technicians can help resolve issues such as underbite, overbite, malocclusion, and a host of other orthodontic issues.
Aligner appliances move teeth incrementally while their close-fitting design and clear plastic composition make them ideal for adults who are uncomfortable wearing more prominent conventional braces. According to Grand View Research, the global market for clear aligners was worth $4.7 billion in 2021. This is expected to expand at a CAGR of 29.5% from this year until 2030.
Invisalign trays from Snow Family Dentistry are custom-made to ensure a comfortable fit, minimizing any friction and pain even when worn for hours at a time. They are also removable, seamlessly integrating into daily life both at work or during leisure time.
Clients also benefit from a swift resolution to issues of dental overcrowding, crossbite, and ungainly gaps and spaces between teeth. Teeth straightening can also have a positive effect on digestive health, oral hygiene, and premature wear and tear on teeth and jaws. It can help with sleep apnea
While the treatment is an ideal solution to problematic dental growth for many people, the practice cautions against Invisalign for smokers, the elderly, and children who still have their baby teeth.
About Snow Family Dentistry https://www.snowfamilydentistry.com/gilbert-az-invisalign-orthodontics-clear-aligners/
Led by Dr. Dallin Snow, a native of Mesa, AZ, the practice is proud to offer a combination of leading dental technologies and traditional values of customer service with a commitment to transparent and affordable pricing for all.
A spokesperson says, “Invisalign represents a new way to straighten teeth, using transparent plastic aligners instead of metal brackets. Not only is Invisalign more discreet than conventional braces, but it also represents a more comfortable and expedient way to achieve the smile you have dreamed of.”
With its latest service updates, Snow Family Dentistry is making straight teeth an affordable reality for patients across Gilbert AZ, Mesa and beyond.
For more information, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0FQdgf4Dxg
Contact Info:
Name: Lindsey Snow
Email: Send Email
Organization: Snow Family Dentistry
Address: 4540 E Baseline Rd # 110, Mesa, AZ 85206, United States
Phone: +1-480-982-7289
Website: https://snowfamilydentistry.com/
Release ID: 89082150
If you detect any issues, problems, or errors in this press release content, kindly contact [email protected] to notify us. We will respond and rectify the situation in the next 8 hours.
COMTEX_415195844/2773/2022-09-24T12:22:50
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Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale
Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale https://digitalarizonanews.com/georgia-voting-equipment-breach-at-center-of-tangled-tale-4/
KATE BRUMBACK
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 24, 2022, 9:46AM
Updated 2 minutes ago
ATLANTA — The tale of breached voting equipment in one of the country’s most important political battleground states involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a cast of characters from a rural county that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
How they all came together and what it could mean for the security of voting in the upcoming midterm elections are questions tangled up in a lawsuit and state investigations that have prompted calls to ditch the machines altogether.
Details of the unauthorized access of sensitive voting equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became public last month when documents and emails revealed the involvement of high-profile Trump supporters. That’s also when it caught the attention of an Atlanta-based prosecutor who is leading a separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the state.
Since then, revelations about what happened in the county of 43,000 people have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia have been compromised.
The public disclosure of the breach began with a rambling phone call from an Atlanta-area bail bondsman to the head of an election security advocacy group involved in a long-running lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines.
According to a recording filed in court earlier this year, the bail bondsman said he’d chartered a jet and was with a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office when they “imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment.”
That happened on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and two days after a runoff election in which Democrats swept both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
The trip to Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment was directed by attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies, according to deposition testimony and documents produced in response to subpoenas.
Later that month, security camera footage shows, two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states spent days going in and out of the Coffee County elections office.
The footage also shows local election and Republican Party officials welcoming the visitors and allowing them access to the election equipment. The video seems to contradict statements some of the officials made about their apparent involvement.
The new information has made Coffee County, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote two years ago, a focal point of concerns over the security of voting machines. While there is no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment in 2020, some Trump supporters have spread false information about machines and the election outcome.
Election security experts and activists fear state election officials haven’t acted fast enough in the face of what they see as a real threat.
The copying of the software and its availability for download means potential bad actors could build exact copies of the Dominion system to test different types of attacks, said University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Philip Stark, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the voting machines lawsuit.
“This is like bank robbers having an exact replica of the vault that they’re trying to break into,” he said.
Stark said the risks could be minimized by using hand-marked paper ballots and rigorous audits. Dominion says its equipment remains secure.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group that sued over the state’s voting machines, said the state has been slow to investigate. She was on the receiving end of the phone call from the bail bondsman.
The state, she said, has been “repeatedly looking the other way when faced with flashing red lights of serious voting system security problems.”
State officials say they’re confident the election system is safe. All Coffee County election equipment that wasn’t already replaced will be swapped out before early voting begins next month, the secretary of state’s office said Friday.
State officials also noted they were deluged by false claims after the 2020 election.
“In retrospect, you can say, well what about this, this and this,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “In real time, no, there was no reason to think that.”
In late January 2021, a few weeks after the computer forensics team visited, security video shows a secretary of state’s office investigator arriving at the Coffee County elections office. He and the elections supervisor walk into the room that houses the election management system server. Seconds later, Jeff Lenberg, who has been identified by Michigan authorities as being part of an effort to gain access to voting machines there, is seen walking out of that room.
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'Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Actor Sentenced To Life In Prison For Killing Mother Plus More Celeb News This Week ICYMI
'Diary Of A Wimpy Kid’ Actor Sentenced To Life In Prison For Killing Mother, Plus More Celeb News This Week ICYMI https://digitalarizonanews.com/diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-actor-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-killing-mother-plus-more-celeb-news-this-week-icymi/
By Mark Gray 9:31am PDT, Sep 24, 2022
Dark crime
On Sept. 21, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” star Ryan Grantham was sentenced to life in prison for the slaying of his mother. Prosecutors said the former actor, 24, confessed to the killing on a GoPro camera after the 2020 incident, indicating he shot her while she played piano. “I shot her in the back of the head. In the moments after, she would have known it was me,” he said, according to TMZ. After murdering his mom — he pleaded guilty — prosecutors claimed that Ryan, who’s also appeared on shows including “Riverdale,” “iZombie” and “Supernatural,” had aspirations of assassinating Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In fact, one day after his mother’s death, Ryan loaded his car with guns, ammunition, Molotov cocktails and directions to the political leader’s home. CBC.ca reported that Ryan thought about carrying out a mass shooting while driving there. However, he aborted his plans and turned himself into Vancouver police.
RELATED: Celebrity mug shots
Who’s at fault?
Jonathan Goodwin, the daredevil who nearly died last year in a stunt he performed during rehearsals for “America’s Got Talent: Extreme,” is convinced that he’s not to blame for the horrible accident that left him paralyzed. During an Instagram Q&A on Sept. 18, a fan specifically asked the stuntman if the tragedy occurred due to an “improper setup” or a mistake on his end. Jonathan, 42, replied, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Whether he blames the setup isn’t known, but he clearly believes that he executed his stunt as intended. Last year, Jonathan was practicing the dangerous act he planned to perform on the reality TV show in which he hung upside down between two swinging cars while escaping from a strait jacket. Video shows Jonathan escaping but being sandwiched between the two suspended swinging vehicles. At the time of the incident, many people thought he was dead, and the outlook certainly appeared bleak. Jonathan survived but was paralyzed. He is now confined to a wheelchair.
RELATED: Celeb’s near-death experiences
Cheating scandal
Adam Levine has some explaining to do. On Sept. 19, social media model Sumner Stroh alleged that she and the Maroon 5 singer had a year-long affair, and she shared several risqué messages that they exchanged. Afterward, multiple other women came forward claiming Adam, 43, sent them flirty messages as well. Following Sumner’s further claims that she and Adam had a “physical” relationship, the singer released a statement claiming he didn’t have an “affair” but did admit he “crossed the line.” According to Adam, “I want to clear the air. I used poor judgment in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner. I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period in my life. In certain instances it became inappropriate; I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family. My wife and my family is all I care about in this world. To be this naive and stupid enough to risk the only thing that truly matters to me was the greatest mistake I could ever make. I will never make it again. I take full responsibility. We will get through it. And we will get through it together.”
RELATED: Notorious cheating scandals
Farewell
Her Majesty has been buried. On Sept. 19, the world said goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II in what was Britain’s first state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965. After days of lying in state in London, QEII’s coffin was carried from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey on the State Gun Carriage of the Royal Navy, drawn by 142 sailors. The service was attended by 2,000 people including the royal family and numerous heads of state. The queen’s coffin was then driven from London to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England. Tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets to view the procession and pay their respects. Following the pomp and circumstance, the queen was lowered into the royal vault and later that day, in a private interment attended by her family, was laid to rest next to her husband, Prince Philip, her parents and her sister inside the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside the church.
Mom-shamed
Some people just aren’t cool with Ice-T’s wife. On Sept. 22, the “Ice Loves Coco” alum got a mixed reaction from her Instagram followers after sharing an image of 6-year-old daughter Chanel bathing in a kitchen sink. “The sink is easiest when you have to be fast,” Coco captioned an Instagram video of her child using her iPad in the makeshift bathtub. Several of Coco’s followers weren’t loving Chanel’s bathing situation. “Yall [sic] still treating her like an Infant,” one Instagram user wrote. Another said, “She’s to [sic] old to be in the sink..that was really Awkward to see.” A third added, “Not the sink.” Others, however, were far more interested in how deep the sink was! “I need a kitchen upgrade,” one fan said.
Polygamy lawsuit
“Escaping Polygamy” star Amanda Rae Grant was one of 10 women who filed a lawsuit accusing a Utah-based sect of fraud, sex abuse and forcing women into marriage. According to the suit, which was obtained by Salt Lake City’s KUTV, it is a “common and intentional practice” within the Kingston polygamist family — also known as “The Order” — to require girls and women to “submit sexually to their husbands even if the sexual submission is against their will because having children results in workers for the benefit of the Order. It is also a common and intentional practice in the Order for girls to be impregnated and have children when they are young so they cannot leave, which also benefits the Order.” In Amanda’s case, she claims she was abused for 10 years by John Paul Johnson, a son of one of her father’s wives. She was 8 when the alleged abuse began and John was 13. Amanda, who left the religion and the Kingston clan nine years ago, claims she was eventually forced to marry her first cousin. “Despite telling her parents, Amanda was not protected by those in the Order who knew of it, and the abuse continued,” her complaint, obtained by Radar Online, said. “Amanda eventually told two outsiders.”
Bombshell lawsuit
On Sept. 21, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, some of his children and other Trump Organization associates, claiming they inflated the value of Trump properties to get bank loans or deflated them for tax relief. The AG, a Democrat, called it the “art of the steal.” NBC News reported that the 220-page lawsuit alleges more than 200 instances of fraud over 10 years. James’s office is seeking approximately $250 million in penalties. Following the lawsuit filing, Trump denied any wrongdoing and dubbed it “another witch hunt.” The announcement prompted a slew of celebrities to chime in. John Cusack tweeted, “Trump is going to call for a terrorists strikes against law enforcement judges feds DA’s rather then him living within the rule of law Doj / indite him – arrest him.” Billy Baldwin said, “Am I alone, or should Donald Trump be CRIMINALLY charged as well?” Donald Trump Jr. said it was “ALL politics.”
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Amanda Rae Grant / Instagram
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We Have To Keep Our Country Gay! WATCH Trumps Epic Misspeak Or Not? At Rally
‘We Have To Keep Our Country Gay!’ WATCH Trump’s Epic Misspeak – Or Not? – At Rally https://digitalarizonanews.com/we-have-to-keep-our-country-gay-watch-trumps-epic-misspeak-or-not-at-rally/
Former President Donald Trump biffed it when he tried to say the word “great” but wound up delighting anti-Trump social media users by saying “We have to keep our country gay!”
Trump held another rally in Wilmington, North Carolina Friday night, where QAnon salutes were once again observed. But near the beginning of his speech, Trump made what was either a gaffe or a surprise declaration of a significant shift in his professed cultural views:
To stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, you must vote Republican. Joe Biden and the Democrat arsonists do not care one bit about the pain and suffering they’re causing you or your family or our once great country. Remember, I was going to say, was going to use an expression, “We have to keep our country gay,” but it’s not… I mean, for some reason, it’s just not great anymore. And we can name those reasons. And we’re going to discuss them tonight.
All politicians misspeak — lord knows President Joe Biden does as he combats a lifelong stutter — but Trump’s misspeak captured the imaginations of journalists, political and media figures, and other blue-check Twitter users who were surprised and delighted by the accidental declaration:
I’m always saying this. pic.twitter.com/Wyk67ih9HL
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) September 24, 2022
“We have to keep our country gay-pur-puh.” – Donald Trump.
So then he is against DeSantis’ Don’t Say Gay initiative. https://t.co/QPbWUrFTfF
— Mr. Newberger (@jeremynewberger) September 24, 2022
if we don’t keep our country gay, who will https://t.co/x3GGAmMOgp
— Justin Ling (@Justin_Ling) September 24, 2022
“Keep our country gay…er…erp per perp it’s not, for some reason, it’s not great anymore…”
It’s adorable when people talk about Biden’s speech impediment while ignoring Trump’s obvious dementia.pic.twitter.com/OJub2ujXkk
— Holly Figueroa O’Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) September 24, 2022
To be fair, I do use the expression “we need to keep our country gay” pretty much daily pic.twitter.com/rArzzdLBRK
— Andy Legon (@AndrewLegon) September 24, 2022
Trump: ‘Keep our country gay’ https://t.co/BA0rBxo3UM
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 24, 2022
Trump just malfunctioned again. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/4sFvCGdxnT
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 24, 2022
… safe to say the age and mounting legal pressures are taking their toll.
… can’t even get out his signature #MAGA slogan.
… maybe a little more oxygen is needed?
. https://t.co/mB9oiHiLZU
— Dan Munro (@DanMunro) September 24, 2022
Watch above via CBS 17.
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Storm Fiona Hammers Canada's East Coast Forcing Evacuations
Storm Fiona Hammers Canada's East Coast, Forcing Evacuations https://digitalarizonanews.com/storm-fiona-hammers-canadas-east-coast-forcing-evacuations/
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Sept 24 (Reuters) – Powerful storm Fiona slammed into eastern Canada on Saturday with hurricane-force winds, forcing evacuations, blowing over trees and powerlines, and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without electricity.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the center of the storm, downgraded to Post-Tropical Cyclone Fiona, was now in the Gulf of St. Lawrence after racing through Nova Scotia.
After taking its toll on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the storm battered Newfoundland, but is now likely to weaken, the NHC said.
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Port aux Basques on the southwest tip of Newfoundland declared a state of emergency and is evacuating parts of the town that suffered flooding and road washouts, according to Mayor Brian Button and police.
“First responders are dealing with multiple electrical fires, residential flooding and washouts. Residents are asked to obey evacuation orders and to find a safe place to weather the storm,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Newfoundland said on Twitter.
“This is hitting us really, really hard right now,” Button said in a Saturday morning video posted on Facebook in which he urged residents to stay indoors or, if asked, to evacuate. “We have a fair bit of destruction in town… We do not need anyone else injured or hurt in during this.”
Homes along the coastline were destroyed by the storm surge, CBC reported, showing images of debris and extensive damage in the town.
Fiona, which nearly a week ago battered Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean, made landfall between Canso and Guysborough, Nova Scotia, where the Canadian Hurricane Centre said it recorded what may have been the lowest barometric pressure of any storm to hit land in the country’s history.
Ian Hubbard, meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre, told Reuters it appears Fiona lived up to expectations that it would be a “historical” storm.
“It did look like it had the potential to break the all-time record in Canada, and it looks like it did,” he said. “We’re still not out of this yet.”
Storms are not uncommon in the region and typically cross over rapidly, but Fiona is expected to impact a very large area.
Hubbard said Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island still have many hours of strong winds, rain and storm surge to go, and the west coast of Newfoundland would be pounded throughout the day.
While scientists have not yet determined whether climate change influenced Fiona’s strength or behavior, there is strong evidence that these devastating storms are getting worse.
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS WITHOUT POWER
Some 79% of customers, or 414,000, were without power in Nova Scotia, and 95%, or 82,000, had lost power on Prince Edward Island, utility companies said. The region was also experiencing spotty mobile phone service. Police across the region reported multiple road closures.
“She was a wild ride last night, sounded like the whole roof was going to blow off,” said Gary Hatcher, a retiree who lives in Sydney, Nova Scotia, near where the storm made landfall. A maple tree was toppled in his back yard but did not damage his house.
Sydney recorded wind gusts of 141 kph (88 mph), Hubbard said.
The storm weakened somewhat as it traveled north. As of 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), it was over the Gulf of St. Lawrence about 100 miles (160 km) west-north-west of Port aux Basques, carrying maximum winds of 80 miles per hour (130 kph) and barreling north at around 25 mph (41 kph), the NHC said.
Fiona is expected to maintain hurricane-force winds until Saturday afternoon, the NHC said.
As a powerful hurricane when it lashed Caribbean islands earlier in the week, Fiona killed at least eight and knocked out power for virtually all of Puerto Rico’s 3.3 million people during a sweltering heat wave. Nearly a million people remained without power five days later.
No casualties have yet been reported in Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed Saturday’s departure for Japan, where he was to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to receive briefings and support the government’s emergency response, Press Secretary Cecely Roy said on Twitter.
Canadian authorities sent emergency alerts in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, warning of severe flooding along shorelines and extremely dangerous waves. People in coastal areas were advised to evacuate.
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Reporting Eric Martyn in Halifax and John Morris in Stephenville; Additional reporting by Ivelisse Rivera in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Ismail Shakil and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Frances Kerry and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Rematches Blowouts And Wild Performances Under Friday Night Lights
Rematches, Blowouts, And Wild Performances Under Friday Night Lights https://digitalarizonanews.com/rematches-blowouts-and-wild-performances-under-friday-night-lights/
The high school football season is ramping up with most 4A-6A schools having played four games now.
At this point in the year, it becomes easier to judge teams based on performances and who they’ve played.
Some games are anomalies. Others are the product of a giant circle on a calendar, where one opponent waits for revenge.
Either way, there’s a ton to digest after last night.
Chandler Wins Round 3 Against Saguaro
This game pretty much lived up to the hype that drew in Arizona Cardinals stars Kyler Murray, Budda Baker, Byron Murphy (Saguaro alum), and more.
At this point in the season, Chandler is the more physical team. Despite Saguaro going up 14-0, the Wolves never backed down because they knew they were going to wear down the lines of the Sabercats.
They did just that. The scoring broke open for Chandler with a long touchdown pass from Dylan Raiola to Jaxon Branch. Ca’Lil Valentine, added a 79 yard rush touchdown and a receiving touchdown, with ASU interim head coach Shaun Aguano in attendance. He was offered by the Sun Devils prior to this contest.
This is how @chandler_wolves got on the board.
A from @RaiolaDylan to @BranchJaxon @Sports360AZ pic.twitter.com/AfzBNsrMX2
— Jordan Spurgeon (@spurge_) September 24, 2022
Saguaro isn’t going anywhere after a 2-2 start. Devon Dampier is so hard for any team to contain. Deric English is making elite plays in the end zone on a weekly basis. The defensive line is young, talented, and slowly beginning to gel. It’s a slow burn for Jason Mohn’s Sabercats, but they all trust the process and will be ready to peak at the right time.
THIS IS A TOP PLAY!!
This is the 2nd time I’ve seen @DericEnglish22 make a catch like this. @saguarofootball @Sports360AZ pic.twitter.com/8IzVsWDUWV
— Jordan Spurgeon (@spurge_) September 24, 2022
Rick Garretson and Mohns said “see ya in December” to each other after the game. It’s likely we get to see this rematch, unless Liberty or Basha have anything to say about that in late November or early December. Liberty had a bye week and is squaring off against Saguaro next week.
Chandler Schools Dominated
Hamilton, Basha, Casteel, and Perry (Thursday) won by a combined margin of 222-51.
.@bashagridiron ran away with the Homecoming victory over Mountain View, 55-10.@DeshaunBuchana8 was too tough on the ground#AZHSFB #FridayNight360@Sports360AZ @BashaAthletics pic.twitter.com/oWAJjRmy9m
— Eliav Gabay (@eliavgabay) September 24, 2022
The Premier region is once again living up to its name. The first three schools mentioned have a legit shot at making the Open Division, and pursuing a title. Perry may have that opportunity despite a loss to Corona del Sol, but if not, a 6A playoff run could end with a gold trophy at the end under first year head coach Joseph Ortiz.
For Hamilton, it’s new territory as they fly under the radar a little bit. Roch Cholowsky is gaining more and more command on the offense each week, which will make them a tough out against anyone. Don’t be surprised if they run the table the rest of the way.
Wait, 8 Touchdowns???
Yes, ALA Gilbert-North quarterback Adam Damante threw for seven and rushed for one touchdown in a 55-35 win over Prescott.
Damante finds Brandon Phelps on 15-yard TD pass, his third tonight and 15th this season. 21-7 Eagles, 18 ticks left in 1Q. @PrescottFB @alaGNathletics #AzPreps365 pic.twitter.com/WtxnLOMtCn
— Brian M. Bergner Jr. (@AzPreps365Brian) September 24, 2022
That’s impressive at any level. NAU is once again getting another great Arizona high school quarterback who makes big time plays.
Other Notable Scores
Arizona College Prep 42 – Mesa 28 (ACP is now 3-1).
Highland 13 – Brophy 8 (The Hawks defense is once again one of the best in the state).
Game saving pick w/ 7 seconds left on the . 13-8 Highland. All glory to God for His timing. @farrel_brock @CoachDunbar2 @Dominicwillis20 @HighlandHawksFB @AZHSFB @gridironarizona @PrepRedzoneAZ pic.twitter.com/OHCrYxubXf
— Ezekiel Cravens Nautu (@ZekeNautu) September 24, 2022
Desert Mountain 30 – Chaparral 26 (Desert Mountain is the best team in 5A. They might make the Open Division…)
Sunnyslope 9 – Coronda del Sol 37 (Jake Barro has his team winning every game they’re supposed to).
ALA Queen Creek 17 – Queen Creek 27 (First annual Andy Luberda Classic goes to Travis Schureman’s team).
Some pictures don’t need comments… @kadeluberda_ @QC_football #andyluberdaclassic pic.twitter.com/6QUeksPTdU
— Andy Silvas Photo LLC (@PhotoSilvas) September 24, 2022
Red Mountain 42 – Mountain View 7 (Red Mountain looks to be the best team in Mesa).
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TCUs Chandler Morris Ruled Out Now Warming Up Vs. SMU In Iron Skillet Game
TCU’s Chandler Morris Ruled Out, Now Warming Up Vs. SMU In Iron Skillet Game https://digitalarizonanews.com/tcus-chandler-morris-ruled-out-now-warming-up-vs-smu-in-iron-skillet-game/
TCU Horned Frogs quarterback Chandler Morris was ruled out earlier this week for the Iron Skillet rivalry against the SMU Mustangs, but Morris is on the field warming up ahead of the big game where Sonny Dykes visits the team he left last season after four years as the Mustangs head coach.
#TCU QB Chandler Morris is dressed and warming up ahead of the SMU game.
Dykes told us point blank Tuesday that Morris would not play today.
— Dean Straka (@DWStraka49) September 24, 2022
Morris suffered a left knee sprain in the second half of TCU’s season opener against Colorado, where he threw for 111 yards. He missed the Tarleton State game, and was expected to remain out against SMU, Dykes told the press on Tuesday.
TCU is 2-0 and will face Morris’ former team, the Oklahoma Sooners, next week. Morris’ backup, Max Duggan, has thrown for 417 yards and five touchdowns in the starter’s absence.
More to come.
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One Dead After Crash On I-17 Closes Ramps In Phoenix
One Dead After Crash On I-17 Closes Ramps In Phoenix https://digitalarizonanews.com/one-dead-after-crash-on-i-17-closes-ramps-in-phoenix/
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) – Arizona Department of Public Safety officers are investigating a deadly, single-car crash that happened early Saturday morning.
DPS officials say it happened near eastbound I-10 to southbound I-17 stack, and that one person is dead. The transition ramp from I-10 to I-17 is closed as well as the southbound I-17 onto McDowell Road on-ramp. Officers say it will be several hours until the road opens again, so drivers are advised to avoid the area.
One person is dead after a crash on the I-10, I-17 stack area near McDowell Road. DPS is investigating.(Stringer)
Details about what led up to the crash or the identity of the victim is not available.
Stay with Arizona’s Family for more updates.
Copyright 2022 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
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Elton John flabbergasted And Teary After Biden Surprises Him With Medal
Elton John ‘flabbergasted’ And Teary After Biden Surprises Him With Medal https://digitalarizonanews.com/elton-john-flabbergasted-and-teary-after-biden-surprises-him-with-medal/
LONDON — British singer Elton John was left teary eyed and “flabbergasted” after being awarded a surprise national humanities medal by President Biden, following a concert at the White House on Friday night.
John, 75, who was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, is a world-renowned singer, pianist and songwriter. He has also championed numerous charities and humanitarian causes, especially those tackling HIV/AIDS.
Flanked by the president and first lady, John, wearing his signature red-tinted spectacles, looked visibly shocked as he first spotted the medal, covering his face with his hands in disbelief.
“I’m never flabbergasted, but I’m flabbergasted and humbled and honored by this incredible award from the United States of America,” he said, overcome, moments after clutching Jill Biden’s hand and hugging her husband. “I will treasure this so much.”
The Grammy-winning singer praised “America’s kindness to me as a musician,” calling it “second to none,” and vowed that the medal would push him to redouble his efforts to help eradicate the illness that impacts more than 38 million people globally, according to the World Health Organization.
Biden, a big fan, described John as a “tidal wave,” quoting Irish poet Seamus Heaney, and praised his “incredible career.”
With the White House as his backdrop, John opened with “Your Song,” followed by classics including “Tiny Dancer,” “Rocket Man” and “Crocodile Rock.” He closed with the jaunty “I’m Still Standing.”
The concert on the South Lawn, titled “A Night When Hope and History Rhyme,” was part of his farewell tourafter a glittering 50-year career. It was also an event to honor “everyday history-makers in the audience,” according to the White House, among them teachers, military families and LGBT+ advocates.
John dedicated “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” to Ryan White and his mother, Jeanne White-Ginder, who attended the concert. Her son lost his life to AIDS-related complications after a blood transfusion and died in 1990, just a month before his high school graduation.
The legendary singer launched the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992, which has raised over $450 million and funded programs across four continents. In between songs, John spoke to the audience about his hope to help eradicate the virus by 2030.
Among the estimated 2,000 guests were former first lady Laura Bush, tennis champion Billie Jean King, British Ambassador to the United States Karen Elizabeth Pierce, and John’s husband, David Furnish. Members of Biden’s administration including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were also at the concert.
John has previously performed at the White House in 1998 alongside Stevie Wonder at a state dinner for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Other artists who have performed at the coveted venue include Patti LaBelle, opera star Andrea Bocelli and the Jonas Brothers.
He has sold more than 300 million records worldwide, according to his official website, and carried out more than 4,000 performances in over 80 countries.
He became Sir Elton John after being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 and has been a close ally of Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, defending them in the press after the criticism they received for stepping back from senior royal duties. John reworked “Candle In The Wind” following the death of Harry’s mother in 1997, which went on to break records, selling over 33 million copies as people across the world mourned.
Earlier this week, John told fans while onstage in Canada that he was “very sad” to learn of the death of the queen, praising the late monarch’s decency and noting she had for decades “worked bloody hard.”
His medal from Biden will sit alongside his Legion d’Honneur given to him by French President Macron in 2019.
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'Fighting Fit': Trial To Show Oath Keepers' Road To Jan. 6
'Fighting Fit': Trial To Show Oath Keepers' Road To Jan. 6 https://digitalarizonanews.com/fighting-fit-trial-to-show-oath-keepers-road-to-jan-6/
The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight.
Convinced the White House had been stolen from Donald Trump, Stewart Rhodes exhorted his followers to action.
“We must now … refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol,” Rhodes declared.
Authorities allege Rhodes and his band of extremists would spend the next several weeks after Election Day, Nov. 3, amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary training and readying armed teams with a singular goal: stopping Biden from becoming president.
Their plot would come to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors say, when Oath Keepers in battle gear were captured on camera shouldering their way through the crowd of Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation.
FILE – A man wearing an Oath Keepers shirt stands outside the Kenosha County Courthouse, Nov. 19, 2021 in Kenosha, Wis. The trial of the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and four associates charged with seditious conspiracy in the attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to begin next week. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Paul Sancya
Court documents in the case against Rhodes and four co-defendants — whose trial opens Tuesday with jury selection in Washington’s federal court — paint a picture of a group so determined to overturn Biden’s victory that some members were prepared to lose their lives to do so.
It’s the biggest test for the Justice Department’s efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the Capitol attack. Rioters temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s victory by sheer force, pummeling police officers in hand-to-hand fighting as they rammed their way into the building, forcing Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from the mob.
Despite nearly 900 arrests and hundreds of convictions in the riot, Rhodes and four Oath Keeper associates — Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — are the first to stand trial on the rare and difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy.
The Oath Keepers accuse prosecutors of twisting their words and insist there was never any plan to attack the Capitol. They say they were in Washington to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before Trump’s big outdoor rally near the White House on Jan. 6. Their preparations, training, gear and weapons were to protect themselves against potential violence from left-wing antifa activists or to be ready if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to call up a militia.
Rhodes’ lawyers have signaled their defense will focus on his belief that Trump would take that action. But Trump never did, so Rhodes went home, his lawyers have said.
___
On Nov. 9, 2020, less than a week after the election, Rhodes held a conference call and rallied the Oath Keepers to go to Washington and fight. He expressed hope that antifa (anti-fascist) activists would start clashes because that would give Trump the “reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.”
”You’ve got to go there and you’ve got to make sure that he knows that you are willing to die to fight for this country,” Rhodes told his people, according to a transcript filed in court.
By December, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers had set their sights on Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, prosecutors say.
On Dec. 23, he published an open letter on the Oath Keepers website declaring that “tens of thousands of patriot Americans, both veterans and nonveterans” would be in Washington. He warned they might have to “take to arms in defense of our God given liberty.”
As 2021 approached, Rhodes spent $7,000 on two night-vision devices and a weapon sight and sent them to someone outside Washington, authorities say. Over several days in early January, he would spend an additional $15,500 on guns, magazines, mounts, sights and other equipment, according to court documents.
___
Rhodes had instructed Oath Keepers to be ready, if asked, to secure the White House perimeter and “use lethal force if necessary” against anyone, including the National Guard, who might try to remove Trump from the White House, according to court documents.
On Jan. 5, Meggs and the Florida Oath Keepers brought gun boxes, rifle cases and suitcases filled with ammunition to the Virginia hotel where the “quick reaction force” teams would be on standby, according to prosecutors. A team from Arizona brought weapons, ammunition, and supplies to last 30 days, according to court papers. A team from North Carolina had rifles in a vehicle parked in the hotel lot, prosecutors have said.
At the Capitol, the Oath Keepers formed two teams, military “stacks,” prosecutors say.
Some members of the first stack headed toward the House in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but couldn’t find her, according to court documents. Members of the second stack confronted officers inside the Capitol Rotunda, prosecutors allege.
Rhodes isn’t accused of going inside the Capitol but was seen huddled with members outside after the riot. Rhodes and others then walked to the nearby Phoenix Park Hotel, prosecutors say.
In a private suite there, Rhodes called someone on the phone with an urgent message for Trump, according to an Oath Keeper who says he witnessed it. Rhodes repeatedly urged the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power, court papers say. The person denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly to Trump.
“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up, according to court papers. Authorities have not disclosed the name of the person they believe Rhodes was speaking to on the call.
That night, Rhodes and other Oath Keepers went to dinner in Virginia. In messages over the course of the evening, they indicated their fight was far from over.
“Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming,” Rhodes wrote.
Rhodes returned to Texas after the Jan. 6 attack and remained free for a year before his arrest in January 2022.
In interviews before he was jailed, he sought to distance himself from Oath Keepers who went inside the Capitol, saying that was a mistake. He also continued to push the lie the election was stolen and said the Jan. 6 investigation was politically motivated.
___
For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Fiona Hits Canada Leaving Hundreds Of Thousands Without Power
Fiona Hits Canada, Leaving Hundreds Of Thousands Without Power https://digitalarizonanews.com/fiona-hits-canada-leaving-hundreds-of-thousands-without-power/
MONTREAL — One of the strongest storms ever to hit Canada slammed into Nova Scotia’s coastline early Saturday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power.
Former Hurricane Fiona made landfall early on Saturday morning over Guysborough county on the northeast corner of mainland Nova Scotia, Canada’s weather service said. There were maximum sustained winds of almost 81 mph, while peak gusts of over 100 mph were detected, it added.
It is the lowest pressured land falling storm on record in Canada, according to the Canadian Hurricane Center, which also described hurricane-force gusts battering the area.
Nearly half of the population of Nova Scotia is affected by power outages, according to Nova Scotia Power, as was most of Prince Edward Island. “We are seeing significant impacts from the storm, including uprooted trees, broken poles and downed power lines across the province,” the utility company added.
Amanda McDougall, mayor of Cape Breton Regional Municipality, the hardest-hit area, told the news station CTV Atlantic that “power lines and power poles are everywhere.”
“Houses have lost their roofs. There are a great many trees that are down that are causing structural damage,” she said Saturday morning.
She added that it was too early to assess overall damage, in part because it is so hard to travel.
With the live wires on the roads, people have been asked to call 911 if they need to evacuate their homes and not to try to leave on their own.
Emergency responders in various parts of Nova Scotia have reported roof collapses but no major injuries.
“A neighbor has a tree down on their house, and basements are flooding,” said Bryson Sylliboy, 41, of Port Hawkesbury. “Usually during a storm someone gets hurt, but I feel like everybody heeded the warnings and stayed in. Even last night, there was a minimum of trucks on the roads.”
Over the past week, Fiona has cut a wide path of destruction, especially in the Caribbean.
Fiona was a Category 1 hurricane when it hit Puerto Rico, but heavy rains battered the island, washing away roads, cutting off running water and causing mudslides. Afterward, Fiona slammed the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and other parts of the Caribbean. By Wednesday, it had intensified to a Category 4 storm before it passed near Bermuda.
Fiona is now a post-tropical cyclone but is still packing hurricane-strength winds. It is winding its way north-northeast and will pass into the Gulf of St. Lawrence on Saturday before reaching the Labrador Sea by late Sunday.
“This storm will be a severe event for Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec,” the Canadian Hurricane Center wrote Friday. The federal agency previously said the storm had the potential to become “historic” and “a landmark weather event.”
The storm was forecast to be so serious that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau postponed a visit to Japan, where he planned to attend Shinzo Abe’s funeral, at the last minute Friday.
In Prince Edward Island and western Newfoundland, meteorologists predict 3 to 6 inches of rain, with up to 10 inches in some areas, and hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph. Tropical storm warnings extend from New Brunswick to eastern Quebec to northern Newfoundland, where rainfall could reach 5 inches and winds at least 39 mph.
The center also predicted a considerable ocean surge, or storm-driven rise in water above normally dry land, causing coastal flooding. It predicted a “rough and pounding surf” with waves up to 26 to 40 feet (8 to 12 meters).
Fiona is the latest marker of an Atlantic hurricane season that started slow but has suddenly turned active. It is one of five systems meteorologists are watching in the Atlantic basin, including one that organized into Tropical Storm Ian Friday night and could soon become a threat to Florida as a hurricane.
Jason Samenow in Washington and Helier Cheung in London contributed to this report.
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AP News Summary At 10:33 A.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-1033-a-m-edt/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Russia shells Ukrainian cities amid Kremlin-staged votes
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes continue to pave the way for Moscow to annex occupied regions of Ukraine. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a hastily approved bill that toughens the punishment for soldiers who disobey officers’ orders, desert or surrender to the enemy.
West: More sanctions, isolation if Putin carries out threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly are spotlighting Russia’s war in Ukraine. A few are prodding the world not to forget everything else. While no one is dismissing the importance of the conflict, some comments quietly speak to some unease about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, says the ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult to tackle other longstanding issues including inequality, nuclear disarmament and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Georgia voting equipment breach at center of tangled tale
ATLANTA (AP) — A breach of sensitive voting equipment data from a rural county in Georgia spilled into the public light last month when documents and emails produced in response to subpoenas revealed the involvement of high-profile supporters of former President Donald Trump. Since then, a series of revelations about what happened in Coffee County have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used throughout Georgia have been compromised. The tale involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to Trump and a cast of characters from an area that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
Dissident: ‘Iranian women are furious’ over headscarf death
NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian activist Masih Alinejad says the videos and messages she’s been receiving in recent days from women in Iran are showing how angry they are following a young woman’s death in police custody over a violation of the country’s strict religious dress code. The spur for this latest explosion of outrage was the death earlier this month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young woman was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely in violation of strictures demanding women wear the Islamic headscarves in public. She died in custody. Protests have been going on around the country for days. Alinejad would love to see more support from those in the West, as well.
Abortion is a matter of ‘freedom’ for Biden and Democrats
WASHINGTON (AP) — The way President Joe Biden sees it, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court wasn’t just about whether a woman has the right to obtain an abortion. “It’s about freedom,” Biden said this past week while in New York. Vice President Kamala Harris tells voters that “extremist, so-called leaders trumpet the rhetoric of freedom while they take away freedoms.” That deliberate echo of “freedom” from Biden, Harris and other top White House officials shows how Democrats at the highest ranks are increasingly co-opting traditionally conservative rhetoric in a blunt appeal to a broad swath of the electorate this fall.
In GOP legislatures, a gender divide emerges over abortion
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A stark gender divide has emerged in debates unfolding in Republican-led states including West Virginia, Indiana and South Carolina following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to end constitutional protections for abortion. As male-dominated legislatures worked to advance bans, protesters were more likely to be women. That happened even as legislators often had support of the few Republican women holding office. In all three states, lawmakers fighting against abortion bans have pointed to the gender divide. They’ve insisted that male counterparts shouldn’t get to dictate medical decisions for women. Ban supporters maintain that abortion affects not only women, but also children, and all of society.
South Dakota investigation weighs Noem’s use of state plane
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is under investigation for using a state-owned airplane to fly to political events and bring family members with her on trips. But the decision on whether to prosecute the Republican governor likely hinges on how a county prosecutor interprets an untested law that was passed by voters in 2006. State law allows the aircraft only to be used “in the conduct of state business.” But Noem attended events hosted by political organizations. State plane logs also show that Noem often had family members join her on in-state flights in 2019. It blurred the lines between official travel and attending family events, including her son’s prom and her daughter’s wedding.
Fiona knocks out power with strong winds in Atlantic Canada
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — Strong rain and winds are lashing the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona hits as a powerful post-tropical cyclone. Canadian forecasters are warning it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday after transforming from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters caution that despite the change, Fiona still could have hurricane-strength winds and will bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada are affected by outages.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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AP News Summary At 10:45 A.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-1045-a-m-edt/
‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6
It’s been a long road to the upcoming Capitol riot trial of the the leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers. But the prosecution’s case against Stewart Rhodes covers a lot more than just the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and four co-defendants are facing the difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that for the Oath Keepers, the siege wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment protest but that it was part of a weekslong plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Jury selection begins Tuesday in federal court in the nation’s capital. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Russia shells Ukrainian cities amid Kremlin-staged votes
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes continue to pave the way for Moscow to annex occupied regions of Ukraine. Ukraine’s presidential office said the latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19. Kyiv and its Western allies say the votes underway in four regions of Ukraine are a sham with no legal force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged residents to undermine “this farce.” He also encouraged people called up to fight to desert or sabotage the Russian military. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a hastily approved bill that toughens the punishment for soldiers who disobey officers’ orders, desert or surrender to the enemy.
West: More sanctions, isolation if Putin carries out threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — How will American leaders and their allies respond if President Vladimir Putin seeks to escalate his way out of his bad situation on Ukraine’s battlefields? Putin this week renewed threats of claiming more Ukrainian territory, and even using nuclear weapons. U.S. and European leaders have made clear they will try to double down on the same tactics that have helped put Russia in a corner in Ukraine. That means more financial penalties and international isolation for Russia, more arms and other backing for Ukraine. There’s no sign of the United States and NATO matching Putin’s intensified nuclear threats with the same bluster, which could raise the risks of escalating the conflict.
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly are spotlighting Russia’s war in Ukraine. A few are prodding the world not to forget everything else. While no one is dismissing the importance of the conflict, some comments quietly speak to some unease about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, says the ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult to tackle other longstanding issues including inequality, nuclear disarmament and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Georgia voting equipment breach at center of tangled tale
ATLANTA (AP) — A breach of sensitive voting equipment data from a rural county in Georgia spilled into the public light last month when documents and emails produced in response to subpoenas revealed the involvement of high-profile supporters of former President Donald Trump. Since then, a series of revelations about what happened in Coffee County have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used throughout Georgia have been compromised. The tale involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to Trump and a cast of characters from an area that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
Dissident: ‘Iranian women are furious’ over headscarf death
NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian activist Masih Alinejad says the videos and messages she’s been receiving in recent days from women in Iran are showing how angry they are following a young woman’s death in police custody over a violation of the country’s strict religious dress code. The spur for this latest explosion of outrage was the death earlier this month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young woman was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely in violation of strictures demanding women wear the Islamic headscarves in public. She died in custody. Protests have been going on around the country for days. Alinejad would love to see more support from those in the West, as well.
Abortion is a matter of ‘freedom’ for Biden and Democrats
WASHINGTON (AP) — The way President Joe Biden sees it, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court wasn’t just about whether a woman has the right to obtain an abortion. “It’s about freedom,” Biden said this past week while in New York. Vice President Kamala Harris tells voters that “extremist, so-called leaders trumpet the rhetoric of freedom while they take away freedoms.” That deliberate echo of “freedom” from Biden, Harris and other top White House officials shows how Democrats at the highest ranks are increasingly co-opting traditionally conservative rhetoric in a blunt appeal to a broad swath of the electorate this fall.
In GOP legislatures, a gender divide emerges over abortion
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A stark gender divide has emerged in debates unfolding in Republican-led states including West Virginia, Indiana and South Carolina following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to end constitutional protections for abortion. As male-dominated legislatures worked to advance bans, protesters were more likely to be women. That happened even as legislators often had support of the few Republican women holding office. In all three states, lawmakers fighting against abortion bans have pointed to the gender divide. They’ve insisted that male counterparts shouldn’t get to dictate medical decisions for women. Ban supporters maintain that abortion affects not only women, but also children, and all of society.
South Dakota investigation weighs Noem’s use of state plane
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is under investigation for using a state-owned airplane to fly to political events and bring family members with her on trips. But the decision on whether to prosecute the Republican governor likely hinges on how a county prosecutor interprets an untested law that was passed by voters in 2006. State law allows the aircraft only to be used “in the conduct of state business.” But Noem attended events hosted by political organizations. State plane logs also show that Noem often had family members join her on in-state flights in 2019. It blurred the lines between official travel and attending family events, including her son’s prom and her daughter’s wedding.
Fiona knocks out power with strong winds in Atlantic Canada
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — Strong rain and winds are lashing the Atlantic Canada region as Fiona hits as a powerful post-tropical cyclone. Canadian forecasters are warning it could be one of the most severe storms in the country’s history. Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia before dawn Saturday after transforming from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters caution that despite the change, Fiona still could have hurricane-strength winds and will bring drenching rains and huge waves. More than 500,000 customers in Atlantic Canada are affected by outages.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Basha Handles Business On Homecoming Night Improves To 4-0
Basha Handles Business On Homecoming Night, Improves To 4-0 https://digitalarizonanews.com/basha-handles-business-on-homecoming-night-improves-to-4-0/
Photo Credit: Michael Yero
Michael Yero is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Basha High School for AZPreps365.com.
Basha head coach Chris McDonald knew how much this one meant to his seniors.
On homecoming night in front of a packed student section, the Bears weren’t going to take Friday’s matchup against Mountain View lightly.
“The party starts tonight,” McDonald told his team pregame.
Then senior Cole Martin got the party started from the jump, returning the opening kickoff for touchdown in Basha’s 55-10 runaway victory to start the season 4-0 for a second straight year.
The Bears’ defense returned the favor with back-to-back three and outs, setting up junior quarterback Demond Williams to connect with Mason Arhin for a 30-yard score.
Basha made it a priority to control the tempo right out the gate.
McDonald ordered his team to snap the ball 30 seconds before the game clock expired, keeping the offense rolling and the Toros gasping for air. The consistency of McDonald’s offensive game plan wore out Mountain View, who went into the half down 34-3.
“We have a big offensive line. We’re just trying to wear them out,” McDonald said. “The key is getting positive yards, win first downs. You’ve got to get plus six or seven yards on first downs in order to go fast. You don’t want to go fast if you can’t move the football.”
Williams was the star in the first half, notching all four of his touchdowns in the first half. The four-star signal caller was patient in the pocket and used his legs effectively when necessary.
Just four games into the season, Williams is inching toward 1,000 passing yards while already racking up 11 touchdowns.
“I’m just going with the flow, he said. “I know some games I’m not going to have as many passing yards and touchdowns as some games, but whatever we got to do to win. If that affects me statistically, I don’t really care that much.”
Basha was just as explosive on the defensive end. Junior linebacker Jack Bleier had three sacks in the first half, collapsing the pocket nearly every play.
Martin, who plays cornerback, forced fumble before the half. That’s the second time he’s done that this season.
“We came in ready to do what we had to do,” Martin said. “We did everything in the game plan to win this game.”
The second half was much of the same for Basha, as senior running back Deshaun Buchanan scored rushing touchdowns on consecutive possessions.
McDonald pulled his starters with 55 seconds left in the third with Basha leading, 48-10.
The backups did their thing, as junior running back Corey Chisley found the end zone with 6:35 remaining in the game.
Linebacker Easton Jones sealed it with an interception before the Bears entered victory formation.
Basha will take on Cactus next week before facing Liberty, Hamilton and Chandler next month.
As those dates approach, McDonald is pleased with what he’s seen on offense, defense and special teams. That said, he knows tweaks must be made if they want to compete against the best teams.
“Just looking at my team and what we focus on, we’ve got to get better at some things,” he said. “I know how good the top tier teams are in the state. We’ve got to clean up some things to really have a chance and move forward.”
“Pretty cool”: Arizona State interim head football coach Shaun Aguano made his first recruiting stop at Friday’s game at Jim Wall Football Stadium.
Aguano, who was the head coach at Chandler High School before replacing Herman Edwards at ASU, came to look at multiple uncommitted prospects for the Bears with senior defensive back Miles Lockhart being one of them.
“It’s his first Friday named as the interim head coach and his first stop is Basha,” McDonald said about Aguano. “That’s pretty cool.”
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This Iconic Bar Of Soap With Two Weird Claims To Fame Has Stuck Around For Nearly 150 Years | CNN Business
This Iconic Bar Of Soap, With Two Weird Claims To Fame, Has Stuck Around For Nearly 150 Years | CNN Business https://digitalarizonanews.com/this-iconic-bar-of-soap-with-two-weird-claims-to-fame-has-stuck-around-for-nearly-150-years-cnn-business/
New York CNNBusiness —
Walk into a Walmart, Target, any drugstore chain in your neighborhood or a corner bodega for New York City dwellers, and chances are you’ll find an Ivory Soap bar, or a pack of 10 bars for under $5, sitting on the shelf.
This iconic cake of soap, invented almost 150 years ago, has become a part of Americana largely by advertising its two strange merits: “It Floats” and it’s “99+44⁄100% Pure.”
The original product is a no-frills, plain white, mild-scented bar soap with the name “IVORY” etched into it in script. Impressively, it has stayed exactly that way for 143 years – barring the addition of an Aloe scented variety, and is also still around.
Ivory soap’s longevity flies in the face of a notoriously fickle market for personal beauty products where new trends can appear and disappear in a flash.
So why has Ivory Soap stood the test of time? One theory is because of its clever advertising and branding. Ivory Soap packaging famously, and relentlessly, touts the attributes of purity and buoyancy.
“That’s brilliant execution,” said David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, a branding expert who has helped name such popular consumer products as “Swiffer,” “Blackberry” and “Dasani.”
“Just think about it. How many other soaps can you think of that tout an attribute that’s analogous to “It Floats?” said Placek. “I can’t think of another. It makes you remember it because it also makes you think about other soaps that don’t float.”
Because Ivory Soap’s taglines have remained consistent and endured for over a century and through generations of consumers, they’ve seeped into the subconscious, said Placek.
“Even if you’ve not used Ivory Soap you know about it and you remember it,” he said.
Ivory Soap is the brainchild of Procter & Gamble. Not the huge multinational consumer brands conglomerate that it is today, but of two individuals – Harley Procter (son of P&G cofounder William Procter) and James N. Gamble (son of P&G’s other cofounder, James Gamble).
It was in the late 19th century, a period when river bathing was prevalent among large swaths of the population. Now imagine losing your grip on a bar of soap when you’re immersed waist-deep in murky water.
But what if there was a soap bar that could float?
An AdAge article about Ivory Soap’s invention explained how Gamble at the time was trying to create a new type of gently formulated soap. The R&D process inadvertently created a batch of soap that was found to float because air bubbles got trapped inside.
Gamble, according to P&G’s website, recognized the “floating soap” could revolutionize the washing experience in more ways than one.
He initially thought the floating soap could be used both for laundry and for washing up. Over time, the soap bar primarily became a bath soap.
Naming the soap was another story.
According to P&G legend, Harley Procter came upon the word “ivory” while attending church and thought it perfectly fit the new soap’s look and feel and both men adopted “Ivory Soap” as the name.
P&G launched the soap in 1879 hyping it not only as a soap bar that floated but for its purity.
That claim, according to the company, hinged on a study of the soap by chemistry professors at the request of the inventors. One study showed the soap had only a small amount of impurities – 56/100 of a percent – of a non soap material in it.
So they decided to play that up in Ivory Soap’s advertising, rounding it up to create its second iconic tagline – “99 and 44-100% pure.”
P&G maintains that while it continues to innovate its Ivory Soap, the product is still made with a simple formula free of dyes and parabens meant to gently cleanse the skin.
It has, however, extended the brand to other products.
In the 1950s, according to the AdAge article, P&G launched a light-duty dishwashing detergent under the Ivory brand, followed by liquid hand soaps in the 1980s and moisturizing body washes in 1996 with the introduction of Ivory Moisture Care. Today, the Ivory personal care portfolio also includes baby care products, hair and body washes and deodorant.
Ivory soap has become so iconic that in 2001 P&G donated a collection of its Ivory Soap artifacts to the Smithsonian Institution, including its earliest advertising and a bar of unused soap from the 1940s.
Lexicon Branding’s Placek said Ivory Soap is a product way ahead of its time. “It was ‘pure’ before pure, clean and simple products became as popular as they are with consumers today,” he said.
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In Memoriam: Funeral Notices, September 24, 2022 https://digitalarizonanews.com/in-memoriam-funeral-notices-september-24-2022/
In memoriam: Funeral notices, September 24, 2022
Funeral notices for Saturday, September 24, 2022. For more obituaries go to
legacy.com/obituaries/tucson/
In memoriam: Funeral notices, September 24, 2022
Paid Obituaries
Walter Tober
Walter Ernest Tober died at home on September 12, 2022 following a brief battle with cancer. He was born on November 10, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ernest Tober and Mollie (Semrau) Tober. Walter graduated from WestTech High School in Cleveland. In 1956, he graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve. In 1958, Walter moved to Tucson, AZ where he began working at Hughes Aircraft. At Hughes, Walter met his bride of 62 years, Madeleine (Preciado) Tober. Madeleine was only 18 when the couple met; they married at St. Phillip’s in 1960. Walter enjoyed being with his family, camping, fishing, and reading. His first trip to Rocky Point, Mexico in 1960 initiated a lifetime of international travel. Walter also enjoyed ice cream, a good dark beer, and playing games with his grandchildren. Walter was a kind and patient man. He faithfully loved his wife and nurtured his children with consistency and devotion. Walter was known for being honest and principled. He also had a wonderful dry sense of humor. In addition to his parents, Walter was predeceased by his sister, Delores Stone. Surviving in addition to his wife, Madeleine Tober, is his son, Chris Tober and his wife Diane, of Tucson; daughter, Kristen Tober and her husband Glen Halvorson of Scottsdale; daughter, Adrienne Tober and her husband David Laney of La Jolla. Walter had 14 grandchildren: Logan, Shelby, Cameron, and Mitchell (Chris and Diane); T.J., Taylor, Dustin, Ben, Blanca, Grace, Asher, and Samuel (Glen and Kristen); Christopher and Morgan (David and Adrienne). Walter had two great-grandchildren, Stella and Juliet (T.J. and Gabriella). Funeral Service to be held in Carlsbad, CA. Those who wish to remember Walt in a special way make gifts in his memory to The Cancer Research Institute, Web Donation 29 Broadway, Floor 4, New York, NY 10006-3111or give.cancerreasearch.org/site/Donation. Donations can also be given to St. Michaels’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church at 2727 Carlsbad Blvd, Carlsbad, CA 92008.
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Virtually All Abortions In Arizona Are Now Illegal Judge Rules
Virtually All Abortions In Arizona Are Now Illegal, Judge Rules https://digitalarizonanews.com/virtually-all-abortions-in-arizona-are-now-illegal-judge-rules/
Virtually all abortions in Arizona are now illegal.
Late Friday, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson rejected arguments by Planned Parenthood of Arizona that a law, on the books since Arizona’s territorial days, was replaced when lawmakers earlier this year approved a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The territorial-era law, a version of which dates to 1864, has only a single exception: to save the life of the mother. It prohibits the procedure including in cases of rape or incest.
The old law was never repealed, but could not be enforced, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973’s Roe v. Wade case that women had a constitutional right to abortion.
Planned Parenthood attorney Andrew Gaona had argued Johnson needed to harmonize the old law with what has been enacted since. That includes the 15-week ban approved this year by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature, which was set to take effect Saturday, Sept. 24.
Planned Parenthood asked Johnson to rule that the new law applies only to doctors, with the old outright ban applying to everyone else.
She refused, saying her job was only to determine whether the injunction against enforcement of the territorial-era law, issued by the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1973 — after the Roe ruling — is still valid.
The judge said it is not, now that the U.S. justices overturned Roe this summer. What happened since, including approval of the 15-week ban, is legally irrelevant, Johnson said.
“The court finds modifying the injunction to harmonize laws not in existence when” the injunction request was filed “is procedurally improper,” the judge wrote.
She said a carve-out exempting doctors from the outright 1864 ban — the argument advanced by Planned Parenthood — “is not consistent with the plain language (of the territorial law) which contains no such exception.”
There is also the fact that when lawmakers approved the 15-week ban — before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June — they spelled out they were not repealing the old law.
Johnson has now given Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich permission to enforce the old law.
“We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue,’’ Brnovich said in a written statement. “I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.’’
However, C.J. Karamargin, press aide to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, pointed out that while Johnson said the 1864 law can be enforced, the judge never specifically voided Senate Bill 1164, the 15-week ban the governor signed into law earlier this year.
And Karamargin said that, as far as Ducey is concerned, that law takes effect as scheduled Saturday.
That sets the stage for someone to ask the Arizona Supreme Court for guidance on which law takes precedence.
There was no immediate response from Planned Parenthood.
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, a Democrat who sided with the organization, said her office now “will be looking at available legal remedies,’’ though she did not spell out what those are.
“Having a near complete ban on abortion procedures puts people at risk,” Conover’s statement said. “… Additionally, the near total ban provides no consideration for victims of rape and incest, making society more vulnerable to these violent crimes. My priorities as Pima County Attorney are public safety and public health. I join our Sheriff and our Tucson Police Chief in reassuring the residents of Pima County of those priorities.”
Cathi Herrod, president of the anti-abortion Center for Arizona Policy, said there are dozens of “pregnancy resource centers’’ throughout Arizona that can provide help to women, from prenatal care and adoption support to car seats and strollers.
“Arizona can and will care for both mother and her unborn child,’’ Herrod said.
Johnson emphasized she was not ruling on the constitutionality of the old law but dealing only with the 1973 injunction.
There have been arguments advanced that the statute runs afoul of the privacy provision of the Arizona Constitution. Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, has advanced that theory and promised not to enforce the law if elected.
“While there may be legal questions the parties seek to resolve regarding Arizona statutes on abortion, those questions are not for this court to decide here,” Johnson wrote.
Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia or email azcapmedia@gmail.com.
Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia or email azcapmedia@gmail.com.
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