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Tag: Social affairs

  • FBI background check blocked gun sale to St. Louis shooter

    FBI background check blocked gun sale to St. Louis shooter

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    ST. LOUIS — The 19-year-old gunman who forced his way into a St. Louis school and killed two people purchased the AR-15-style rifle from a private seller after an FBI background check stopped him from buying a weapon from a licensed dealer, police said Thursday.

    Orlando Harris tried to buy a firearm from a licensed dealer in nearby St. Charles, Missouri, on Oct. 8, St. Louis police said in a news release Thursday evening. An FBI background check “successfully blocked this sale,” police said, though they didn’t say why the sale was blocked. A message seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.

    Harris then bought the rifle used in the school shooting on Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School from a private seller who had purchased it legally in 2020, police said.

    Police noted in the release that Missouri does not have a red-flag law aimed at keeping firearms away from people who may be a danger to themselves or others. As a result, police “did not have clear authority to temporarily seize the rifle when they responded to the suspect’s home when called by the suspect’s mother on 10/15/22.”

    Police on Wednesday said Harris’ mother called police on the evening of Oct. 15 after she found a gun and wanted it removed. The statement said someone known to the family was contacted and took possession of it.

    Somehow, Harris got the gun back. How that happened is under investigation.

    Police responded within minutes after being called Monday morning. Officers confronted and killed the gunman, who graduated from the school last year. He had around 600 rounds of ammunition with him.

    Tenth-grader Alexzandria Bell and teacher Jean Kuczka were killed in the attack, and seven 15- and 16-year-olds were wounded. None of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening.

    Police believe Harris had intended targets. They have not said if any of the victims were among them.

    Harris’ mother was “heartbroken” by the shooting, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said. She and other relatives had long dealt with Harris’ mental health issues and even had him committed at times, Sack said at a news conference on Wednesday. They also monitored his mail and often checked his room to make sure he did not have a weapon.

    In a note left behind, Harris lamented that he had no friends, no family, no girlfriend and a life of isolation. His note called it the “perfect storm for a mass shooter.”

    “Mental health is a difficult thing,” Sack said. “It’s hard to tell when somebody is going to be violent and act out, or if they’re just struggling, they’re depressed, and they might self-harm.”

    Central Visual and Performing Arts shares a building with another magnet school, Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, which also was evacuated as the shooting unfolded. Central has 383 students, Collegiate 336.

    The building was locked Monday morning and an unarmed security guard saw Harris trying to get in. Sack has declined to say how Harris forced his way inside.

    Officers, some of whom were off-duty, arrived four minutes after the 911 call. Amid the chaos of students, teachers and staff fleeing, officers asked some of them where the gunman was. Eight minutes after arriving, officers located Harris on the third floor, barricaded in a classroom. Police said that when Harris shot at officers, they shot back and broke through the door.

    The St. Louis shooting was the first school shooting to involve multiple deaths since a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, according to a list of shootings compiled by Education Week.

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  • Musk doesn’t seek a ‘free-for-all hellscape’ for Twitter

    Musk doesn’t seek a ‘free-for-all hellscape’ for Twitter

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    Elon Musk attempted to soothe leery Twitter advertisers Thursday, a day before a deadline to close out on his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform, saying that he is buying the platform to help humanity and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

    The message appears aimed at addressing concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue — that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.

    “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote in an uncharacteristically long message for the Tesla CEO, who typically projects his thoughts in one-line tweets.

    He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”

    Musk has previously expressed distaste for advertising and Twitter’s dependence on it, suggesting more emphasis on other business models such as paid subscriptions that won’t allow big corporations to dictate policy on how social media operates. But on Thursday, he assured advertisers he wants Twitter to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”

    The note is a shift from Musk’s position that Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

    But it’s also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business, putting Twitter at risk of losing advertisers and subscribers, she said.

    “You do not want a place where consumers just simply are bombarded with things they do not want to hear about, and the platform takes no responsibility,” Yildirim said.

    Musk said Twitter should be “warm and welcoming to all” and enable users to choose the experience they want to have.

    “I didn’t do it to make money,” he said of the pending acquisition. “I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love. And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.”

    Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in a battle that began in April with Musk signing a deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to go through with the acquisition. If the two sides don’t meet Friday’s deadline, the next step could be a November trial that could lead to a judge forcing Musk to complete the deal.

    But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through. He strolled into the company’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink, changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit,” and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”

    And overnight the New York Stock Exchange notified investors that it will suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening bell Friday in anticipation of the company going private under Musk.

    Musk is expected to speak to Twitter employees directly Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in several media outlets. Despite internal confusion and low morale tied to fears of layoffs or a dismantling of the company’s culture and operations, Twitter leaders this week have at least outwardly welcomed Musk’s arrival and messaging.

    Top sales executive Sarah Personette, the company’s chief customer officer, said she had a “great discussion” with Musk on Wednesday and appeared to endorse his Thursday message to advertisers.

    “Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” Personette tweeted Thursday. “Looking forward to the future!”

    Musk’s apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters this week stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions: The building should be turned into a homeless shelter because so few employees actually worked there.

    The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation.

    Musk has spent months deriding Twitter’s “spam bots” and making sometimes contradictory pronouncements about Twitter’s problems and how to fix them. But he has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform.

    Thursday’s note to advertisers shows a newfound emphasis on advertising revenue, especially a need for Twitter to provide more “relevant ads” — which typically means targeted ads that rely on collecting and analyzing users’ personal information.

    Yildirim said that, unlike Facebook, Twitter has not been good at targeting advertising to what users want to see. Musk’s message suggests he wants to fix that, she said.

    Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said Musk has good reason to avoid a massive shakeup of Twitter’s ad business because Twitter’s revenues have taken a beating from the weakening economy, months of uncertainty surrounding Musk’s proposed takeover, changing consumer behaviors and the fact that “there’s no other revenue source waiting in the wings.”

    “Even slightly loosening content moderation on the platform is sure to spook advertisers, many of whom already find Twitter’s brand safety tools to be lacking compared with other social platforms,” Enberg said.

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  • Oklahoma sues federal prisons for inmate it wants to execute

    Oklahoma sues federal prisons for inmate it wants to execute

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    OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma is suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons for custody of a state death row inmate whom the bureau is refusing to hand over, with the state saying the man’s scheduled execution cannot be carried out in December if he’s not returned soon.

    A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday by state Attorney General John O’Connor urging that the bureau be ordered to transfer John Hanson back to Oklahoma by Nov. 9 from a federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana. That lawsuit, which also names three federal prison officials, has the support of Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler.

    Hanson, 58, has a clemency hearing set for Nov. 9. Unless clemency is recommended and granted by Gov. Kevin Stitt, the inmate is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Dec. 15 for his conviction in the 1999 killing of an elderly woman.

    Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, was killed in a carjacking and kidnapping outside a Tulsa mall in 1999.

    The U.S. Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden — who has vowed to work to end the death penalty — announced last year that it was halting federal executions. That step came after a historic use of capital punishment under Donald Trump’s presidency, with 13 executions carried out in six months. The Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to turn over Hanson raises questions about whether the agency is using its power to deliver on the president’s political pledge.

    Hanson is serving a life sentence for numerous federal convictions, including being a career criminal, that predate his state death sentence.

    Attorneys listed as representing Hanson did not return phone calls for comment Thursday.

    Kunzweiler said he asked O’Connor’s support for the return of the inmate. The district attorney said he sought the attorney general’s help after his August letter requesting Hanson’s transfer was denied by the warden of the Louisiana facility as being “not in the public’s best interest.”

    The decision was “infuriating,” Kunzweiler said.

    “I’ve never in my 33 years as a prosecutor encountered this level of refusal to transfer an inmate from one jurisdiction to another,” Kunzweiler said.

    After being contacted by Kunzweiler, O’Connor sent a request for Hanson’s transfer to Bureau of Prisons Regional Director Heriberto Tellez in Grand Prairie, Texas, which also was denied.

    “As inmate Hanson is presently subject to a life term imposed in federal court, his transfer to state authorities for a state execution is not in the public interest,” according to the Oct. 17 letter from Tellez.

    Robert Dunham, executive director of the national Death Penalty Information Center, said he is unaware of the bureau previously declining to transfer an inmate to a state for execution. But he noted that such a transfer is not required.

    “The question here is, is this an abuse of discretion (by the bureau),” Dunham said. “It’s hard to make a determination about that because the letter doesn’t explain.”

    Dunham said it was not clear whether the refusal to transfer Hanson is related to the federal government’s halting of executions under the Biden administration.

    “Given Oklahoma’s history of botched executions, that’s an appropriate question,” Dunham said.

    The prisons bureau declined comment, citing the official’s previous responses.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which represents the BOP, also declined to comment and said a response will be filed by the expedited Oct. 30 deadline set by the court.

    The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Texas because that is where Tellez is based, contends Oklahoma faces “imminent harm” if Hanson is not returned.

    “Oklahoma’s execution policy begins thirty-five days prior to the execution date” of Dec. 15, according to the filing. “The Oklahoma Department of Corrections must be able to initiate the process on Nov. 10, 2022, with Hanson in custody before that date.”

    The filing also argues that the federal government’s refusal to surrender Hanson usurps the state’s authority.

    “Defendants have also, in essence, lawlessly threatened to commute Hanson’s sentence to life imprisonment,” from the death penalty he received.

    Oklahoma has put to death six inmates since resuming executions in October 2021. The state had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers until problems in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium. That included prison officials realizing they received the wrong lethal drug just hours away from executing Richard Glossip in September 2015. It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.

    The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection — and after the state’s prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.

    The state’s next scheduled execution, that of Richard Stephen Fairchild for the beating death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son in 1993, is set for Nov. 17.

    ———

    Read more on AP’s coverage of executions: https://apnews.com/hub/executions

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  • Texas chief says state police ‘did not fail’ in Uvalde

    Texas chief says state police ‘did not fail’ in Uvalde

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    AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ state police chief said Thursday that his department “did not fail” Uvalde during the hesitant law enforcement response to the Robb Elementary School shooting, as a Republican congressman joined angry parents of some of the 19 children killed in the May attack in calling for him to resign.

    Col. Steve McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, acknowledged mistakes by officers while several Uvalde families confronted him in Austin over multiple outrages: why police waited more than 70 minutes before entering the fourth-grade classroom and killing the gunman, false and shifting accounts given by authorities, and records that remain withheld more than five months later.

    But McCraw defended his agency, and during a meeting of the state’s Public Safety Commission, made the case that failures uncovered to date did not warrant his removal while saying he was not shirking from accountability. Uvalde families bristled and asked how DPS could not have failed, given that troopers were among the first on the scene.

    “I can tell you this right now, DPS as an institution, right now, did not fail the community,” McCraw said. “Plain and simple.”

    Significantly, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said for the first time after the meeting that McCraw should also lose his job, becoming the first major figure in the GOP to call for a change at the top of Texas’ state police force. Gonzales, a former Navy officer, represents the sprawling South Texas district that includes Uvalde.

    “DPS Director McCraw should RESIGN immediately,” Gonzales tweeted. His office has not responded to a message seeking further comment Thursday.

    McCraw said a criminal investigation into the police response to the shooting led by Texas Rangers would be wrapped up by the end of the year and turned over to prosecutors. He offered no indication as to whether the findings would result in charges against any of the nearly 400 officers who went to the school where two teachers were also killed. Two officers have been fired in response to their actions at the scene and others have been placed on leave.

    The meeting Thursday at Texas state police headquarters was the first public update on Uvalde in weeks, although little new information was revealed. McCraw and Uvalde families addressed the state’s four-member public safety commission, which oversees Texas state police.

    Each of the board members were appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a longtime supporter of McCraw. The board did not ask McCraw any questions about Uvalde before moving on to other business.

    Families of children killed in the attack have spent months accusing the Department of Public Safety of slow-walking the investigation, withholding information and trying to minimize its responsibility. There were 91 state troopers on the scene, including some that body camera later revealed were among the first officers to arrive.

    Last week, the department fired one of seven troopers subject to an internal investigation into their actions during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.

    Jesse Rizzo, whose 9-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was among the victims, said misleading and false comments from authorities about the police response has compounded the small town’s grief and eroded trust in law enforcement.

    “The aftermath that came after that was absolutely unacceptable, hurtful, painful,” Rizzo said. “Every single time seemed like lie after lie, disinformation.”

    McCraw on Thursday apologized for the department originally saying that the gunman had been able to gain access to the school because a teacher had propped open an exterior door with a rock. The teacher had gone back and shut the door, but it did not lock.

    McCraw insisted his department “did not fail the community,” drawing condemnation from the assembled Uvalde families.

    “If you’re a man of your word then you would retire,” Brett Cross, the uncle of 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia, told McCraw. “But unfortunately it doesn’t seem like you’re going to do that because you keep talking in circles.”

    Another of the state troopers under internal investigation was Crimson Elizondo, who resigned and later was hired by Uvalde schools to work as a campus police officer. She was fired less than 24 hours after outraged parents in Uvalde found out about her hiring.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg contributed from Dallas.

    ———

    More on the school shooting in Uvalde: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting

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  • Mexican artisans preserve Day of the Dead decorations

    Mexican artisans preserve Day of the Dead decorations

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    XOCHIMILCO, Mexico — Mexican artisans are struggling to preserve the traditional manufacture of paper cut-out decorations long used in altars for the Day of the Dead.

    Defying increasingly popular mass-production techniques, second-generation paper cutter Yuridia Torres Alfaro, 49, still makes her own stencils at her family’s workshop in Xochimilco, on the rural southern edge of Mexico City.

    As she has since she was a child, Torres Alfaro punched stunningly sharp chisels into thick piles of tissue paper at her business, ‘Papel Picado Xochimilco.’

    While others use longer-lasting plastic sheets, laser cutters or pre-made stencils, Torres Alfaro does each step by hand, as Mexican specialists have been doing for 200 years.

    In 1988, her father, a retired schoolteacher, got a big order for sheets — which usually depict festive skeletons, skulls, grim reapers or Catrinas — to decorate city government offices.

    “The business was born 34 years ago, we were very little then, and we started helping in getting the work done,” Torres Alfaro recalled.

    Begun in the 1800s, experts say ‘papel picado’ using tissue paper is probably a continuation of a far older pre-Hispanic tradition of painting ceremonial figures on paper made of fig-bark sheets. Mexican artisans adopted imported tissue paper because it was cheap and thin enough so that, with sharp tools, extreme care and a lot of skill, dozens of sheets can be cut at the same time.

    But the most important part is the stencil: its design designates the parts to be cut out, leaving an intricate, airy web of paper that is sometimes strung from building or across streets. More commonly, it is hung above Day of the Dead altars that Mexican families use to commemorate — and commune with — deceased relatives.

    The holiday begins Oct. 31, remembering those who died in accidents; it continues Nov. 1 to mark those died in childhood, and then those who died as adults on Nov. 2.

    Traditionally, the bright colors of the paper had different meanings: Orange signified mourning, blue was for those who drowned, yellow was for the elderly deceased and green for those who died young.

    But many Mexicans — who also use the decorations at other times of year, stringing them at roof-height along streets — now prefer to buy plastic, which lasts longer in the sun and the rain.

    Still other producers have tried to use mass-produced stencils, which means that tens of thousands of sheets might bear exactly the same design.

    “Stencils began to appear for making papel picado, because it is a lot of work if you have to supply a lot of people,” said Torres Alfaro, who still hand-cuts her own stencils with original designs.

    “We wanted to keep doing it the traditional way, because it allows us to make small, personalized lots, and keep creating a new design every day,” she says.

    Another rival was the U.S. holiday Halloween, which roughly coincides with Day of the Dead, Because it is flashier and more marketable — costumes, movies, parties and candy — it has gained popularity in Mexico.

    “For some time now, there has been a bit more Halloween,” said Torres Alfaro. “We do more traditional Mexican things. That is part of the work, to put Mexican things in papel picado. If we do Halloween things, it’s only on order” from customers.

    Still others have tried to use 21st-century technology, employing computer-generated designs and laser cutters.

    But Torres Alfaro says that concentrating so much on the cutting leaves out the most important part: the delicate webs of paper left behind.

    “There are some laser machines that are gaining popularity, but we have checked them and the costs are the same, the machines still cut hole-by-hole and they can’t cut that many sheets,” she said.

    “The (ready-made) stencils and the laser machine have their downsides,” she said. “Papel picado is based on what can be cut, and what can’t, and that is the magic of papel picado.”

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  • Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

    Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

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    MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was escorted out of the California-based headquarters of athletic shoemaker Skechers after he showed up unannounced Wednesday, a day after Adidas ended its partnership with the artist following his antisemitic remarks.

    The Grammy winner, who legally changed his name to Ye, “arrived unannounced and without invitation” at Skechers corporate headquarters in Manhattan Beach, southwest of Los Angeles, the company said.

    “Considering Ye was engaged in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his party from the building after a brief conversation,” according to a company statement.

    “Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West,” the company said. “We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech.”

    The rapper’s Instagram account — which had been suspended over antisemitic comments — resumed posting Tuesday night. A new message showing a screen grab of a text message that appeared to be from a contact at a high-profile law firm spelled out when Ye could resume making apparel and new shoe designs.

    Details of the message could not be verified; email messages sent to representatives for Ye weren’t immediately returned.

    For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON. His posts led to his suspension from both Twitter and Instagram.

    He apologized for the tweet on Monday.

    On Tuesday, sportswear manufacturer Adidas announced that it was ending a partnership with Ye that helped make him a billionaire, saying it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism and hate speech.

    The German sneaker giant said it expected that the decision to immediately stop production of its Yeezy products would cause a hit to its net income of up to 250 million euros ($246 million).

    The company had stuck with Ye through other controversies after he suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast.”

    Other companies also have announced they were cutting ties with Ye, including Foot Locker, Gap, TJ Maxx, JPMorgan Chase bank and Vogue magazine. An MRC documentary about him was also scrapped.

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  • Weinstein lawyer presses woman over absence of rape evidence

    Weinstein lawyer presses woman over absence of rape evidence

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    LOS ANGELES — An attorney for Harvey Weinstein peppered a woman with questions Wednesday on the lack of forensic evidence that the movie magnate raped her in 2013, or that he was even at the hotel where she says the assault occurred.

    “You don’t have any physical evidence to present to this jury that any of this happened, do you?” lawyer Alan Jackson asked pointedly during cross-examination.

    When the judge at the 70-year-old Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial sustained an objection to the question because it called for speculation, Jackson got more specific:

    “Any photos?”

    “No,” the woman said quietly.

    “Any video?”

    “No,” she replied, then added, “Do you think somebody after rape makes a video?”

    She began crying softly as she answered “no” to a series of similar questions about whether she had any documentation of bruises, scrapes, cuts, or handprints on her face from Weinstein holding her down, or had been given a sexual assault examination.

    “Do you have any physical evidence that you were even with Mr. Weinstein?” Jackson asked.

    Her crying grew louder as she answered, “I had his jacket, but I gave it away.”

    The woman, a model and actor who was working in Rome, is the the first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify at the trial and spent portions of three days on the witness stand.

    Prosecutors have presented photographs and other evidence that both Weinstein and the woman were at the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, which she had come to California to attend in February 2013.

    But they have not yet produced anything that puts Weinstein at her hotel on the night she says he forced her to perform oral sex on her bed then raped her in her bathroom.

    The woman did not go to police until October of 2017, when women’s stories about Weinstein made him the central figure in the #MeToo movement.

    She maintains that Weinstein left her jacket in the room and she gave it to hotel staff, but no lost-and-found records have been discovered to demonstrate it.

    Asked whether the explosion of media stories around Weinstein prompted her to go to police, the woman repeated earlier testimony that she had already decided to file a report earlier in the year when she urged her teenage daughter to go to authorities over sexual harassment she’d been subjected to at school.

    The woman is going only by “Jane Doe 1” in court. Her age and birthplace have also been kept out of court proceedings, though she has said her first language was Russian and she was living at the time with her three children in Italy, where she had married into considerable wealth.

    The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

    Weinstein’s defense tried to poke holes in her testimony and press on inconsistencies in previous accounts she gave to police, to prosecutors, to a grand jury, and in the first two days of her trial testimony.

    In graphic questioning, Jackson dwelt on the woman’s description in her initial interview with police of oral sex she said Weinstein forced her to perform. Jackson suggested that Weinstein’s unusual genital features after a surgery he had years earlier made the acts she described impossible.

    The same acts went unmentioned during her 2020 grand jury testimony, and Jackson asked her whether she had learned more about Weinstein’s sex organs from prosecutors and thus changed her story.

    “Never!” she said adamantly.

    Under questioning later from the prosecution, she described “very bad scarring tissue” around Weinstein’s genitals.

    It was the first time jurors heard from a witness about Weinstein’s anatomy, which arose often in his 2020 trial in New York, where he was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

    The woman told prosecutor Paul Thompson that she had been having panic attacks and had hardly slept or eaten since her testimony began Monday afternoon. It finally ended late Wednesday.

    Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of rape and sexual assault involving five women.

    When prosecutors gave their opening statement Monday, however, they excluded one of the women, putting into question whether the four counts involving her will be addressed during the trial.

    The district attorney’s office has declined to explain when asked about the issue.

    Weinstein’s attorneys said no charges have been dropped.

    ———

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

    ———

    For more on the Harvey Weinstein trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein

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  • Same-sex marriage is now legal in all of Mexico’s states

    Same-sex marriage is now legal in all of Mexico’s states

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    MEXICO CITY — Lawmakers in the border state of Tamaulipas voted Wednesday night to legalize same-sex marriages, becoming the last of Mexico’s 32 states to authorize such unions.

    The measure to amend the state’s Civil Code passed with 23 votes in favor, 12 against and two abstentions, setting off cheers of “Yes, we can!” from supporters of the change.

    The session took place as groups both for and against the measure chanted and shouted from the balcony, and legislators eventually moved to another room to finish their debate and vote.

    The president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Arturo Zaldívar, welcomed the vote. “The whole country shines with a huge rainbow. Live the dignity and rights of all people. Love is love,” he said on Twitter.

    A day earlier, lawmakers in the southern state of Guerrero approved similar legislation allowing same-sex marriages.

    In 2015, the Supreme Court declared state laws preventing same-sex marriage unconstitutional, but some states took several years to adopt laws conforming with the ruling.

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  • Woman sues over ban on feeding homeless people in parks

    Woman sues over ban on feeding homeless people in parks

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    BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. — A woman who was arrested for feeding homeless people in northwest Arizona is suing over a local ordinance that regulates food-sharing events in public parks.

    Norma Thornton, 78, became the first person arrested under Bullhead City’s ordinance in March for distributing prepared food from a van at Bullhead Community Park. Her lawyer said the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, is part of a nationwide effort to let people feed those in need.

    Criminal charges against Thornton were eventually dropped, but she’s seeking an injunction to stop the city from enforcing the ordinance that took effect in May 2021.

    “Bullhead City has criminalized kindness,” Thornton’s attorney Suranjan San told Phoenix TV station KPHO. “The City Council passed an ordinance that makes it a crime punishable by four months imprisonment to share food in public parks for charitable purposes.”

    Bullhead City Mayor Tom Brady said the ordinance applies only to public parks. He said churches, clubs and private properties are free to serve food to the homeless without a permit.

    Thornton owned a restaurant for many years before retiring in Arizona and said she wanted to use her cooking skills to help the less fortunate.

    “I have always believed that when you have plenty, you should share,” Thornton said.

    According to the Mohave Valley Daily News, Thornton said she has continued to feed people in need from private property not far from Community Park.

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  • Kanye West kicked out of Skechers California headquarters

    Kanye West kicked out of Skechers California headquarters

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    MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Kanye West was escorted out of the California-based headquarters of athletic shoemaker Skechers after he showed up unannounced Wednesday, a day after Adidas ended its partnership with the artist following his antisemitic remarks.

    West, who legally changed his name to Ye, “arrived unannounced and without invitation” at Skechers corporate headquarters in Manhattan Beach, southwest of Los Angeles, the company said.

    “Considering Ye was engaged in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his party from the building after a brief conversation,” according to a company statement.

    “Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West,” the company said. “We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech.”

    Email messages sent to representatives for West weren’t immediately returned.

    For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON. He was suspended from both Twitter and Instagram.

    He apologized for the tweet on Monday.

    On Tuesday, sportswear manufacturer Adidas announced that it was ending a partnership with West that helped make him a billionaire, saying it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism and hate speech.

    The German sneaker giant said it expected the decision to immediately stop production of its Yeezy products will cause a hit to its net income of up to 250 million euros ($246 million).

    The company had stuck with Ye through other controversies after he suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast.”

    Other companies also have announced they were cutting ties with West, including Foot Locker, Gap, TJ Maxx, JPMorgan Chase bank and Vogue magazine. An MRC documentary about him was also scrapped.

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  • Tuberville: US has too many ‘takers’ who don’t want to work

    Tuberville: US has too many ‘takers’ who don’t want to work

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    MONTGOMERY, Ala — U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville said this week that the country has too many “takers” instead of workers and suggested that many in younger generations — including people in their 40s — don’t understand they need to work.

    Tuberville, 68, made the remarks while discussing the national worker shortage during a speech to business groups in south Alabama.

    “What’s happening in our country right now, we’re getting too many takers in our country,” Tuberville said Tuesday, according to Al.com. Later, he added, “They don’t want to go to work. We’ve got to get Generation X and these Millennials to understand that you have to tote your own load.”

    A spokeswoman for Tuberville, responding to a question from The Associated Press on Wednesday, said the state’s junior senator misspoke and meant to say Generation Z, which includes people born after 1997, instead of Generation X, which includes people in their 50s. Millennials are generally defined as people born between 1981 and 1996. The oldest millennials are entering their 40s.

    Tuberville made the remarks in Mobile on Tuesday. He was the featured speaker at a Forum Alabama breakfast presented by the Mobile Chamber and attended by local business leaders. He also spoke to news outlets during an appearance at Austal USA after touring the shipyard. The remarks about generational work ethic came two weeks after Tuberville was widely criticized for comments about race and crime.

    Fox10 reported that Tuberville blamed government benefits.

    “We’re getting too many takers in our country,” the former college football coach said. “They’d rather take a (government) check.”

    While the federal government initially sent out trillions in pandemic relief funds, the COVID-19-related extended unemployment benefits and stimulus checks have ended. The last pandemic stimulus check was given out last year.

    Businesses nationwide have struggled to fill positions amid a dire worker shortage, prompting some companies to raise wages or offer perks such as college tuition reimbursement to try to lure workers. Economists have pointed to complex reasons for the worker shortage in the wake of the pandemic, including a rise in early retirements, a shortage of affordable child care and other factors that have contributed to a workforce reshuffling.

    Tuberville’s comments came two weeks after he drew widespread criticism for saying at an election rally that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

    In an interview with FOX10 afterward, Tuberville maintained his comments were about crime, not race. “It had nothing to do with race. You know crime has no color,” he said.

    Tuberville rejected calls to apologize. “I would apologize if I meant anything about race, but it wasn’t. Like I said, race has no color. Reparation would have no color,” Tuberville said.

    Al.com reported that Tuberville deflected a question about the controversy.

    “We don’t have enough people right now paying the price for a lot of the crimes that are being made,” he said. “They don’t need to be rewarded for it. They need to understand that we can’t run a country — it’s like a football team. If you’ve got people going in different directions breaking all the rules, you’re not going to win.”

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  • ‘Marxist environmentalist’ and author Mike Davis dies at 76

    ‘Marxist environmentalist’ and author Mike Davis dies at 76

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    SAN DIEGO — Mike Davis, an author, activist and self-defined “Marxist environmentalist” whose greatest fears drove him to anticipate riots, fires and disease in such bestsellers as “City of Quartz” and “The Ecology of Fear,” has died at age 76.

    Davis died Tuesday after a long battle with esophageal cancer, his friend Jon Wiener announced this week in an online posting for The Nation, a progressive magazine. Wiener, a historian who with Davis wrote “Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties,” told The Associated Press that Davis died in San Diego.

    Davis, dubbed by the Los Angeles Times as the prophet Jeremiah of Southern California, had announced over the summer that he was terminally ill.

    “Although I’m famous as a pessimist, I really haven’t been pessimistic,” he told the Times in July. “You know,(my writing has) more been a call to action. An attempt to elicit righteous anger against those whom we should be righteously angry against. But now, there is a certain sense of doom. This is not the time or history that my kids should inherit, you know?”

    As noted in Wiener’s tribute, Davis was “a 1960s person” whose background was not privileged, but working class and conservative. Raised in San Diego County, he was a onetime member of the military oriented Devil Pups youth program, radicalized by the civil rights movement. He volunteered for the Congress of Racial Equality, burned his draft card to protest the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, joined the Communist Party and became an organizer for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society.

    “I was like Zelig in the events of the period,” Davis told The New Yorker in 2020. “I was at every demonstration and several riots, just there in the crowd, rank and file.”

    He was faulted for ideological bias and for various errors and fabrications — some acknowledged — but his dark takes on Los Angeles and broader subjects often proved justified. “City of Quartz,” published in 1990, condemned the race and class divides of Los Angeles and labeled the city a “carceral” society, prison-like and overseen by an oppressive police force. The police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the riots following the 1992 acquittal of his attackers made his book seem like prophecy.

    Davis’ “Ecology of Fear” foresaw the growing catastrophe of wildfires in California and “The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu,” published in 2005, warned that a deadly pandemic was increasingly likely. During his New Yorker interview, Davis called capitalism unfit to handle public health and environmental disaster, but still believed a better world was possible.

    “This seems an age of catastrophe, but it’s also an age equipped, in an abstract sense, with all the tools it needs,” he said. “Utopia is available to us. If, like me, you lived through the civil-rights movement, the antiwar movement, you can never discard hope.”

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  • Suspended Georgia sheriff convicted of civil rights abuses

    Suspended Georgia sheriff convicted of civil rights abuses

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    ATLANTA — A federal jury on Wednesday returned a guilty verdict on six of seven charges against a suspended Georgia sheriff accused of violating the constitutional rights of people in his custody by unnecessarily strapping them into restraint chairs.

    Prosecutors said Victor Hill, who was suspended as Clayton County sheriff after his indictment last year, had detainees strapped into restraint chairs for hours even though they posed no threat and complied with deputies’ instructions. The use of the chairs was unnecessary, was improperly used as punishment and caused pain and bodily injury in violation of the civil rights of seven men, prosecutors argued.

    Defense attorneys asserted that Hill used the restraint chair legally to maintain order at the jail and didn’t overstep his lawful authority.

    The jury began deliberating Friday afternoon, after about a week of testimony from more than three dozen witnesses, news outlets reported. Their verdict — guilty of violating the civil rights of six of the seven detainees — came Wednesday afternoon, news outlets reported.

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  • EPA awarding nearly $1 billion to schools for electric buses

    EPA awarding nearly $1 billion to schools for electric buses

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    WASHINGTON — Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

    The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

    Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan are set to announce the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children’s health, the White House said.

    As many as 25 million children ride familiar yellow school buses each school day and will have a “healthier future” with a cleaner fleet, Regan said. “This is just the beginning of our work to … reduce climate pollution and ensure the clean, breathable air that all our children deserve,” he said.

    Only about 1% of the nation’s 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.

    The clean bus program “is accelerating our nation’s transition to electric and low-emission school buses while ensuring a brighter, healthier future for our children,” Regan said in a statement.

    The EPA initially made $500 million available for clean buses in May but increased that to $965 million last month, responding to what officials called overwhelming demand for electric buses across the country. An additional $1 billion is set to be awarded in the budget year that began Oct. 1.

    The EPA said it received about 2,000 applications requesting nearly $4 billion for more than 12,000 buses, mostly electric. A total of 389 applications worth $913 million were accepted to support purchase of 2,463 buses, 95% of which will be electric, the EPA said. The remaining buses will run on compressed natural gas or propane.

    School districts identified as priority areas serving low-income, rural or tribal students make up 99% of the projects that were selected, the White House said. More applications are under review, and the EPA plans to select more winners to reach the full $965 million in coming weeks.

    Districts set to receive money range from Wrangell, Alaska, to Anniston, Alabama; and Teton County, Wyoming, to Wirt County, West Virginia. Besides Washington, major cities that won grants for clean school buses include New York, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Seattle.

    Environmental and public health groups hailed the announcement, which comes after years of advocacy to replace diesel-powered buses with cleaner alternatives.

    “It doesn’t make sense to send our kids to school on buses that create brain-harming, lung-harming, cancer-causing, climate-harming pollution,” said Molly Rauch, public health policy director for Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental group. “Our kids, our bus drivers and our communities deserve better.”

    Harris and Regan are expected to announce the awards at an event in Seattle with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Gov. Jay Inslee. Murray is running for reelection against Republican Tiffany Smiley.

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  • Richmond gets court win in lingering Confederate statue case

    Richmond gets court win in lingering Confederate statue case

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    RICHMOND, Va. — A judge has sided with Richmond officials in a lawsuit over whether the Virginia city can remove a final Confederate monument and the remains of a rebel general interred beneath it.

    Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr. said in a ruling Tuesday that city officials — not the descendants of A.P. Hill — get to decide where the statue goes next, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and TV station WRIC reported. The city plans to give the statue to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which the plaintiffs found objectionable.

    The plaintiffs, who were indirect descendants of Hill, did not oppose the removal of the general’s remains to a cemetery in Culpeper, near where Hill was born. But they argued that the ownership of the statue should be transferred to them. They hoped to move it to a battlefield, also in Culpeper, according to the news outlets.

    “We’re gratified by Judge Cheek’s ruling,” Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement.

    The city, which was the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War, began removing its many other Confederate monuments more than two years ago amid the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder. Richmond conveyed them to the Black History Museum earlier this year. But efforts to remove the A.P. Hill statue, which sits in the middle of a busy intersection near a school where traffic accidents are frequent, were more complicated because the general’s remains were underneath it.

    Scott Braxton Puryear, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Times-Dispatch that he wasn’t sure if his clients would appeal. The statue won’t be removed before the window for an appeal expires, the newspaper reported.

    “We look forward to a successful conclusion of the legal process, which will allow us to relocate Hill’s remains, remove and transfer the statue to the Black History Museum and, importantly, improve traffic safety,” Stoney’s statement said.

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  • UN: Almost 1 million drought-hit Somalis in al-Shabab areas

    UN: Almost 1 million drought-hit Somalis in al-Shabab areas

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    A woman walks past makeshift shelters at a camp for the internally-displaced on the outskirts of Baidoa, in the South West State of Somalia, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. The World Food Programme said Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 it is delivering life-saving food and nutrition assistance to over 4 million people a month to prevent famine in the face of the region’s worst drought in over 40 years. (Geneva Costopulos/WFP via AP)

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  • Woman testifies Harvey Weinstein rape filled her with guilt

    Woman testifies Harvey Weinstein rape filled her with guilt

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    LOS ANGELES — A woman who says Harvey Weinstein raped her in 2013 testified Tuesday that she had feelings of guilt and disgust that began soon after she let him into her hotel room and lasted for years.

    The woman, a model and actor living and working in Rome who was in Los Angeles at the time for a film festival, said that starting the following day she began drinking heavily.

    “I was destroying myself,” she said. “I was feeling very guilty. Most of all because I opened that door.”

    The woman was the first of eight Weinstein accusers set to testify in a courtroom in Los Angeles where the 70-year-old movie mogul is on trial on multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction in New York, has pleaded not guilty.

    Most of the women said that their assaults began with what were supposed to be business meetings with Weinstein at hotels. However, the woman testifying Tuesday said she was stunned to find him knocking at her door late on a night in February 2013 after she had met him only briefly earlier in the evening at the Los Angeles Italia film festival.

    Staying in the hotel under a pseudonym, she said she had no idea how Weinstein even knew her room number and that she let him through her door initially without thinking there was any harm in it. That shifted quickly when Weinstein became sexually aggressive, she said.

    The woman, whose first language is Russian, said that her English was very poor at the time though it has improved considerably since, and she thought she might have miscommunicated.

    “I was feeling guilty that I did something or said something that made him think something could happen between us,” she said.

    She said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on her hotel bed.

    “I was kind of hysterical through tears,” she said. “I kept saying ‘no, no no.’”

    She said she physically feared Weinstein, who outweighed her by 100 pounds or more.

    She said she considered running, or hitting or biting him.

    Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson asked why she didn’t.

    “I don’t know,” she answered. “I regret this a lot.”

    She said by the time Weinstein took her into the bathroom to rape her, she stopped physically resisting, though still objected verbally.

    “I would just freeze, like my body wouldn’t listen,” she said.

    She said she struggled to face her children after the incident, and felt the need to confess it to her Russian Orthodox priest. Prosecutors sought for the priest to testify, but he declined, citing religious privilege. The woman’s daughter, now 21, is set to testify later.

    In his opening statement, Weinstein attorney Mark Werksman said many of the counts his client is charged with were actually consensual sex that his accusers reframed after he became a lightning rod for the #MeToo movement in 2017.

    But in the case of the woman testifying Tuesday, Weinstein’s attorneys deny that the events in her hotel room happened at all. No records, surveillance video or other evidence places Weinstein at the woman’s hotel, Mr. C Beverly Hills, on the night she says she was raped.

    Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson pressed her on this during cross-examination, asking how Weinstein could have learned her room number and been allowed to her door, and why she made no complaints to hotel staff over “this terrible breach of protocol.”

    She answered, “Because of what happened to me. Because I didn’t want anybody to know.”

    Jackson then asked why she stayed in the same hotel for weeks afterward, and did not even change rooms.

    “You stayed in the very room that you claim you were attacked and victimized by a sexual predator?” Jackson asked.

    The woman conceded that she had.

    She cried occasionally during her testimony, but remained mostly composed, looking down when she grew emotional to gather herself.

    A day earlier she was sobbing so much in her account of the assault, court adjourned a few minutes early.

    “I want to apologize for my breakdown yesterday,” she said when she returned to the stand Tuesday. “Unfortunately I cannot control that.”

    She is expected to return to the stand Wednesday.

    The woman’s name is not being revealed in court. She is being referred to as “Jane Doe 1.”

    The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

    ———

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

    ———

    For more on the Harvey Weinstein trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein

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  • Boston, Clark headline AP women’s hoops All-America team

    Boston, Clark headline AP women’s hoops All-America team

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    Aliyah Boston of South Carolina and Caitlin Clark of Iowa were unanimous picks for The Associated Press preseason women’s basketball All-America team released Tuesday.

    Boston led South Carolina to its second national championship and swept nearly ever major award last season. Expectations are high once again for the top-ranked Gamecocks and Boston, who was on all 30 ballots from the national media panel that selects the AP Top 25 each week.

    “I don’t think all the awards define who she is but also puts her in a position of she’s in a more relaxed mode because she accomplished those things. She’s still in a place of hunger,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “She still wants to be the best. When you’ve proven that at such an early stage of your career, you want more and more. She’s entered a phase of wanting more yet is confident in who she is, since she was able to accomplish it.”

    Seniors Haley Jones of Stanford, Ashley Joens of Iowa State and Elizabeth Kitley of Virginia Tech were also selected for the team as was sophomore Aneesah Morrow of DePaul.

    Boston, who averaged 16.8 points and 12.4 rebounds, and Clark were both on the preseason team last year. Clark followed up a fantastic first season with an even better one as a sophomore, averaging 27 points, eight rebounds and eight assists for the Hawkeyes, who are ranked fourth in the preseason poll for their best mark since 1994.

    “She worked on a little bit more emotional control in her leadership. I think that’s really important,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “You want those officials to be your best friends let’s treat them like that.”

    Bluder also said Clark has added some post moves to her game: “That may sound silly with Monika (Czinano) on the block. She’s almost 5-foot-10 and no reason she can’t post up. She’s looking for that a lot more.”

    Joens opted to stay at Iowa State for another year, passing up a chance to enter the WNBA draft. She averaged 20.3 points and 9.5 rebounds last season and is the first preseason All-American in school history.

    “This is a great honor for Ashley and the entire Iowa State program,” coach Bill Fennelly said. “To be recognized with such a great group of players is an outstanding accomplishment. I know she will continue to work hard to play at an All-American level this season.”

    Jones helped Stanford go 32-4 before falling to UConn in the Final Four. She averaged 13.2 points, 7.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the Cardinal. Last season, coach Tara VanDerveer called her star the “Magic Johnson of women’s basketball.”

    Kitley had a stellar year, averaging 18.1 points and 9.8 rebounds for the Hokies. Her return is a big reason why the team is ranked No. 13 in the preseason, its best mark since the final poll of 1999 when the school was also 13th.

    She is the first player from the school to be honored as a preseason All-American.

    “She’s the hardest working kid I’ve been around,” Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks said. ‘If she doesn’t do something, she has FOMO (fear of missing out). She’s added so much to her game to make us the best we can be. My responsibility is to prepare her for the next level.”

    Morrow had an incredible first season, averaging 21.9 points and 13.5 rebounds for the Blue Demons. She is the first DePaul player to earn preseason honors since Latasha Byears did it in 1995.

    “She earns it through her daily work ethic and competitiveness,” DePaul coach Doug Bruno said of Morrow.

    All six players were honored last spring on the AP All-America teams. Boston, Clark and Jones were on the first team while Joens and Morrow were on the second. Kitley made the third team.

    The AP started choosing a preseason All-America team before the 1994-95 season.

    ———

    The Associated Press’ 2022-23 preseason All-America women’s basketball team, with school, height, year and votes from a 30-member national media panel (key 2021-22 statistics in parentheses):

    Aliyah Boston, South Carolina, 6-5, senior, 30 of 30 votes (16.8 ppg, 12.5 rpg, 2.4 bpg.)

    Caitlin Clark, Iowa, 6-0, junior, 30 of 30 votes (27.0 ppg, 8.0 apg, 8.0 rpg)

    Haley Jones, Stanford, 6-1, senior 28 of 30 votes (13.2 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 3.7 apg)

    Ashley Joens, Iowa State, 6-1, senior, 24 of 30 votes (20.3 ppg, 9.5 rpg, 2.0 apg)

    Elizabeth Kitley, Virginia Tech, 6-6, senior, 9 of 30 votes (18.1 ppg, 9.8 rpg, 2.4 bpg)

    Aneesah Morrow, DePaul, 6-1, sophomore, 9 of 30 votes (21.9 ppg, 13.5 rpg, 3.0 spg)

    Others receiving votes: Cameron Brink, Stanford; Rori Harmon, Texas; Hailey Van Lith, Louisville; Olivia Miles, Notre Dame; Angel Reese, LSU; Maddy Siegrist, Villanova; Azzi Fudd, UConn; Jade Loville, Arizona State; Jordan Horston, Tennessee; Deja Kelly, North Carolina; Tamari Key, Tennessee.

    ———

    More AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP—Top25

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  • Girl killed at St. Louis high school was ‘wonderful, joyful’

    Girl killed at St. Louis high school was ‘wonderful, joyful’

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    ST. LOUIS — The teenager killed in a school shooting in St. Louis was a “joyful, wonderful” girl who loved to dance, her father said.

    Alexandria Bell, 16. died Monday morning when Orlando Harris broke into Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and began shooting. Teacher Jean Kuczka also died and seven other students were injured. Police killed Harris in an exchange of gunfire minutes after they arrived.

    Bell’s death was confirmed by her father, Andre Bell of Los Angeles, in interviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KSDK-TV.

    “Alexandria was my everything,” Andre Bell told the TV station. “She was joyful, wonderful and just a great person.”

    Alexandria, a 10th grader, was outgoing, loved to dance and was a member of the school’s junior varsity dance team.

    “She was the girl I loved to see and loved to hear from. No matter how I felt, I could always talk to her and it was alright. That was my baby,” Andre Bell said.

    The attack forced students to barricade doors and huddle in classroom corners, jump from windows and run out of the building to seek safety. One terrorized girl said she was eye-to-eye with the shooter before his gun apparently jammed and she was able to run out. Several people inside the school said they heard Harris warn, “You are all going to die!”

    Harris, 19, graduated from the school last year. The FBI was assisting police in trying to determine a motive, but Police commissioner Michael Sack said at a news conference that mental health issues may have been a factor.

    Authorities did not name the victims, but the Post-Dispatch identified the dead teacher as Jean Kuczka, 61. Her daughter said her mother was killed when the gunman burst into her classroom and she moved between him and her students.

    “My mom loved kids,” Abbey Kuczka told the newspaper. “She loved her students. I know her students looked at her like she was their mom.”

    The seven injured students are all 15 or 16 years old. All were listed in stable condition. Sack said four suffered gunshot or graze wounds, two had bruises and one had a broken ankle.

    The school in south St. Louis was locked, with seven security guards near each door, St. Louis Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams said. A security guard initially became alarmed when he saw the gunman trying to get in one of the doors. He was armed with a gun and “there was no mystery about what was going to happen. He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner,” Sack said.

    That guard alerted school officials and made sure police were contacted.

    Harris managed to get inside anyway — Sack declined to say how, saying he didn’t want to “make it easy” for anyone else who wants to break into a school.

    Sack offered this timeline of events: A 911 call came in at 9:11 a.m. alerting police of an active shooter. Officers — some off-duty wearing street clothes — arrived at 9:15 a.m. Police located Harris at 9:23 a.m. and began shooting at him. Harris was shot at 9:25 a.m. He was secured by police at 9:32 a.m.

    Harris was armed with nearly a dozen 30-round high-capacity magazines, Sack said.

    “This could have been much worse,” Sack said.

    Central Visual and Performing Arts shares a building with another magnet school, Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience. Central has 383 students, Collegiate 336.

    Monday’s school shooting was the 40th this year resulting in injuries or death, according to a tally by Education Week — the most in any year since it began tracking shootings in 2018. The deadly attacks include the killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, when 19 children and two teachers died. Monday’s St. Louis shooting came on the same day a Michigan teenager pleaded guilty to terrorism and first-degree murder in a school shooting that killed four students in December 2021.

    Taniya Gholston said she was saved when the shooter’s gun jammed as he entered her classroom. “All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” the 16-year-old told the Post-Dispatch. “I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed.”

    The gunman pointed his weapon at Raymond Parks, a dance teacher at the school, but did not shoot him, Parks said. The kids in his class escaped outside and Parks tried to stop traffic and get someone to call the police. They came quickly.

    “You couldn’t have asked for better,” Parks said of the police response.

    Ashley Rench said she was teaching advanced algebra to sophomores when she heard a loud bang. Then the school intercom announced, “Miles Davis is in the building.”

    “That’s our code for intruder,” Rench said.

    The gunman tried the door of the classroom but did not force his way in, she said. When the police started banging, she wasn’t sure at first if it really was law enforcement until she was able to glance out and see officers.

    “Let’s go!” she told the kids.

    Kuczka, the slain teacher, taught health at Central for 14 years and recently began coaching cross-country at Collegiate, her daughter said. “She was definitely looking forward to retirement though. She was close,” Abbey Kuczka said.

    Kuczka’s biography on the school website said she was the married mother of five and a grandmother of seven. She was an avid bike rider and was part of a 1979 national championship field hockey team at what is now Missouri State University.

    “I cannot imagine myself in any other career but teaching,” Kuczka wrote on the website. “In high school, I taught swimming lessons at the YMCA. From that point on, I knew I wanted to be a teacher.”

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  • Report: Norway detains university lecturer as suspected spy

    Report: Norway detains university lecturer as suspected spy

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norway’s domestic security agency has detained a man who entered the country as a Brazilian citizen but is suspected of being a Russian spy, a Norwegian broadcaster reported Tuesday.

    The man was arrested Monday in the Arctic city of Tromsoe, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK said, adding that investigators believe he was in Norway under a false name and identity while working for one of Russia’s intelligence services.

    Norwegian Police Security Service deputy chief Hedvig Moe told NRK that the man had been based at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsoe as “a Brazilian researcher” and would be expelled from the Scandinavian country “because we believe he represents a threat to fundamental national interests.”

    The security service, known as PST, “is concerned that he may have acquired a network and information about Norway’s policy in the northern region,” Moe said, according to NRK. “Even if this network or the information bit by bit is a threat to the security of the kingdom, we are worried that the information could be misused by Russia.”

    PST representatives were not immediately available to comment. In a statement, Arctic University of Norway administrator Jørgen Fossland said the person in question was “a guest lecturer” at the school. Fossland referred other questions to the security service.

    Several Russian citizens have been detained in Norway in recent weeks. They include three men and a woman who were seen allegedly taking photos in central Norway of objects covered under a photography ban. They have since been released.

    European nations have heightened security around key energy, internet and power infrastructure following underwater explosions that ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

    The damaged Nord Stream pipelines off Sweden and Denmark discharged huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the air.

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