A key employee with the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic pushed back at a question from a Coast Guard investigator about whether OceanGate felt a sense of “desperation” to complete the dives because of the high price tag.
Amber Bay, director of administration for the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible, insisted Tuesday that the company would not “conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need.”
But she agreed that the company wanted to deliver for those who paid $250,000 and were encouraged to participate as “mission specialists.”
“There definitely was an urgency to deliver on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,” she told a Coast Guard panel.
OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023.
The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.
On Tuesday, Bay pushed back at earlier testimony from Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor who said Bay told her “you don’t seem to have an explorer mindset” after she raised safety concerns. Bay said Wilby’s concerns were noted at the time and treated with respect. Bay added that her own duties did not include engineering or operations.
She later broke down in tears when discussing the tragedy, which was personal, because she knew the victims.
“I had the privilege of knowing the explorers lives who were lost,” Bay said through tears. “And there’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of them, their families and the loss.”
Earlier in the hearings, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
On Tuesday, submersible pilot and designer Karl Stanley of the Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration testified to provide perspective about deep-sea submersible operations and safety. He said the phenomenon of “billionaires courting scientists” has upset the economics of the industry.
Stanley also said he viewed OceanGate’s characterization of paid passengers as “mission specialists” to be an attempt to avoid accountability.
“It’s clearly a dodge with trying to get around U.S. regulations with passengers,” Stanley said.
Additionally, the company’s “entire business plan made zero sense,” Stanley said. He also said he felt the implosion ultimately stemmed from Rush’s desire to leave his mark on history.
“There was nothing unexpected about this. This was expected by everyone who had access to a little bit of information,” Stanley said.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.
Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, said during testimony Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” he said.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.
The carbon fiber hull of the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic had imperfections dating to the manufacturing process and behaved differently after a loud bang was heard on one of the dives the year before the tragedy, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
Engineer Don Kramer told a Coast Guard panel there were wrinkles, porosity and voids in the carbon fiber used for the pressure hull of OceanGate’s Titan submersible. Two different types of sensors on Titan recorded the “loud acoustic event” that earlier witnesses testified about hearing on a dive on July 15, 2022, he said.
Hull pieces recovered after the tragedy showed substantial delamination of the layers of carbon fiber, which were bonded to create the hull of the experimental submersible, he said.
OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded in June 2023.
Kramer’s statements were followed by testimony from William Kohnen, a longtime submersibles expert and key member of the Marine Technology Society. Kohnen emerged as a critic of OceanGate in the aftermath of the implosion and has described the disaster as preventable.
On Wednesday, Kohnen pushed back at the idea the Titan could not have been thoroughly tested before use because of its experimental nature. He also said OceanGate’s operations raised concerns among many people in the industry.
Kohnen said “I don’t think many people ever told Stockton no.” He described Rush as not receptive to outside scrutiny.
“This is not something where we don’t want you to do it. We want you to do it right,” Kohnen said.
The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the submersible’s carbon fiber construction, which was unusual. Other testimony focused on the troubled nature of the company.
Another Wednesday witness, Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering Services of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, testified about his review of the OceanGate submersible’s development. He expressed particular concern about the sub’s window.
“This is consistent with something on the path of failure,” Kemper said.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.
The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans. Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.
SEATTLE (AP) — Having spent the past two seasons as his teammate, Seattle center Connor Williams struggled to watch what happened to Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa.
He’d much rather see Tagovailoa on the field Sunday when the Seahawks host the Dolphins than watch his former teammate deal with yet another concussion.
“It was awful. I mean, you never wish for something like that, and definitely with his history,” Williams said. “Just prayers out to him and his family.”
The latest concussion suffered by the Miami quarterback and his uncertain future has centered the storylines around the Week 3 matchup.
Tagovailoa was injured last Thursday night in a loss to Buffalo, his third diagnosed concussion in the past two years. The Dolphins have spent the week trying to get Skylar Thompson ready to make his first start since the 2022 season while also answering unknowns about when Tagovailoa — who has been placed on injured reserve — will return.
For now, Miami is placing its faith in Thompson.
“When I tell you that the confidence that the team has for Skylar is real and it’s earned, and it’s based upon thousands of hours that as a backup quarterback most people don’t see,” Miami coach Mike McDaniel said.
The last time Thompson started was the 2022 playoffs against Buffalo. He never saw the field last season and his limited career opportunities thus far make it difficult to get a read on what exactly may be different with Thompson under center.
“It’s tough because it’s not a huge sample size to see, and it’s been a long time, and you’re talking about a couple of years of growth from when he started last in a playoff game, being in the system,” Seattle coach Mike Macdonald said. “So that’s where we’re at right now.”
While it’s a bit of an unknown how Thompson will step in, the Dolphins still have a dangerous set of skill talent like Tyreek Hill and De’Von Achane.
“One of my favorite parts about this game is going to play with the guys next to me. It’s been that way since I was a little kid, and I just find joy in going to battle with guys that I know have put so much into it to do their job,” Thompson said.
In the backfield
Seattle played last week without top running back Kenneth Walker III and his status against the Dolphins is uncertain due to an oblique injury. Whether it’s Walker or backup Zach Charbonnet carrying the load, Seattle’s offensive line must do better blocking up front.
“We’ve got to move people. Right now we’re not moving them,” Macdonald said.
The Seahawks had only 46 yards rushing and averaged 2.4 yards per rush against New England, which made the 103 yards Walker had in Week 1 against Denver that much more impressive.
The guard spot has been the problem thus far and Seattle could continue to rotate at right guard where Anthony Bradford and Christian Haynes split time against the Patriots.
Bring the noise
Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks knows how loud it can get inside Seattle’s home stadium after spending the first four years of his career as a Seahawk.
Brooks said the best way for the Dolphins to quiet the noise from Seattle’s passionate fans is to stymie the Seahawks’ offense and for Thompson and the Dolphins’ offense to make big plays of their own.
“It gets as loud as the team can make it,” Brooks said. “So if we’re stopping them, it won’t be that loud. If we don’t, it will be pretty loud.”
Thompson also has experience playing in hostile environments. He started a road playoff game against the Buffalo Bills during the 2022 season.
“For me, that’s what you want,” Thompson said. “That’s why football is such a great game, and being able to go on the road, having a road opportunity with the guys and get to go in there and go to battle with them in that environment is fun. We’re really excited for that opportunity.”
The other QB
Geno Smith is coming off one of the best games of his career, completing 75% of his passes and throwing for 327 yards in the win over the Patriots. Smith was 17 of 25 passing in the second half and overtime, and carried Seattle’s offense on a day there was no run game.
“Y’all been calling this man underrated for three years, and when is it going to stop?” Seattle wide receiver DK Metcalf questioned. “But he’s not underrated by any means.”
Homecoming
There was a huge smile on Tyler Huntley’s face Wednesday when he described the feeling of playing football in Miami.
Huntley, signed this week by Miami off the Ravens’ practice squad, was born in Dania Beach, Florida, about 20 miles north of Miami and attended high school in South Florida. He went to college in Utah before signing with Baltimore as an undrafted free agent in 2020.
“Man, it’s just like a dream come true,” Huntley said. “As a little kid, you’re looking up seeing the NFL and your home team being right there, you just want to be a part of it. I get the chance to be a part of it.”
LONDON (AP) — British regulators on Wednesday cleared Microsoft’s hiring of key staff from startup Inflection AI, saying the deal wouldn’t stifle competition in the country’s artificial intelligence market.
The Competition and Markets Authority had opened a preliminary investigation in July into Microsoft’s recruitment of Inflection’s core team, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karen Simonyan and several top engineers and researchers.
The watchdog said its investigation found that the hirings amounted to a “merger situation” but that the “transaction does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition.”
Big technology companies have been facing scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic lately for gobbling up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them.
Three U.S. Senators called for the practice to be investigated after Amazon pulled a similar maneuver this year in a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept’s AI systems and datasets.
The U.K. watchdog said Microsoft hired “almost all of Inflection’s team” and licensed its intellectual property, which gave it access to the startup’s AI model and chatbot development capabilities.
Inflection’s main product is a chatbot named Pi that specializes in “emotional intelligence” by being being “kind and supportive.”
However, the CMA said the deal won’t result in a big loss of competition because Inflection has a “very small” share of the U.K. consumer market for chatbots, and it lacks chatbot features that make it more attractive than rivals.
Less than eight months after playing for the national championship, Washington makes its debut under new coach Jedd Fisch with a completely remodeled program. Most of the stars from last year’s team have moved on either to the NFL or new schools. Fisch took control after Kalen DeBoer moved to Alabama and will unveil his overhauled roster against Weber State, highlighted by new quarterback Will Rogers and running back Jonah Coleman, and a defense under the command of Steve Belichick. Weber State returns nine starters from last year’s team that went 6-5 and the Wildcats begin the season ranked No. 22 in the FCS.
KEY MATCHUP
Washington returns only one full-time starter from last season’s team so the opener against the Wildcats will be a test of how well the remade roster can come together. Fisch said effort and fundamentals are the two of the things he’s most interested in seeing. There are also the concerns of complacency and making sure Washington isn’t looking past Weber State. It was only three years ago that Washington opened its season by losing to Montana at home.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Weber State: DE Brayden Wilson has been the most honored player in the preseason for the Wildcats. Wilson was named a preseason all-Big Sky and preseason All-American by some outlets. He led the Big Sky last season with 16 1/2 tackles for loss, including 7 1/2 sacks. He could be a test for Washington’s new offensive line.
Washington: Rogers and fellow QB Demond Williams Jr. Fisch made it clear that Rogers’ experience playing at Mississippi State in the SEC was a factor in naming him the starting QB. But Williams is a promising freshman who pushed Rogers in training camp and seems likely to get some amount of playing time this season.
FACTS & FIGURES
Washington’s first game as a member of the Big Ten. Weber State’s first game against a team from the Big Ten. … The Wildcats were picked to finish sixth in the Big Sky preseason poll. … The Huskies won’t leave Seattle for their first four games. After this week, Washington hosts Eastern Michigan, plays Washington State at Lumen Field and opens conference play at home against Northwestern. … CB Elijah Jackson is the only full-time starter to return from last season for Washington – and he might not even start the opener.
Brandi Brown has yet to find a Black church near her Southern California home that feels right for her. So when she wants to talk about God, she relies on someone over a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) away.
Like her, Ellen Lo Hoffman, who lives just outside Seattle and is Chinese American, is a progressive Christian. They have known each other through a Christian fellowship for six years. But for the past three years, Hoffman has supported Brown, a former minister, through monthly virtual chats.
“How Black women and how women of color experience God is different than how other people experience God,” said Brown, who is Black. “If I imagine myself, like, sitting on a bench trying to talk to God, Ellen is there too — to sit on the bench with me and point out observations and allow me to interpret things that I’m experiencing.”
For some Christian progressives, the lack of acknowledgement by their churches or ministries of the 2020 racial reckoning was the final push to go elsewhere. Some women of color have been disappointed and upset by evangelical Christian churches — both predominantly white and multiracial — whose leaders failed to openly decry racism or homophobia. Traditional pastors and other leaders often see congregants’ concerns through a patriarchal lens, leaving many feeling dismissed or overlooked. Still, others said they felt alienated by evangelical supporters of former President Donald Trump, with whom they disagree on politics.
Many are now finding solace and reaffirming their faith on their own terms through what they call “spiritual directors,” who are not necessarily priests, pastors, counselors or therapists, but can help others explore thoughts about God or broader concepts around a higher power.
With nearly 24 years of ministry leadership experience, Hoffman has been a self-employed spiritual director for the past seven years. The 2014 death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer was a pivotal moment for her. She gathered staff members of color, as the associate regional director of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, in a discussion.
Hoffman came away vowing to be a better ally.
So when the murder of George Floyd and anti-Asian hate crimes soon dominated national conversation, Hoffman wanted to do more than march in protests and facilitate bystander training. She said she noticed that a lot of people of color needed “care in the midst of racial trauma.” So with her husband, she created Soul Reparations, a nonprofit providing free spiritual support to women.
“With the people that I was already meeting with, the impact of the racial trauma in 2020 was constantly coming up,” Hoffman said. “And then the people who were reaching out looking for a spiritual director was all women of color looking for spaces to process.”
The sessions are intimate one-on-one chats in person or over Zoom. It’s the client who drives the conversation. Often, there’s no Bible talk or preaching from Hoffman. The discussions can be more philosophical.
“Simply allowing them to tell their story, giving them space to share their pain — is really healing for them and it restores a sense of identity,” Hoffman said. Churches, religious leaders and officials don’t get to “have the last word” on how women choose to express their Christianity.
She has since recruited seven other women of color to serve as directors. In total, they have helped more than 200 women, including queer women, over the past three years. The demand hasn’t waned. Recently, Hoffman had to close a 60-person waitlist.
That number doesn’t surprise Jessica Chen, of Los Angeles, who virtually meets with Hoffman monthly.
“I do see this kind of movement of women of color who’ve left kind of the traditional church environment to create these spaces for other women of color,” Chen said. “So, sort of reimagining what community can look like for women of color, I think that’s very much needed.”
Only in the last few years did Chen consider she might be limiting herself by only hearing male pastors who have a specific perspective that’s been “universalized,” she said. While her last church was diverse and multigenerational, she felt like she wasn’t growing as a person.
“I want to hear from Black women, Asian women, Indigenous folks … queer folks. What has your faith experience been and how can I learn from your experiences as well?” Chen said. “And I think that makes our understanding and relationship with God or spirituality a lot richer.”
In 2020, Rebekah James Lovett, of Chicago, tried to broach the subject of social justice with her evangelical pastor. She stayed up till 4 a.m. crafting a written plea to him. The pastor met with her but she came away feeling like he was simply placating her.
Raised in Christianity by Indian immigrant parents, she said she came to a realization, “I can’t ever go back” to white, male-dominated churches that don’t consider other viewpoints.
She felt liberated — but also a bit rudderless. Then she heard Hoffman speak on a podcast, “Reclaiming My Theology.”
“The idea of going to a woman who also is pastorally trained was interesting to me,” Lovett said. “Christianity as we’ve been sold it is built on this sense of certainty that somebody has the answer and you just have to look to the Bible and it’s all right there. Whereas for Ellen, there’s this invitation to wonder. That was never there before.”
After adding her name to the waitlist, Lovett became a regular client of Hoffman’s in fall 2021.
Hoffman’s rates for spiritual direction range from $85-$100 per session — or, in some cases, are free. Her paying clients, or “directees,” don’t seem to mind. They liken it to a regular check-up or therapy session.
“I do feel like it is a wellness practice as well as a spiritual practice. It’s something that keeps me centered,” Brown said. “I’m not trying to reach a goal. My only desire is to, deepen my personal relationship with God.”
Many have left churches across the U.S. over the past few decades. Around 30% of Americans identify as “the nones” or people with no organized religion affiliation, according to a 2023 AP-NORC poll. They include atheists, agnostics and people who are “nothing in particular.”
The Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, who last year became the first woman and woman of color elected general minister and president of the socially liberal United Church of Christ, agrees churches are often patriarchal. They “continue to be exclusive and bring narratives of hatred, diminishing the human spirit and decrying people’s humanity,” she said. While UCC congregations have become more racially and ethnically diverse, Thompson wants to see that diversity reflected at the top as well.
“We continue to include the voices of all in the leadership — as best we can — paying attention to those whose presence and voices have been historically underrepresented in the life of the UCC,” Thompson said in an email.
Spiritual direction has actually reinvigorated Brown to not give up on looking for a church.
“I’m excited about joining a church that talks about justice, that cares about LGBTQ+ people,” Brown said. “I want to be a part of a community.”
___ This story has been corrected to show Hoffman’s group has assisted more than 200 women or 70 per year, not 70 overall.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Supermarket chain Albertsons told a federal judge Monday that it might have to lay off workers, close stores and even exit some markets if its planned merger with Kroger isn’t allowed to proceed.
The two companies proposed what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in October 2022. But the Federal Trade Commission sued to prevent the $24.6 billion deal, alleging it would eliminate competition and raise grocery prices in a time of already high food price inflation.
In the three-week hearing that opened Monday, the FTC is seeking a preliminary injunction that would block the merger while its complaint goes before an in-house administrative law judge.
“This lawsuit is part of an effort aimed at helping Americans feed their families,” the FTC’s chief trial counsel, Susan Musser, said in her opening arguments on Monday.
Musser said Kroger and Albertsons currently compete in 22 states, closely matching each other on price, quality, private label products and services like store pickup. Shoppers benefit from that competition, she said, and will lose those benefits if the merger is allowed to proceed.
Customers also are wary of the merger, the lawyer said. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, 278 shoppers wrote to the FTC to express their concerns about a combined Kroger and Albertsons, which would own five of the city’s eight supermarkets.
But Kroger and Albertsons insist the FTC’s objections don’t take into account the rising competition in the grocery sector. Walmart’s grocery sales totaled $247 billion last year compared to $63 billion in 2003, for example; Costco’s sales have grown more than 400% in the same period.
“Consumers are blurring the line of where they buy groceries,” Albertsons attorney Enu Mainigi said.
Mainigi said Albertsons’ customers now spend 88 cents of every dollar at competitors that range from Aldi and Trader Joe’s to Dollar General. Albertsons can’t compete with larger rivals that have national scale, but joining forces with Kroger would help it do that, she said.
Kroger attorney Matthew Wolf also defended the proposed merger.
“The savings that come from the merger are obvious and intuitive. Kroger may have the best price on Pepsi. Albertsons may have the best price on Coke. Put them together, they have the best price on both,” Wolf said.
The two sides also disagree on Kroger and Albertsons’ plan to sell 579 stores in places where their stores overlap. The buyer would be C&S Wholesale Grocers, a New Hampshire-based supplier to independent supermarkets that also owns the Grand Union and Piggly Wiggly store brands.
The FTC says C&S is ill-prepared to take on those stores. Laura Hall, the FTC’s senior trial counsel, cited internal documents that indicated C&S executives were skeptical about the quality of the stores they would get and may want the option to sell or close them.
But Wolf said C&S has the experience and infrastructure to run the divested stores and would be the eighth-largest supermarket company in the U.S., if the merger plan goes through.
The commission also alleges that workers’ wages and benefits would decline if Kroger and Albertsons no longer compete with each other.
Before the hearing, several members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland to speak out against the proposed deal.
“Enough is enough,” said Carol McMillian, a bakery manager at a Kroger-owned grocery store in Colorado. “We can no longer stand by and allow corporate greed that puts profit before people. Our workers, our communities and our customers deserve better.”
The labor union also expressed concern that potential store closures could create so-called food and pharmacy “deserts” for consumers.
For people in many communities across the U.S., when a grocery store shutters, “their only source of food actually is walking to the nearest gas station,” said Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, which represents over 23,000 members in Colorado and Wyoming.
Mainigi argued the deal could actually bolster union jobs, since many of Kroger’s and Albertsons’ competitors, like Walmart or Costco, have few unionized workers.
U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson is expected to hear from around 40 witnesses, including the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons, before deciding whether to issue the preliminary injunction. If she does decide to temporarily block the merger, the FTC’s in-house hearings are scheduled to begin Oct. 1.
But Nelson’s decision will seal the merger’s fate, according to Wolf. He said the FTC’s in-house administrative process is so long and cumbersome that merger deals almost always fall apart before it’s through. Earlier this month, Kroger sued the FTC, alleging the agency’s internal proceedings were unconstitutional and saying it wants the merger’s merits decided in federal court.
The attorneys general of Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming all joined the case on the FTC’s side. Washington and Colorado filed separate cases in state courts seeking to block the merger.
Kroger, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, operates 2,800 stores in 35 states, including brands like Ralphs, Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons, based in Boise, Idaho, operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s. Together, the companies employ around 710,000 people.
SEATTLE (AP) — One of the last remaining U.S. House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump and a candidate endorsed by the former president have advanced in Tuesday’s primary to the general election in Washington state’s 4th Congressional District.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse is seeking a sixth term in the conservative Washington district that runs from the Canadian border to the Columbia River. He will face Republican Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR driver, in November.
This was a rematch for the pair from 2022, when Sessler earned a distant fourth in the primary. This time, Sessler said things have gone his way. He was endorsed by the Washington State Republican Party and nabbed Trump’s backing early on, which he called a “game changer.” He said he communicates regularly with Trump’s team, referencing a text he said he received from the GOP presidential candidate this year saying, “The country is counting on you.”
“In ninety days, this district is going to vote overwhelmingly for President Trump,” Sessler said in a statement. “I will work hard to make sure we also elect a member of Congress who will be his greatest ally in our fight to enact a pro-Constitution, pro-MAGA agenda and heal our nation from the disaster of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Newhouse has mostly steered clear of the subject of Trump. The third-generation farmer has instead focused on agriculture and border security in a state with millions of acres of pastures, orchards and cereal grain lands where immigrant labor is extremely important.
In the lead-up to the primary, Newhouse’s opponents repeatedly touted his vote to impeach Trump as a huge liability. But political experts have cautioned that it’s difficult to say whether the endorsement will sway voters who already stuck with Newhouse two years ago.
Newhouse and U.S. Rep. David Valadao, of California, are the only Republican Congressional lawmakers left among the 10 who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Others retired or were defeated by Trump-endorsed primary challengers.
As of July 17, Newhouse, who was endorsed by the NRA and the National Right to Life, had raised $1.6 million – far more than the $409,000 raised by Sessler.
They prevailed over Tiffany Smiley, a former nurse who entered the race after losing to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray two years ago. She received a backing from Trump just three days before the primary, marking a unique, though not unprecedented, dual endorsement by the former president. But the backing for Smiley likely came too late to impact many voters in the vote-by-mail state.
Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters in each of the contests advance to the November election, regardless of party.
The longtime friends and U.S. gymnastics teammates knew they needed to find a way to honor Brazilian star Rebeca Andrade. They just weren’t sure how.
What they came up with after Andrade’s gold medal on floor exercise at the end of 10 days inside Bercy Arena symbolized the state of their sport at the 2024 Games.
Where it is. And hopefully where it’s going.
Biles, the unequivocal Greatest of All Time, and Chiles, a three-time Olympic medalist whose journey back to the Games was a testament to talent and grit, dropped down to one knee. It was a show of respect to Andrade, whose excellence is symbolic of a sport that is getting more diverse, more inclusive and perhaps more positive as it goes.
“It was just the right thing to do,” Biles said about a moment that soon went viral, with even the Louvre itself suggesting it might be worthy enough for a spot somewhere in the vicinity of the Mona Lisa.
Fitting for an Olympics that offered masterpieces everywhere you looked.
Biles eagerly shares the stage
Biles and the American women finished off their “Redemption Tour” by reclaiming gold in the team final. Biles exorcised whatever inner doubt remained from the Tokyo Games — and shut up the haters in the process — by winning a second all-around title eight years after her first.
Andrade led Brazil to its first Olympic team medal (a bronze), then added three more in the individual competition, finishing runner-up to Biles in the all-around and vault before becoming the first woman in memory to edge Biles in a floor exercise final.
The Italian women won their first team medal in nearly a century. Japan put together a stirring rally on high bar in the last rotation to slip by rival China for gold. The U.S. men and “Pommel Horse Guy” Stephen Nedoroscik returned to the Olympic podium for the first time in 16 years. Carlos Yulo of the Philippines tripled his country’s Summer Olympic all-time gold medal count in a mere 24 hours.
The good vibes were everywhere, led by Biles, who seemed to make it a point to take her vibrant spotlight and redirect it toward the other women on the floor as often as possible.
That was never more evident than what could have been the last day of her career. The 27-year-old’s voice could be heard shouting encouragement to each of the other balance beam finalists inside an eerily quiet arena. Regardless of nationality. Regardless of age. Regardless of score. Regardless of how well she might know them.
Afterward, Biles spoke glowingly of Italians Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito, who earned gold and bronze in beam after half the field — Biles included — fell inside an arena so still that Biles joked she could hear cell phones buzzing.
“I’m super excited and proud of them because now they’re building bricks (for a program) for the other Italian girls,” she said.
U.S. women’s team dismantles stereotypes
Jordan Chiles, of the United States, and Simone Biles, of the United States, celebrate after the women’s artistic gymnastics individual floor finals in Bercy Arena at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Paris, France. Biles won the silver medal and Chiles the bronze medal. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Those bricks have long been in place in the U.S., yet what Biles, Chiles, six-time Olympic medalist Sunisa Lee and three-time Olympic medalist Jade Carey did in Paris is destroy the “little girls in pretty boxes” stereotype that has lingered over the sport for decades once and for all.
The four 20-somethings — oh, and 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, too — came to France with a score to settle. Biles to put those strange days in Japan three years ago firmly in the rearview mirror. Lee to rid herself of the “imposter syndrome” that kept nagging at her following her all-around gold in Tokyo and the health issues that pushed her to the verge of quitting over and over again. Chiles and Carey to put the Americans back on top after ceding the top of the podium to Russia.
The group checked every box. The U.S. won eight of 18 possible medals, including four for Biles to boost her Olympic total to 11, tied for the second most ever by a women’s gymnast in the history of the event.
Yet just as important as the results was the process they took to get there. There was pressure but there was also joy in abundance for the oldest team the Americans have ever brought to the Games, a team that has dubbed itself “The Golden Girls.”
“It’s been so much fun,” Carey said. “And I think so many have seen that, that we’re just having fun out there. And I think that’s bringing out the best gymnastics from us.”
‘We did it’
A decade ago, the core four would be heading off into retirement while the next wave of prodigies came along. It says something about the rapidly shifting demographics on the floor and the rising interest in women’s gymnastics at large that not one of them — Biles included — has made any firm decisions about their future.
Biles nudged the door toward Los Angeles 2028 open when she said over the weekend “never say never.” Lee, still just 21, is taking time before weighing her options. Carey and Chiles will join Biles on her post-Olympic tour and have college eligibility remaining.
No one is in a hurry. Biles in particular. She chastised the media for pressing about the future so soon after the biggest moment of athletes’ lives. For a long time — for too long, in hindsight — she fixated on what’s next.
No longer. She was intent on soaking in her third Olympics. Of enjoying it. And she did, from the first pressure-packed rotation in qualifying to that moment with Chiles and Andrade, when the last of the weight she’s been carrying for years lifted off her shoulders, perhaps for good.
“There’s nothing left,” Biles said. “We did our job, you know what I’m saying? So yeah, it was hard, but we did it.”
GLOSTER, Miss. (AP) — This southern Mississippi town’s expansive wood pellet plant was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins’ home that she sometimes heard company loudspeakers. She says industrial residues coated her truck and she no longer enjoys spending time in the air outdoors.
Dobbins feels her life — and health — were better before 2016, when United Kingdom energy giant Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the majority Black town of Gloster, Mississippi. To her, it’s no coincidence federal regulators find residents are exposed to unwanted air particles and they experience asthma more than most of the country.
Her asthma and diabetes were once under control, but since a 2017 diagnosis of heart and lung disease, Dobbins has frequently lived at the end of a breathing tube connected to an oxygen cannister.
“Something is going on. And it’s all around the plant,” said the 59-year-old widow who raised two children here. “Nobody asked us could they bring that plant there.”
Shelia Mae Dobbins holds part of her oxygen tube inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Shelia Mae Dobbins walks with her oxygen tube inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Wood pellet production skyrocketed across the U.S. South. It helped feed demand in the European Union for renewable energy, as those coutries sought to replace fossil fuels such as coal. But many residents near plants — often African Americans in poor, rural swaths — find the process left their air dustier and people sicker.
Billions of dollars are available for these projects under President Joe Biden’s signature law combating climate change. The administration is weighing whether to open up tax credits for companies to burn wood pellets for energy.
Shelia Mae Dobbins cries as she talks about her health inside her home in Gloster, Miss., Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
As producers expand west, environmentalists want the government to stop incentivizing what they call a misguided attempt to curb carbon emissions that pollute communities of color while presently warming the atmosphere.
Despite hefty pollution fines against industry players and one major producer’s recent bankruptcy, supporters say the multibillion-dollar market is experiencing growing pains. In wood pellets, they see an innovative long-term solution to the climate crisis that brings revenue necessary for forest owners to maintain plantations.
Birds fly past a pile of wood used to make pellets during a tour of a Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Biomass boom
After the European Union classified biomass as renewable energy in 2009, the Southeast’s annual wood pellet capacity increased from about 300,000 tons to more than 7.3 million tons by 2017, according to research led by a University of Missouri team.
Federal energy statistics show about three dozen southern wood pellet manufacturing facilities account for nearly 80% of annual U.S. capacity. Most pellets are used for commercial-scale energy overseas.
The market brought hope for revitalization to small, disadvantaged communities. But interviews with residents of towns with large Black populations, from Gaston, North Carolina, to Uniontown, Alabama, surfaced complaints of truck traffic, air pollution and noise from pellet plants.
Dan Caston, an employee of Drax leads a tour of their plant in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Dan Caston, an employee of Drax, shows some of the wood pellets their plant produces in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Gloster has become the poster child for such tensions. In 2020, Mississippi’s environmental agency fined Drax $2.5 million for violating air emissions limits. Gloster is exposed to more particulate matter than much of the U.S. and adults have higher asthma rates than 80% of the country, according to an Environmental Protection Agency mapping tool. Median household income is about $22,000; the poverty rate is triple the national level.
Spokesperson Michelli Martin said Drax in 2021 installed pollution controls, including incinerators to decrease carbon emissions. An environmental consulting firm found “no adverse effects to human health” and that “no modeled pollutant from the facility exceeded” acceptable levels, Martin said.
The company recently committed to annual town halls and announced a $250,000 Gloster Community Fund to “improve quality of life.”
But critics aren’t swayed by showings of corporate goodwill they say don’t account for poor air. Krystal Martin, of the Greater Greener Gloster Project, returned to her hometown after her 75-year-old mother was diagnosed with lung and heart problems.
“You don’t really know you’re dealing with air pollution until most people have breathed and inhaled it for so long that they end up sick,” she said.
Krystal Martin, a Gloster native, shows pamphlets to residents Myrtis Woodard and Shelia Mae Dobbins, right, during a community meeting she organized regarding health complaints against the Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Krystal Martin, a Gloster native, shows pamphlets during a community meeting she organized regarding health complaints against the Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Brown University assistant epidemiology professor Erica Walker is studying health impacts of industrial pollutants on Gloster residents. Walker said fine particulate matter can travel deep into lungs and reach the bloodstream.
“It can also circulate to other parts of our body, leading to body-wide inflammation,” she said.
A man crosses the street in downtown Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Subsidies for an upstart industry
Environmentalists are calling on Biden to stop aiding an industry they believe runs counter to his green energy goals. At the annual United Nations climate conference, The Dogwood Alliance urged attendees to phase out wood pellets.
Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet producer — had already received subsidies through the 2018 farm bill signed by former President Donald Trump, according to Sheila Korth, a former policy analyst with nonpartisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.
But Korth said the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act made tax credits available to companies that create pellets for countries in Europe and Asia.
Elizabeth Woodworth, interim executive director of the US Industrial Pellet Association, said the money is a small part of lRA allocations and noted emerging technologies require government subsidies. The industry argues that replanting of trees will eventually absorb carbon produced by burning pellets.
“We need every single technology we can get our hands on to mitigate climate change,” Woodworth said. “Bioenergy is a part of that.”
Scientific studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal. Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy.
In a 2018 letter, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the “additional carbon load” from burning wood pellets means “permanent damages” including glacial melting.
A resident crosses the street for a community meeting regarding health complaints against Drax in Gloster, Miss., Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Expansion plans and more burning?
Drax — with plants operating in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi — is heading west.
The corporation signed an agreement in February with Golden State Natural Resources to identify biomass from California’s forests. The public-private venture hopes to build two plants by year’s end and produce up to 1 million tons of wood pellets annually. Another Drax project in Washington would produce 500,000 tons a year.
The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rita Frost, who fought plants in the South, said the deal will endanger California’s low-income Latino communities much like she says the industry threatened Black southern towns.
“It’s an environmental justice problem that should not be repeated in California,” Frost said.
An employee walks toward a pile of lumber to be used during a tour of a Drax facility in Gloster, Miss., Monday, May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
But a key federal decision could draw more companies into pellet combustion — not just production.
The White House is looking into whether biomass facilities should receive tax credits meant for zero-emission electricity generators. The Treasury Department is weighing whether biomass’ potential long-term carbon neutrality is sufficient even if its production increases emissions in the short term.
Spokesperson Michael Martinez said they are “carefully considering public comments” and “working to issue final rules that will increase energy security and clean energy supply as effectively as possible.”
Some environmentalists doubt the energy alternative is ultimately carbon neutral. The Southern Environmental Law Center fears the credits could be the incentive needed for the U.S. to join Europe in scaling up the burning of pellets.
“The threat here is really the growth of biomass energy production in the U.S. itself,” said senior attorney Heather Hillaker. “Which obviously will add to the total carbon and climate harms of this industry globally.”
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Pollard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Watson reported from San Diego. Contributing were video journalist Terry Chea from San Francisco and reporter Matthew Daly from Washington, D.C.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon Prime Day is here, and experts are reminding consumers to be wary of scams.
Deceptions such as phony emails from people impersonating online retailers like Amazon are nothing new. But phishing attempts increase amid the heavy spending seen during significant sales events, whether it’s Black Friday or Prime Day, according to the Better Business Bureau.
“This is a huge moment on the retail calendar,” Josh Planos, vice president of communications and public relations at the Better Business Bureau, previously told The Associated Press. “And because of that, it represents an enormous opportunity for a scammer, con artist or even just an unethical business or organization to capitalize on the moment and separate folks from their hard-earned money.”
Prime Day, a two-day discount event for Amazon Prime members, kicks off on Tuesday and runs through Wednesday. In updated guidance published last week, the Better Business Bureau reminded consumers to watch out for lookalike websites, too-good-to-be-true social media ads, and unsolicited emails or calls during sales events this month.
Consumers might need to be more vigilant this year than ever before. In June, the Better Business Bureau published a report that said it received a record number of phishing reports in 2023. Reports are also trending up so far this year, the organization said.
Meanwhile, in a report released this month, the Israel-founded cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies said more than 1,230 new websites that associated themselves with Amazon popped up in June. The vast majority of them were malicious or appeared suspicious, according to Check Point.
Scott Knapp, director of worldwide buyer risk prevention at Amazon, identifies two areas that the company has seen hoaxes around come Prime Day in recent years: Prime membership and order confirmations.
Last year, for example, more than two-third of scams reported by Amazon customers claimed to be related to order or account issues, Knapp wrote in an emailed statement. People reported getting unsolicited calls or emails saying there was something wrong with their Prime membership and seeking bank account or other payment information to reinstate the accounts, Knapp explained.
Urging consumers to confirm an order they didn’t place is also a common tactic at this time of year, he added. Scammers might pick something expensive, like a smartphone, to get attention — and again ask for payment information or send a malicious link. They might also try to lure in consumers with promises of a giveaway, or by using language that creates a false sense of urgency.
Amazon is attempting “to ensure scammers are not using our brand to take advantage of people who trust us,” Knapp wrote, adding that customers can confirm their purchases and verify messages from the company on its app or website.
Additional scams are probably out there, but it’s hard to know what form they might take before this year’s Prime Day begins. Still, experts note that the same shopping scams tend to resurface year after year.
“Typically, the bones remain the same,” Planos said, pointing to fake delivery scams, email phishing and other repeated methods. “It’s always a ploy to separate consumers from (their) personal and payment information.”
But online hoaxes are also constantly evolving to become more sophisticated, Planos and others warn. That means images might look more legitimate, text messages may sound more convincing and fake websites that look very similar to real shopping destinations.
Amazon’s Knapp has said that with artificial intelligence “starting to leak in,” the scams targeting e-commerce shoppers follow the same approach but with a machine populating an email or text instead of a person.
According to data from the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing about $10 billion to fraud in 2023, a 14% jump from 2022. Online shopping scams were the second most-reported form of fraud, following impostor scams, the FTC said.
Both the FTC and Better Business Bureau provide consumers with tips to avoid scams year-round. Guidance includes blocking unwanted messages, not giving financial information to unsolicited callers and checking links before clicking — secure websites, for example, will have “HTTPS” in the URL, Planos notes, never “HTTP.”
Scammers will often pressure you to act immediately, experts say. It’s important to pause and trust your gut. Experts also urge consumers to report scams to regulators.
Beyond scams that impersonate companies or retailers, it’s also important to be cautious of counterfeit products and fake reviews on the sites of trusted retailers. Just because you’re shopping on Amazon, for example, doesn’t mean you’re buying from Amazon. The online shopping giant, like eBay, Walmart and others, has vast third-party marketplaces.
The quality and look of counterfeit products has significantly increased over recent years, Planos notes, making the activity difficult to police. A good rule of thumb is looking at the price tag — if the product is being sold for less than 75% of its year-round market rate, “that’s a pretty big red flag,” he says.
Sketchy sellers can show up on different platforms, including sites like Amazon, “all the time” Planos said, urging consumers to check out companies on the Better Business Bureau’s website. Like other scams, counterfeit products may increase around high spending periods.
Amid increasing pressure to tackle counterfeit products, Amazon has reported getting rid of millions of phony products in recent years. The company said it also blocked billions of bad listings from making it on to its site. In 2023, Amazon said more than 7 million counterfeit items were “identified, seized and appropriately disposed of.” The online retailer has also filed multiple lawsuits against fake review brokers.
Amazon notes customers can also report fake reviews and other scams on its website. If a shopper purchases a counterfeit item detected by the company, Amazon has said it will “proactively contact” the customer and provide a refund.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon’s popular Prime Day sales event has been “a major cause of injuries” for warehouse workers who pick and pack customer orders at the e-commerce giant’s facilities across the United States, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The report, which draws information from a year-long Senate committee investigation into Amazon’s safety practices and relied on internal company data from 2019 and 2020, said peak shopping times – including the holiday shopping period – resulted in the “highest weekly injury rates” for warehouse workers.
The preliminary report from Sanders’ office was also based on interviews with more than 100 current and former Amazon employees. This year’s two-day Prime Day event started Tuesday.
In a statement, Sanders said the “incredibly dangerous working conditions at Amazon” highlighted in the report are a “perfect example of the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of.”
“Despite making $36 billion in profits last year and providing its CEO with over $275 million in compensation over the past three years, Amazon continues to treat its workers as disposable and with complete contempt for their safety and well-being,” said the Vermont independent, who has been critical of Amazon and supports worker efforts to unionize at the company. “That is unacceptable, and that has got to change.”
Labor unions and safety experts have long criticized Amazon, alleging the company’s focus on speed and fast deliveries puts workers in danger. In recent years, some states have passed laws aimed at Amazon to curb the use of warehouse productivity quotas, though the company claims it doesn’t employ them.
According to the Senate report, 45 out of 100 warehouse at Amazon received injuries during the 2019 Prime Day event. The number included minor injuries the company was not required to disclose to the federal government, such as bruises and superficial cuts, but also serious ones such as concussions that should have been reported, it said.
Amazon disputed the finding.
“The claims that we systemically underreport injuries, and that our actual injury rates are higher than publicly reported, are false,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a prepared statement. “We’re required to report every injury that needs more than basic first aid, and that’s what we do.”
While Amazon “might make an occasional clerical error,” a six-month federal investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found “no intentional, willful, or systemic errors” in the company’s reporting, Nantel said.
The report also alleged that Amazon had a practice of failing to refer workers for outside medical care because doing so could affect whether an injury should be considered “recordable” and referred to OSHA. Even when injuries were serious and might have required extra medical attention, workers often received first aid before being sent back to work instead of to a doctor, it said.
Amazon has acknowledged in the past that its warehouse injury rates had been higher compared to its peers. Federal safety investigators levied fines against the company in recent years following inspections at some of its warehouses. Some of the inspections arose from referrals made to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is also investigating worker safety at the company through its civil division.
Last month, California fined Amazon a total of $5.9 million, accusing the company of violating the state’s Warehouse Quota Law at two facilities.
A spokesperson for Sanders’ office said the committee relied on 2019 and 2020 workplace injury rate data because that’s what Amazon provided for the inquiry.
However, Amazon spokesperson Nantel said that the Senate review ignored the progress the company has made since 2019 in reducing its rate of recordable incidents – those which require more care than basic first aid – by 28%. The company also has improved the rate of significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least a day of work by 75%, she said.
“We’ve cooperated throughout this investigation, including providing thousands of pages of information and documents,” Nantel said. “But unfortunately, this report (which was not shared with us before publishing) ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative using only a fraction of the information we’ve provided. It draws sweeping and inaccurate conclusions based on unverified anecdotes, and it misrepresents documents that are several years old and contained factual errors and faulty analysis.”
The report also says Amazon failed to adequately staff its warehouses during peak shopping times, which the company disputed. Amazon said in March that it allocated over $750 million to safety efforts for this year.
SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge said Friday that Attorney General Bob Ferguson is not entitled to enforce a subpoena seeking decades of records from the Seattle Archdiocese, despite his assertion that the records are needed to learn whether the Catholic church used charitable trust funds to cover up sexual abuse by priests.
Judge Michael Scott sided with the archdiocese, which argued that under the state’s law governing charitable trusts, Ferguson did not have authority to enforce the subpoena. The law contains an exemption designed to ensure the state does not meddle in religious practices.
Nevertheless, Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne said in a written statement after Friday’s decision that the church is willing to provide the state with relevant records and collaborate with Ferguson on the investigation “in a lawful manner.”
“Sexual abuse in the Church is a heart-wrenching part of our history, and I am deeply sorry for the pain caused to victim survivors, their families and all Catholics,” Etienne said. “We remain focused on the need for healing and proper governance in these matters. … Because we are committed to preventing abuse, promoting transparency and continuously improving our processes, my offer to collaborate with the attorney general still stands.”
Ferguson, himself a Catholic, said his office would appeal. The state argued that the exemption in the law does protect religious practices — but that using charitable trust money to conceal or facilitate sex abuse was not a religious practice.
“Our fight for survivors of clergy abuse is not over,” Ferguson said in a news release. “Washingtonians deserve a full public accounting of the Church’s involvement in and responsibility for the child sexual abuse crisis.”
Ferguson filed the case in May, saying the church was stonewalling its investigation by refusing to comply with the subpoena.
At the time, the archdiocese called his allegations a surprise, saying it welcomed the investigation and shares the state’s goals — “preventing abuse and helping victim survivors on their path to healing and peace.”
Church officials said the records sought by the state were excessive and irrelevant — including every receipt going back to 1940, in an archdiocese with more than 170 pastoral locations and 72 schools.
Some 23 states have conducted investigations of the Catholic church, and so far at least nine have issued reports detailing their findings. In some cases, those findings have gone far beyond what church officials had voluntarily disclosed.
For example, the six Catholic dioceses in Illinois had reported publicly that there had been 103 clerics and religious brothers credibly accused of child sex abuse. But in a scathing report last year, the Illinois attorney general’s office said it had uncovered detailed information on 451 who had sexually abused at least 1,997 children.
Similarly, Maryland last year reported staggering evidence of just how widespread the abuse was: More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability. In 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury found that more than 300 Catholic clerics had abused more than 1,000 children in that state over the prior 70 years.
The Seattle Archdiocese has published a list of 83 clerics it says were credibly accused, and it says that beginning in the 1980s it was one of the first in the nation to begin adopting policies to address and prevent sexual abuse by priests. Sexual abuse by church personnel peaked in 1975, and there have been no reports since 2007, the archdiocese said.
Without immigration, the white population in the U.S. would have declined last year.
Immigration also propelled the expansion of the Asian population, which was the fastest-growing race or ethnic group last year in the U.S., while births outpacing deaths helped propel growth in Hispanic, Black, tribal and Hawaiian populations.
Population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show what drove changes in different race, ethnic and age groups last year, as well as since the start of COVID-19′s spread in the U.S. in April 2020. The country had grown to 333.2 million people by the middle of last year, a 0.4% increase over the previous year, according to the 2022 population estimates.
For white residents in the U.S., immigration drove the expansion. Without it, the white population, including those who identify as more than one race, would have dropped last year by more than 85,000 people instead of growing meagerly by more than 388,000 residents, or 0.1%.
When the focus is narrowed to white people who aren’t Hispanic and identify only with a single race, there was a decline of more than 668,000 people in the white population since the number of immigrants couldn’t overcome the steep drop in natural decrease that came from deaths outnumbering births last year.
Population growth is propelled in two ways: through immigration and natural increase, when births outpace deaths. The data released Thursday speak to the complexity of the nation’s ever-shifting population patterns and reinforce a level of nuance not always reflected amid the political debate over immigration.
“Immigrant and refugee communities bring talent, culture and a set of skills that are needed in our community,” said Arrey Obenson, president and CEO of the International Institute of St. Louis, which helps newcomers adapt to life in the U.S.
Since the start of the pandemic in April 2020, the white population has grown by 391,000 people, all of it driven by immigration.
Hamdullah Hamdard immigrated to St. Louis in September 2021 from Afghanistan, where he had run a media production company, after threats from the Taliban and deteriorating conditions made it unsafe for his wife, son, brothers and parents. He started a production company in St. Louis, runs a news outlet for the local Afghan community and is a communications manager for the International Institute of St. Louis.
“I could start my own business once again, and I could pursue the dreams that I had in Afghanistan,” Hamdard, 31, said Wednesday.
The United States last year had 260.5 million people who identified as white, including those who identify as more than one race. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, had the biggest jump in the white population of any county, gaining more than 35,000 new white residents last year. Arizona’s largest county also had the biggest gain in the overall population of any U.S. county, with a jump in 2022 of almost 57,000 new residents due to domestic migration.
Immigration also drove Asian growth last year, accounting for two-thirds of the 577,000-person increase in people who identify as Asian, including those who identify with more than one race. That 2.4% bump was the largest of any race or ethnic group, and there were 24.6 million Asians in the U.S. last year.
King County, Washington — home to Seattle — added almost 21,500 Asian residents, the most of any U.S. county last year.
The Hispanic population in the U.S. grew by more than 1 million people last year, the biggest jump in pure numbers of any race or ethnic group. Two-thirds of that expansion was driven by natural increase, or births outpacing deaths. More than 63.3 million people identified as Hispanic last year, a 1.7% increase over the previous year.
The biggest Hispanic growth in pure numbers was in Harris County, Texas, home to Houston, which added almost 35,000 Latinos last year.
Natural increase also drove almost two-thirds of the 436,000-person jump in the Black population last year, a 0.9% increase from the previous year. The Black population stood at 50 million residents in 2022. Harris County, Texas, had the largest numeric gain of Black residents of any U.S. county, with almost 23,000 residents.
The American Indian and Alaska Native population stood at 7.2 million residents last year, an increase of more than 93,000 people, or 1.3%. Maricopa County, Arizona had the biggest numeric gain, with more than 3,100 new residents.
There were more than 1.7 million Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in the U.S. last year, an increase of 1.2% over the previous year. Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, had the biggest increase, with almost 1,500 new residents.
The median age in the U.S. last year increased 0.2 years to 38.9 years between 2021 and 2022, fueled by aging baby boomers and millennials getting older. Sumter County, Florida, home to a large retirement community, had the highest median age in the U.S. at 68.1.
“Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise,” said Kristie Wilder, a Census Bureau demographer.
NEW YORK (AP) — Another dreadful outing by Domingo Germán made things easy for touted rookie Bryan Woo on a breakthrough night for the Seattle Mariners.
Teoscar Hernández hit one of Seattle’s four early homers and the Mariners teed off against a suddenly inept Germán in blowing out the sloppy New York Yankees 10-2 on Thursday to prevent a three-game sweep.
Woo (1-1) breezed into the sixth inning with a no-hit bid to earn his first major league victory. Kolten Wong hit his first home run for the Mariners before Ty France and Cal Raleigh also went deep against Germán (4-5).
“We just kind of came in with a different attitude today,” Wong said. “Guys were aggressive, guys were excited to go out there and compete. That was the kind of game that we really needed to kind of jumpstart us back to the winning ways.”
Julio Rodríguez got Seattle started with a one-out single in a four-run first. Hernández had an RBI single, Eugenio Suárez delivered a two-run double and Mike Ford capped the quick outburst with a sacrifice fly.
Batting ninth and hitting .154, Wong led off the second with his first homer since smashing three in one game for Milwaukee last Sept. 22 at Cincinnati.
“It felt great. Obviously, everybody knows I’m putting in the work here. All the guys know, and I don’t want to make excuses man, but yeah, it’s been tough,” Wong said. “It’s nice to look up now and see one instead of zero.”
After rounding the bases, he received the silent treatment from teammates when he returned to the dugout.
“I haven’t had that since I hit my first homer in the big leagues,” Wong said, laughing. “That was funny, man. It was cool to come in and see that. … It was a good weight off my shoulders and a good laugh at the same time.”
France added a solo shot later in the inning off Germán — and then things really got ugly for the Yankees.
New York committed three errors in an embarrassing third inning as the Mariners, held to three runs in the first two games of the series, scored two more without getting a hit.
“Awful game for us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s not fun to go through something like that, especially at home.”
Hernández and Raleigh hit back-to-back solo homers in the fourth to mercifully chase Germán, who gave up a career-high 10 runs — eight earned — and eight hits. He threw 93 pitches in 3 1/3 innings as his ERA soared to 5.10.
It was the second consecutive flop for the right-hander, who had a very respectable 3.49 ERA before giving up seven runs and seven hits in two innings last Friday at Boston.
This dud came against a Seattle team that was ranked 29th in the majors in batting average and 24th in OPS. Germán joined Bob Turley (1955) and Hall of Famer Whitey Ford (1966) as the only Yankees pitchers to give up at least 10 runs and four homers in a game.
“Sometimes it happens. It’s hard to figure out where the issue is, if it’s mechanical, if it’s the release point. Are they adjusting, are they seeing the pitch well?” Germán said through a translator. “You’ve got to keep working.”
Reserve utilityman Isiah Kiner-Falefa pitched a perfect ninth for New York, striking out Suárez with a 79 mph fastball, and then hit a two-run homer in the bottom half.
Making his fourth major league start, Woo was handed a 4-0 lead before throwing a pitch. With one out in the sixth, Gleyber Torres fisted a clean single to right field for New York’s first hit — drawing a sarcastic Bronx cheer from the crowd of 42,440.
“I was kind of disappointed just to see it fall,” Woo said.
Rizzo laced the next pitch off the top of the right-field fence for a single that ended the right-hander’s night.
“Credit to Woo, too. That heater’s real,” Boone said. “He was tough.”
TWO-WAY PLAYER
It was the third career pitching appearance (all this season) for Kiner-Falefa, who became the first Yankees player to homer as a pitcher since Lindy McDaniel in September 1972 at Detroit. The next year, the designated hitter was introduced in the American League.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Mariners: SS J.P. Crawford (bruised right shoulder) sat out for the second consecutive game but was feeling better, manager Scott Servais said. Crawford went through some pregame drills and the team hopes to have him available this weekend in Baltimore.
Yankees: DH/OF Willie Calhoun was placed on the 10-day injured list with a left quadriceps strain and New York recalled utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. … RHP Ian Hamilton (right groin strain) is scheduled to get at least four outs Saturday in another minor league rehab outing and then could rejoin the Yankees on their road trip next week.
UP NEXT
Mariners: RHP Logan Gilbert (4-4, 4.31 ERA) starts Friday night in Baltimore against RHP Kyle Gibson (8-4, 3.94). Gilbert, who has never faced the Orioles, is 16-4 with a 3.90 ERA in 37 career starts on the road.
Yankees: RHP Clarke Schmidt (2-6, 4.65 ERA) faces the highest-scoring team in the majors when New York hosts Texas. RHP Dane Dunning (6-1, 2.78) goes for the AL West leaders.
To hear former President Donald Trump tell it, taking and withholding classified documents was perfectly consistent with federal law and a decade-old legal case involving former President Bill Clinton.
“Under the Presidential Records Act — which is civil, not criminal — I had every right to have these documents,” Trump claimed in a speech Tuesday night, hours after he pleaded not guilty to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back. “The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject, known as the Clinton socks case.”
But legal experts say Trump’s description of the law — which isn’t mentioned in the charges against him — is wrong and contrary to its very purpose, while the 2012 legal case involving Clinton isn’t a sound comparison to Trump’s current legal predicament.
Here are the facts.
CLAIM: The Presidential Records Act gives a president the right to take any record when leaving office and declare them personal.
THE FACTS: That’s a flagrant misreading of the law, legal experts say.
The law, which took effect in 1981, requires the preservation of White House documents as property of the U.S. government.
Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, said that the notion that a president could declare any record as personal goes against the “very reason” the law was created. NARA is the federal record-keeper and the agency that repeatedly sought the documents kept by Trump.
Congress passed the act in 1978 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, when a collection of secret tapes that President Richard Nixon had considered destroying played a defining role.
The law, he and other experts note, clearly distinguishes between “presidential records” and “personal records.”
“The definition of ‘personal records’ is narrow, clear, and functional: it includes only records of a ‘purely private or nonpublic character’,” Peter Margulies, a professor at Roger Williams University’s School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island, wrote in an email. “Any record that touches on information relevant to presidential decisions on foreign policy or national security is a presidential record. Period, end of story.”
Josh Chafetz, a professor at Georgetown Law, agreed, saying there’s “simply no way” the records described in the indictment against Trump could be considered “personal” under the act’s definitions.
Among the documents found at Mar-a-Lago were ones marked “SECRET” or “TOP SECRET.” The documents included details about the country’s nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities and military activities of other countries. Prosecutors allege, for example, that Trump showed off a classified map of a foreign country while discussing a military operation.
“There is no way to read that statutory language as giving the president ‘discretion’ to categorize military plans, to take just one example, as ‘personal’,” Chafetz wrote in an email.
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CLAIM: A case involving Bill Clinton keeping audio tapes in a sock drawer proves that Trump’s actions were legally sound.
THE FACTS: The case in question involved very different documents and experts say it isn’t the parallel Trump makes it out to be.
In Judicial Watch vs. NARA, a conservative activist group sued for access to audio recordings of wide ranging interviews Clinton did with historian Taylor Branch during his time in the White House. Clinton was reported to have stashed the cassettes in his sock drawer.
The Washington, D.C. based organization had argued the audiotapes were “presidential records” that the agency should provide under the federal public records law, but U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ultimately dismissed the case, ruling NARA didn’t have the authority to seize the records from Clinton and hand them over.
David Super, another professor at Georgetown Law, argues the 2012 Clinton case has “absolutely nothing to do with” the charges Trump currently faces.
For one thing, the court didn’t dismiss the case because it found that Clinton was entitled to keep the tapes, Super said. Jackson simply ruled that NARA could not turn over the tapes as public records because they were owned by the historian and not government property.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign didn’t respond to an email seeking comment, but the Republican and his allies have argued that the judge’s ruling in the case showed that the Presidential Records Act affords presidents complete discretion to delineate between personal and presidential records.
Legal experts this week also dismissed those arguments. Margulies, of Roger Williams University, said the claim “mixes apples and oranges.”
“The Clinton materials were audiotapes of conversations with an historian that incidentally recorded some calls on official business,” he wrote. “In contrast, the documents that Trump kept were all presidential records from the moment they arrived at the Oval Office from other parts of the government.”
Eric Freedman, a professor at Hofstra University’s School of Law in Hempstead, New York, also noted that a federal appeals court has already rejected similar arguments raised by Trump’s legal team as it sought to block the criminal investigation into the records found at Mar-a-Lago.
In either case, Super said, any discussion about the Presidential Records Act is “largely a red herring” because Trump doesn’t face charges of violating that law.
The indictment instead charges Trump with Espionage Act violations, as prosecutors argue the documents he kept could harm the country if obtained by adversaries.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
SEATTLE (AP) — A man who police say was exhibiting signs of a mental health crisis after he shot and killed a pregnant restaurant owner in her car in downtown Seattle this week was charged Friday with first-degree murder in her death, and prosecutors said they are seeing whether they can also charge him for the death of the baby girl the woman was carrying.
Cordell M. Goosby, 30, was arrested Tuesday soon after witnesses said he ran up to a car occupied by Eina Kwon, 34, and her husband, Sung Kwon, 37, the owners of a sushi restaurant near the city’s famed Pike Place Market, and started firing a stolen gun into the vehicle without provocation.
Eina Kwon, who was eight months pregnant, was killed. Sung Kwon suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and the fetus died soon after emergency delivery. The King County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday that state law allows murder charges to be brought if the victim was “born alive”; it is reviewing medical records to determine whether a murder charge is warranted for the baby’s death.
The prosecutor’s office sought that Goosby be held on $10 million bail. It was not immediately clear if Goosby had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Goosby is also charged with attempted murder in the attack on Sung Kwon.
“The defendant’s actions left a family and community shattered,” senior deputy prosecutor Aubony G. Burns wrote in charging papers. “Victim S. Kwon and his family lost not just a wife, a mother, and a daughter when the defendant killed E. Kwon, but they lost an innocent baby girl.”
The couple was stopped at an intersection on their way to work at their restaurant, Aburiya Bento House, when Goosby ran up to them and started shooting, authorities said. He emptied the 9 mm handgun into the car and took off, throwing the gun down. When officers found him nearby, he put his hands up and said, “I did it, I did it,” police said.
In an interview following his arrest, police reported, Goosby told detectives that he had a history of mental health care and that he was being harassed by strangers who were spreading rumors about his sexuality and saying that he had done something to his caseworker.
“He did appear to Detectives to be in some form of crisis whether genuine or knowingly performed,” police wrote in a probable cause statement.
Goosby had no criminal history in Washington state, police said, but according to charging papers, he said he was wanted out of Indiana for a 2020 domestic battery case and has felony convictions from Illinois for drug possession and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. Prosecutors said they were trying to confirm that information before adding a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon.
The gun had been reported stolen to the Lakewood Police Department, south of Seattle, authorities said.
It was not clear how long Goosby had been living in Washington, but he had a driver’s license from Washington state. Police said his last known address was an apartment building near downtown Seattle.
His arraignment is set for next Thursday, when the court will formally inform his attorneys he has been charged. But as is routine, Goosby is not expected to appear in court, according to Casey McNerthney, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office. Goosby waived his appearance at an initial hearing earlier this week.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said Thursday that he had spoken with Sung Kwon.
“Eina was a leader in our community and business owner, running Aburiya Bento House with her family,” Harrell said. “What was supposed to be a joyful time for the Kwon family has turned into an unimaginable nightmare caused by senseless gun violence.”
The shooting has led to an outpouring of grief for the Kwons, who also have a toddler.
A crowdfunding campaign to support the family and bring relatives from Korea to the funeral has raised more than $160,000.
Mourners have placed flowers and other remembrances at their now-shuttered restaurant, including Eunji Seo, the consulate general for the Republic of Korea in Seattle.
The Kwons opened Aburiya, which serves traditional and fusion sushi, in 2018. The restaurant is popular with tourists and downtown workers seeking lunch deals.
Michael Bufano, part owner of Mack Gallery, an art gallery next to the restaurant, said Eina Kwon would greet him with a smile in the mornings and bring him lunch if he was too busy — “the kind of people everybody wants to have as part of your community and as friends.”
For random violence to strike two people who seemed to have everything going for them was tough to stomach — especially as the neighborhood seemed to feel safer recently, with the city taking steps to address mental health issues and drug addiction, he said.
“I think we’re on the right track and that’s why this hit so hard, I think,” Bufano said.
Eina Sung’s death marked the 29th homicide investigated by Seattle police so far this year, according to The Seattle Times. Seattle police investigated 55 killings last year, up from 41 the year before that.
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Associated Press videographer Manuel Valdes contributed.
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Amazon unveiled the first phase of its new headquarters complex in Virginia Thursday, a pair of gleaming, amenity-packed office towers that its leaders hope will persuade employees accustomed to working from home during the pandemic to happily return to the office.
The grand opening of the Met Park office complex in Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood near the nation’s capital marks the biggest milestone in the headquarters project since the company announced in 2018 that it would build a second headquarters complex in northern Virginia to complement its existing headquarters in Seattle.
Initially, plans for the “HQ2” project called for Amazon to bring 25,000 jobs each to both northern Virginia and New York City. But opposition to the incentive package in New York helped derail those plans, and the Arlington complex became the sole site for HQ2.
At Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremonies, Amazon emphasized its efforts to ingratiate itself to the region. The company committed hundreds of millions of dollars to help preserve affordable housing in the region, and the project includes a 2.5-acre (1.01-hectare) park, fenced dog run and playground. Amazon even replicated its well-known banana stand from its Seattle headquarters, offering free fruit to workers and visitors.
Generally speaking, local leaders have welcomed Amazon and the high-paying jobs it has brought. Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey praised the company’s willingness to partner with the county, particularly on affordable housing.
“We looked to Amazon to learn about our community’s values and embrace them as their own. I want to commend Amazon’s leadership for doing exactly that,” he said.
Still, the changes have not been without some aggravation. Some community activists have complained about rising rent and gentrification. During construction, piledriving occurred in the first half of 2020, during the worst of the pandemic. Neighbors stuck in their homes pleaded for relief from the noise, to no avail.
Amazon also designed its headquarters to appeal to its employees. The project launched before the pandemic disrupted office culture. Earlier this year, Amazon announced it is pausing the second phase of the HQ2 project, though state and county leaders remain confident that the delay is only temporary.
In a tour of the complex Thursday, John Schoettler, Amazon’s vice president of global real estate, said the company tweaked the designs to incorporate changes designed to accommodate a post-pandemic workforce. The towers feature dedicated suites to accommodate group projects and open spaces dubbed “centers of energy” designed to facilitate collaboration.
“This was designed pre-pandemic, but we were constantly gathering information from our employees” to accommodate their needs,” Schoettler said.
The finished product includes rooftop gardens, pool and foosball tables, outdoor electric grills — Amazon says the building uses no fossil fuels — high-quality dining options and a “dog wall” that shows photos of workers’ pets.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, himself a former corporate chieftain, seemed genuinely impressed by the complex as he toured it.
“I don’t want to cause any intracompany tensions,” he said, “but I wonder if this should be renamed HQ1.”
A Corsi-Rosenthal air purifier built by Liz Hradil is seen at her home in Syracuse, N.Y. after the wildfire smoke covered much of New York Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The method involves taping four air filters together with a box fan. Experts say the DIY method is highly effective against filtering air indoors against wildfire smoke. (Liz Hradil via AP)
A Corsi-Rosenthal air purifier built by Liz Hradil is seen at her home in Syracuse, N.Y. after the wildfire smoke covered much of New York Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The method involves taping four air filters together with a box fan. Experts say the DIY method is highly effective against filtering air indoors against wildfire smoke. (Liz Hradil via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Social media users are sharing a surprisingly effective way to protect yourself indoors from the toxic wildfire smoke blanketing much of the East Coast: a box fan, four air filters and a whole lot of duct tape.
As searches for “air purifiers” spike on Google, people are posting on TikTok and Facebook about how to build the DIY air purifier. The technique, known as the Corsi-Rosenthal method, has gained attention in recent years amid the pandemic and raging western U.S. wildfires.
Some East Coast residents are learning about the box fan method for the first time, unlike their West Coast counterparts who are accustomed to wildfire smoke.
Seattle resident Angel Robertson, 34, posted a video on a New Yorker’s TikTok demonstrating how to put it together. In her video, which has amassed more than 600,000 views, Robertson duct tapes four 20-by-20 air filters into a box shape and attaches the fan on top. The whole apparatus costs under $100.
“It works extremely well and will save your life with really smoky days,” she says in the video. “It does a lot better than the normal air filters.”
Public health experts say Corsi-Rosenthal purifiers are highly effective at removing particles from the air. Petri Kalliomäki, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, said their clean air delivery rate is relatively high and can be used to purify air against not only smoke, but pollen and viruses.
At the University of Connecticut Thursday, Misti Levy Zamora, an assistant professor in public health sciences, and her colleagues were handing out Corsi-Rosenthal purifiers for free to anyone stopping by. Zamora said she has done several tests at the university, public schools and her own home on the purifier.
“I can confidently say this thing is working really well today,” she said. “I was able to filter out all the particles in the air basically back down to what I saw last week within a matter of minutes.”
The power of social media led to the invention of the box, co-inventor Richard Corsi, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Davis, told The Associated Press. He said in 2020, he was sketching one night and put the design up on Twitter. Jim Rosenthal, CEO of Tex-Air Filters, took the design and built it. Corsi said he wanted to create an inexpensive purifier that the average American could afford. He’s now hearing from friends in the Northeast who are using his idea.
“When you have to seal up a building and reduce the amount of air flow coming in and when you have to spend a lot of time indoors, this is where portable air cleaners can really make a difference in your life,” he said.
Grace Turner, 31, built her box fan purifier for her home in Rochester, New York, after picking up the trick from living in Salt Lake City. She shared her DIY box on TikTok where she said the air purifier has made a difference in her home.
“There are a bunch of different designs people can choose from, and it’s really accessible to find the info,” she said of the DIY instructions online.
Liz Hradil, 27, who lives in Syracuse, New York, said the smoke burned her eyes, and she could feel the smoke in her nose and throat as the smoke descended onto New York this week. She went digging around online to buy an air purifier when she came across the Corsi-Rosenthal box and went to Lowe’s to pick up the filters and fan. She then immediately noticed that the smoke smell was gone after about 30 minutes of starting her purifier.
“It was my first time, and my New York friends were like this is so genius,” she said after sharing the photo of the box online. “No one had heard of it.”
SEATTLE (AP) — Switching around the rotation gave Seattle rookie Bryce Miller an extra day of rest and more time to fret about his last start, when he failed to make it out of the third inning.
“I had eight days to think about the last one in Texas, so I felt like I haven’t thrown in a month,” Miller said. “But yeah, it was good getting back out there, getting back on track and feeling good.”
Miller and two relievers combined on a one-hitter, Ty France, Eugenio Suárez and Tom Murphy homered, and the Mariners opened an important six-game homestand with an 8-1 win over the Miami Marlins on Monday night.
Following a disappointing 2-6 trip that saw Seattle fall 10 games back in the AL West, the Mariners rediscovered a winning formula of strong starting pitching and a few big swings.
“The road trip was tough, but what can you do about it now?” France said. “Just got to keep moving forward and got just under 100 games left, so gotta make the most of them.”
Miller was superb, throwing six innings and allowing only Nick Fortes’ home run with two outs in the fifth. Ty Adcock pitched two innings of relief in his major league debut, and Gabe Speier worked the ninth to finish the one-hitter.
Miller (4-3) rebounded from his previous two starts in which the rookie was badly knocked around by the Yankees and Rangers to the tune of 19 hits and 15 earned runs. The 24-year-old right-hander again relied mostly on spotting his fastball, but mixed in just enough sliders to keep the Marlins off balance.
Miller struck out six and walked three and said one of the keys was adjustments made throwing his cutter at a higher velocity.
“That was kind of what I worked on this week. I had two bullpens and I felt really good with it going into the game, and all game it felt really good,” Miller said.
Miami’s Luis Arraez went hitless in four at-bats as his batting average dipped to .391. Arraez was hitless for the second time in his last 17 games, and for the 11th time this season.
“(Miller’s) got a good fastball. We knew that going in,” Miami manager Skip Schumaker said. “But we just couldn’t get on top of the fastball and do any damage with it.”
Miller was provided support from the outset — and a chance to pitch with the lead. The Mariners scored six runs with two outs in the first two innings combined, highlighted by Teoscar Hernández’s RBI double in the first and France’s three-run homer in the second.
“Getting the runs early certainly helps. I’d love to see it here on a consistent basis,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said. “We’re capable of doing it. We’ve seen us do it before, but it takes a really disciplined approach every night.”
Bryan De La Cruz’s error in left field later in the first inning allowed Hernández to score, and Julio Rodríguez’s RBI single in the second set the stage for France to hit his sixth homer of the season. Suárez hit a solo shot in the fifth, and Murphy added a solo homer in the eighth.
All of Seattle’s early offensive damage came off Miami starter Jesús Luzardo, who lasted just four innings in his shortest outing of the season. Luzardo (5-5) allowed five earned runs, six hits and struck out three.
ONE HIT
The one hit was a season low for the Marlins and just the second time in franchise history their only hit was a home run. The previous came on June 26, 2008, versus Tampa Bay in a 6-1 loss.
ROSTER MOVE
Seattle placed RHP Penn Murfee on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation. Murfee was removed from Sunday’s game at the Los Angeles Angels after feeling discomfort in his pitching arm. Murfee missed 29 games in May and early June with the same issue. Seattle selected Adcock from Double-A Arkansas to take Murfee’s spot and transferred LHP Robbie Ray to the 60-day IL.
UP NEXT
Marlins: RHP Edward Cabrera (5-4, 4.29 ERA) won his second straight start in his last outing, allowing one run and two hits in five innings against Kansas City.
Mariners: RHP George Kirby (5-5, 3.50) looks to rebound after getting battered for 11 hits and five runs in 3 2/3 innings in his last start against San Diego.
