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Notre Dame’s Xavier Watts wins Bronko Nagurski award as nation’s top defensive player

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts won the Bronko Nagurski Award given to the nation’s top defensive player on Monday night.The award was presented at the annual ceremony put on by the Charlotte Touchdown Club.“It means a lot, especially with the journey I have been through,” Watts said. “I have played offense, I’ve played defense and I’ve kind of bounced around and tried to find a spot to fit on the field my whole career. So this is a tribute to all of the hard work I did and everything coming together.”Other finalists for the award were Iowa cornerback Cooper DeJean, Illinois defensive tackle Jer’Zhan Newton, Georgia safety Malaki Starks and North Carolina State linebacker Payton Wilson.Watts said his biggest improvement this season was making more game-changing plays.He has an FBS-leading seven interceptions for the Fighting Irish, along with 47 tackles. He had two picks against both Southern California and Pittsburgh, becoming the first Irish playe...

Caught on camera: Commerce City dog stolen in broad daylight

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (KDVR) — The Coronado family in Commerce City is turning to the public for help after cameras captured the moment a person stole their 5-month-old pit bull from their driveway.“She is a lovely dog," said Berenice Coronado, the dog's owner. "We got her really small. We used to feed her with the bottle." Denver father and children battle bed bugs at shelter hotel room Coronado said over the weekend, she left her home for an hour, and her dogs got out of the fence. Within the hour, she said a camera captured a person who pulled up, tried to get two of the three family dogs to jump into the car and, finally, put Shelby the puppy in the car and left."Pit bulls can be expensive, and he saw it as an opportunity to get her," Coronado said.Shelby, a 5-month-old pit bull, was stolen from a Commerce City family's driveway (Berenice Coronado)'We just want her back'The convenience store across the street shared the video with the family. The person who took Shelby appeare...

Column: Despite so many questions about the future, Chicago White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf only talks about the past

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

Chicago White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was discussing Jim Leyland’s National Baseball Hall of Fame selection at the MLB winter meetings Monday when he was asked about his pursuit of Leyland to replace Terry Bevington as manager after the 1996 season.“It was after 2003,” Reinsdorf replied. “In 1996 or ’97 didn’t I try to bring (Tony) LaRussa back?”Bruce Levine and I confirmed it was Leyland in ’96.“No after Bevington that was LaRussa, when we tried to bring him back,” Reinsdorf said.“And I don’t want to get into that, but we did try to bring Jim back (in ’03).”Never get in the way of a good story is my motto.The Sox wound up hiring Ozzie Guillen in ’03, the only club manager to win a World Series in the last 106 years. Leyland finished his career in Detroit and wound up in Cooperstown where he belongs.After Reinsdorf finished talking up his old friend he asked: “Is that it?”I tol...

‘Real Women Have Curves’ musical attuned with possibilities

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer’s last acting gig was as glamorous as they come — she toured the country starring as glittering cabaret queen Satine in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.” Next up, something a bit more intimate and introspective, a role in the American Repertory Theater’s “Real Women Have Curves: The Musical.”Gonzalez-Nacer can find overlaps between the two works — “They are shows that center around the underdog and an often overlooked group of people and they are both filled with amazing songs,” she told the Herald. But she also sees something unique in “Real Women Have Curves,” Dec. 6 to Jan. 21 at the ART.The new musical has its bones in Josefina López’s 1990 play and the 2002 feature film of the same name (the film that started America Ferrera on her journey from unknown to icon). It’s the story of an 18-year-old Latina in Los Angeles in 1987 who is struggling to keep her dreams of college and a new life in New York from being crushed under the weight of familial and cultural exp...

Kerrigan: How PBMs are hurting local pharmacies

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

Local pharmacies are boarding up nationwide. Nearly 2,200 American pharmacies shut their doors between 2017 and 2020, leaving 20,000 in business nationwide — about half the number in 1980.These closures are bad for local communities and patients’ health. When small, independent shops close, patients lose access to the pharmacist who personally knows local residents. They have personal knowledge of their health conditions, prescribed medications, and the potential interactions those medicines might have with new ones. Local communities may also lose a convenient place to get a flu shot, other immunizations or blood-pressure screening.Small pharmacies employ more than 300,000 people.Fortunately, lawmakers across both parties are aware of the plight of local pharmacies and the consequences of their diminishing numbers. That is why bipartisanship has rallied behind three dozen bills during this session of Congress. These bills aim to curb the power of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — ...

Dear Abby: Should abuser’s widow tell family the truth?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

Dear Abby: Four years ago, I lost my husband of 20 years. After it happened, I told his younger brother, whom he was closest to, that I was going to write about him. However, some things have stopped me. I lost our dog six months ago and watched her follow a similar path as my late husband, which hurt me deeply. The other reason is, I believe his family may not want to know the truth.His brother thinks my husband was a great man. He did have good qualities, but he wasn’t the saint his brother thinks he was. He was emotionally abusive and he raped me numerous times. He often yelled at our dog for simple things, and he wasn’t faithful, either. So — should I write the story they don’t want to hear? — Pen in Hand in TexasDear Pen: They say the pen is mightier than the sword. But if you want to continue to interact with these former in-laws, refrain from the temptation to use it to cut their brother down to size.Dear Abby: A woman where I work refuses to ack...

‘We are officially hostages.’ How the Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz embodied Hamas hostage strategy

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

NIR OZ, Israel (AP) — The Hamas attack on the kibbutz of Nir Oz started a little after 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7 and lasted long into the afternoon, with dozens of fighters rampaging unopposed through the community with an apparent mission: To capture as many civilians as possible.By the time the last fighter left, one in five residents of Nir Oz was a hostage. The remaining residents emerged from their safe rooms and gathered together in a shelter, spending the long night tallying the missing. Eight weeks into the Israel-Gaza war, the recent release of dozens of Israeli hostages – with as many still in captivity – is bringing new focus on what Hamas did on Oct. 7, the day its fighters rounded them up from communities across southern Israel. In the kibbutz of Nir Oz, where militants rampaged unopposed, is perhaps the best place to understand Hamas’ hostage strateg y, an operation that was unprecedented both in its scope and execution.More than 100 Palestinian militants stormed Nir Oz on O...

Activists at COP28 summit ramp up pressure on cutting fossil fuels as talks turn to clean energy

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Activists had a series of events and actions lined up Tuesday at the United Nations climate summit seeking to amp up pressure on conference participants to agree to phase out coal, oil and gas, responsible for most of the world’s emissions, and move to clean energy in a fair way. The question of how to handle fossil fuels is central to the talks, which come after a year of record heat and devastating weather extremes around the world. And even as the use of clean energy is growing, most energy companies have plans to continue aggressive pursuit of fossil fuel production well into the future.A team of scientists reported Tuesday that the world pumped 1.1% more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than last year, largely due to increased pollution from China and India.Protests — which are limited to “action zones” around the U.N. site — centered on phasing out fossil fuels and calling for finance to ramp up the move to clean energy.Meanwhi...

AI’s future could be ‘open-source’ or closed. Tech giants are divided as they lobby regulators

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

Tech leaders have been vocal proponents of the need to regulate artificial intelligence, but they’re also lobbying hard to make sure the new rules work in their favor.That’s not to say they all want the same thing.Facebook parent Meta and IBM on Tuesday launched a new group called the AI Alliance that’s advocating for an “open science” approach to AI development that puts them at odds with rivals Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.These two diverging camps — the open and the closed — disagree about whether to build AI in a way that makes the underlying technology widely accessible. Safety is at the heart of the debate, but so is who gets to profit from AI’s advances.Open advocates favor an approach that is “not proprietary and closed,” said Darío Gil, a senior vice president at IBM who directs its research division. “So it’s not like a thing that is locked in a barrel and no one knows what they are.”WHAT’S OPEN-SOURCE AI?The term “open-source” comes f...

Owners of a funeral home where 190 decaying bodies were found to appear in court

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:05:20 GMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The owners of a Colorado funeral home where 190 decomposing bodies were found are set to appear in court Tuesday, facing allegations that they abused corpses, stole, laundered money and forged documents.Jon and Carie Hallford own Return to Nature Funeral Home, which has a facility in Penrose where investigators in early October discovered dozens of stacked bodies, some that had death dates as far back as 2019, according to a federal affidavit.Family members had been falsely told their loved ones were cremated and had received materials that were not their ashes, court records said.Several families who hired Return to Nature to cremate their loved ones have told The Associated Press that the FBI confirmed to them privately that their loved ones were among the decaying bodies.The Hallfords were arrested in Oklahoma last month, after allegedly fleeing Colorado to avoid prosecution. They have been jailed on a $2 million bond. Both have been charged with ap...