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QuoteDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Powerball player in Oregon won a jackpot worth more than $1.3 billion on Sunday, ending a winless streak that had stretched more than three months.
The single ticket matched all six numbers drawn to win the jackpot worth $1.326 billion, Powerball said in a statement.
The jackpot has a cash value of $621 million if the winner chooses to take a lump sum rather than an annuity paid over 30 years, with an immediate payout followed by 29 annual installments. The prize is subject to federal taxes, while many states also tax lottery winnings.
The winning numbers drawn early Sunday morning were: 22, 27, 44, 52, 69 and the red Powerball 9.
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QuoteIt’s time for a change — real change. As more Americans are giving up on government and democracy, the time is long overdue for Congress to stand up for the hard-pressed working families of our country. And an important step in that direction would be implementing a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay.
As far back as 1866, one of the central planks of the trade union movement in America was to establish an eight-hour workday with a simple and straightforward demand: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will.”
Americans of that era were sick and tired of working 12-hour days for six or seven days a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They went out on strike, they organized, they petitioned the government and business leaders, and they achieved real results after decades of struggle.
Finally, in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation into law to establish an eight-hour workday for railroad workers. Ten years later, the Ford Motor Company became one of the first major employers in America to establish a five-day work week for autoworkers.
By 1933, the US Senate had overwhelmingly passed legislation to establish a 30-hour work week. And, just a few years later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law and the standard 40-hour work week was created. That is the good news.
The bad news is that despite massive growth in technology and skyrocketing worker productivity, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In fact, nearly 40% of employees in the United States are working at least 50 hours a week, and 18% are working at least 60 hours.
What do you think?
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QuoteCNN — As Caitlin Clark’s stardom has transcended women’s college basketball this year, she has become the center of its universe around which everything else orbits.
After doing so much to popularize the sport, she now has an opportunity to complete her fairytale season on Sunday when Iowa appears in the women’s national championship game.
But the Hawkeyes will face the mighty South Carolina for the title, a team which is undefeated, the No. 1 overall seed and 108-3 in the last seasons. Nine of the previous 10 undefeated teams who reached the title game have won the championship, according to ESPN
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QuoteNEW YORK (AP) — An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, with residents reporting they felt rumbling across the Northeast.
The agency reported a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.7, centered near Lebanon, New Jersey, or about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia.
The Fire Department of New York said there were no initial reports of damage. New York Mayor Eric Adams had been briefed on the quake, his spokesperson Fabien Levy said, adding, “While we do not have any reports of major impacts at this time, we’re still assessing the impact.”
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QuoteSmall farmers are struggling. For decades, they’ve been told to “get big or get out,” an imperative levied against them by both public and private forces.
Recent statistics on American agriculture reveal a decline of 200,000 farms between 2007 and 2022. Since 1935, we’ve seen a decrease of 4.8 million farms—to 2 million from 6.8 million. As agriculture has industrialized and become more capital-intensive, leading to dominance by wealthy, large-scale producers, much of the decline has come at the expense of small and midsized farmers.
This phenomenon isn’t just happening in the United States. New researchpublished in Nature Sustainability projects that, if trends continue, the number of farms across the world will be sliced in half by the end of the 21st century as consolidation of land, wealth and power reshapes our farming and food landscape.
The marginalization of smaller-scale farms has severe consequences. When farms are continually consolidated—when there is one 5,000-acre farm in a community, for example, instead of 50 100-acre farms—fewer people remain in rural areas. That decreased population leads to social and economic impacts, with ripple effects that harm small businesses, school systems and other community institutions.
It’s even worse when the owners of large-scale farms don’t live in or meaningfully contribute to the community. Recognizing the value of farmland and the fact that, as a popular phrase goes, “they’re not making any more land,” investors are buying up agricultural acreage. These investors vary from agri-business “farmers” who manage operations from far-away offices to private equity firms. Their deep pockets price out new and underserved farmers looking to purchase land and root into a community. Data shows that land access is the biggest challenge faced by aspiring next-generation agrarians.
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QuoteOne day after the trade of Stefon Diggs was announced, new details are emerging on the wide receiver’s departure from the Buffalo Bills.
One national media member, Chris Simms, stated that Buffalo allowed Diggs to seek a trade with one caveat. He could not pursue a trade with the Kansas City Chiefs.
“From what I do know, is he was allowed to seek a trade from anybody in the league except the Kansas City Chiefs, Mike,” Simms told Florio. “That’s what I’ve been told by multiple people. He was allowed to do that. The Chiefs were the only team they weren’t going to trade to.”
Diggs did not land with the Kansas City Chiefs via trade, but it turns out that he could go there sooner rather than later. It was announced on Thursday that Houston voided the final three years of Diggs’ contract which will make him a free agent at the end of the season. If Diggs wants to play for Andy Reid and with Patrick Mahomes, there is now a path for him to do so as early as 2025.
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Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the launch of New York’s inaugural first responder mental health needs assessment to better understand the mental health-related challenges facing the public safety community and strengthen programs and services for these professionals. Stemming from a partnership between the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services and SUNY New Paltz’s Institute for Disaster Mental Health and Benjamin Center, the assessment will include results from a voluntary anonymous survey and input from a series of focus groups for first responders.
“As we continue to make historic investments in mental health care, it is critical that we engage with communities of first responders, who suffer disproportionately from mental health related challenges,” Governor Hochul said.“Our state is only as strong as the network of individuals who keep us safe, and this comprehensive needs assessment will help us provide them with the care and resources they deserve.”
The needs assessment will gather input from law enforcement, the fire service, EMTs, 911 dispatchers and emergency managers. Officials from DHSES and SUNY New Paltz will deliver the results of the assessment at the 19th Annual Institute for Disaster Mental Health Conference at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park on May 14 and May 15.
In addition to these initiatives, the State Office of Mental Health is partnering with the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services and the Institute for Disaster Mental Health to develop a disaster mental health response statewide. Disaster mental health responders may be activated to support disaster response operations and provide a compassionate presence, immediate psychological first aid and additional support as needed to address the early and expected stress reactions to disasters.
OMH is leveraging federal funding to further develop and train the disaster mental health team, with plans underway to help develop and support local and regional teams. Likewise, DHSES has been working with OMH and the institute to identify additional first responder mental health-related training opportunities, including peer-to-peer courses offered at the State Preparedness Training Center.
Peer support teams include individuals with lived experience to provide emotional, social, and practical support when needed. Peer support teams are often used within public safety organizations to help individuals deal with job-related stress and following critical incidents.
Last week, the training center hosted two peer support team training sessions – Assisting Individuals in Crisis and Group Crisis Intervention – in Oriskany. Both sessions reached capacity and additional trainings will be offered later this year.
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QuoteHORSEHEADS, N.Y. (WETM) – “Hearts and emotions are very much heightened and I understand that. These are our friends, these are our neighbors, these are our community members.”
On April 4, a large number of concerned parents, teachers and community members attended the Horseheads School District budget workshop.
The proposed budget would cut an estimated 49 positions and funding to some extracurricular activities. Many people spoke out against those cuts.
“The biggest concern about losing my position is what’s going to happen to the children of the Horseheads community,” said one teacher.
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Some white Americans are showing signs of disagreeing with key democratic principles. Carol Yepes/Moment via Getty Images
by Thomas F. Schaller, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Rural white voters have long enjoyed outsize power in American politics. They have inflated voting power in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and the Electoral College.
Although there is no uniform definition of “rural,” and even federal agencies cannot agree on a single standard, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural communities, according to the Census Bureau’s definition. And three-quarters of them – or approximately 15% of the U.S. population – are white.
Since the rise of Jacksonian democracy and the expansion of the vote to all white men in the late 1820s, however, the support of rural white people has been vital to the governing power of almost every major party coalition. Which is why my co-author Paul Waldman and I describe rural white people as America’s “essential minority” in our book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.”
As a political scientist, I’ve written or co-written five books addressing issues of racial politics at some level of government or part of the country. My latest, “White Rural Rage,” seeks to understand the complex intersections of race, place and opinion and the implications they hold for our political system.
The unfortunate fact is that polls suggest many rural white people’s commitment to the American political system is eroding. Even when they are not members of militant organizations, rural white people, as a group, now pose four interconnected threats to the fate of the United States’ pluralist, constitutional democracy.
Although these do not apply to all rural white people, nor exclusively to them in general, when compared with other Americans, rural white people:
- Express the most racist, least inclusive, most xenophobic, most anti-LGBTQ+ and most anti-immigrant sentiments.
- Subscribe at the highest rates to conspiracy theories about QAnon, the 2020 presidential election, Barack Obama’s citizenship and COVID-19 vaccines.
- Support a variety of antidemocratic and unconstitutional positions and exhibit strong attachments to white nationalist and white Christian nationalist movements inimical to secular, constitutional governance.
- Are most likely to justify, if not call for, force or violence as acceptable alternatives to deliberative, peaceful democracy.
Let’s examine a few data points.
Xenophobia
In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2018, 46% of white rural Americans said it is important to live in a diverse community. That’s a lower proportion than urban and suburban dwellers and even nonwhite rural residents.
And in rural areas, fewer than half the people said white people have advantages Black people do not, approve of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and say immigrants make American society stronger.
In addition, Cornell researchers found that rural whites reported feeling less comfortable with gay and lesbian people than urban whites do. And 49% of rural LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 10 and 24 called their own towns “unaccepting” of LGBTQ+ people – nearly twice the rate of suburban and urban LGBTQ+ young people who said the same about their communities.
Conspiracism
Polls in 2020 and 2021 indicated that QAnon supporters are 1.5 times more likely to live in rural areas than urban ones, and 49% of rural residents – 10 points higher than the national average – believe a “deep state” undermines Trump.
Rural residents are also more likely than urban and suburban residents to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, according to 2021 polling by the Public Religion Research Institute.
And people who live in rural areas are also less confident as a whole than those who live in urban areas that votes will be counted accurately and fairly in their state or across the country, according to a 2022 poll from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
In addition, by our analysis, of the 139 U.S. House members who voted to reject the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election just hours after a violent mob of Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol, 103 – 74% – represented either “purely rural” or “rural/suburban” districts, as categorized by Bloomberg’s CityLab project.
Antidemocratic beliefs
A scholarly analysis of multiyear data from the American National Election Studies project finds that rural citizens are “much more likely (than urban residents) to favor restrictions on the press” and to say it would be “helpful if the president could unilaterally work” without regard to Congress or the courts.
In addition, more than half of rural residents surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute said being a Christian is important to “being truly American” – 10 percentage points more than in surburban or urban areas.
This is one of several signals that rural residents are disproportionately likely to support white Christian nationalism, an ideology that reaches beyond Christian ideas of faith and morality and into government. Its followers want the United States to base its laws on Christian values rather than maintain the centuries-old separation of church and state the founders saw as fundamental to a secular democracy.
Justification of violence
Rural residents are more likely than urban or suburban residents to say the political situation in the country is heading to a point where violence may be necessary to preserve the nation, according to polls from the Public Religion Research Institute in 2021 and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics in 2022.
Of the estimated 21 million Americans who in late 2021 said Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win was “illegitimate,” according to the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 30% lived in rural areas. And 27% of Americans who say Trump should be returned to office even if “by force” are rural residents. Those are minority views, but both proportions are significantly higher than the rural proportion of the overall population.
With the 2024 election fast approaching, the views of rural white people are once again of vital importance because they and the members of Congress who represent them disproportionately believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by Joe Biden. A Pew Research Center study found 71% of rural white voters voted for Trump in 2020, so their preference in November will be key to who returns to the White House for a second term.
Thomas F. Schaller is Professor of Political Science at University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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QuoteChemung County will receive nearly $200 million in federal money to combine its two wastewater treatment plants.
In March, the county was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and low- to no-interest loans from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and New York’s Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA) grant program.
The BIL is providing over $75 million in short-term interest-free financing, $75 million in short-term market-rate financing, $22 million in long-term interest-free financing and a $25 million grant.
The $25 million WIIA grant is for planning, design and construction of the two wastewater treatment plants. Those facilities will be consolidated into one. The Lake Street facility is over 60 years old and not meeting effluent discharge standards. Effluent is sewage that’s been treated at a wastewater facility and flows into our waterways such as the Chemung River and Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
The goal is to combine all county wastewater for treatment at the Milton Street plant.
The project is now in its third year. Arcadis, the contractor, expects completion of the upgrades by 2026, according to a press release.
The county said that the low- to no-interest loans will be paid back by sewer users.
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QuoteIt’s never really the end of the road for Kiss. The hard rock quartet have sold their catalog, brand name and IP to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment Group in a deal estimated to be over $300 million, it was announced Thursday.
This isn’t the first time Kiss has partnered with Pophouse, which was co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus. When the band’s current lineup — founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons as well as guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer — took the stage at the final night of their farewell tour in December at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, they ended by revealing digitized avatars of themselves.
The cutting-edge technology was created by George Lucas’ special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, in partnership with Pophouse. The two companies recently teamed up for the “ABBA Voyage” show in London, in which fans could attend a full concert by the Swedish band in their heyday, as performed by their own digital avatars.
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QuoteDES MOINES, Iowa — The Powerball jackpot has increased to an estimated $1.23 billion after another drawing without a big winner Wednesday night.
The numbers selected were: 11, 38, 41, 62, 65 and the Powerball 15.
The jackpot, which now ranks as the eighth-largest in U.S. lottery history, has been growing for more than three months, reflecting the long odds of 1 in 292.2 million of winning the top prize. Since the last player won the jackpot Jan. 1, there have been 40 consecutive drawings without anyone matching all six numbers and hitting it rich.
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QuoteCNN — A full five-on-five brawl erupted just two seconds after the opening puck drop between the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
Once the fights had broken up, eight players in total – four from each team – were ejected before even playing a single minute.
The main tussle was between Rangers forward Matt Rempe and Devils defenseman Kurtis MacDermid, who continued to fight at center ice after the other players had separated.
When the teams faced each other at Madison Square Garden last month, the 21-year-old Rempe had declined to fight MacDermid early in the game.
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QuoteFORT WORTH, Texas — Another candidate has joined the 2024 presidential race with the name Literally Anybody Else, and yes, that is his legal name.
Else posted his Texas driver’s license on his campaign’s Facebook page, proving he really did change his name to Literally Anybody Else.
Else was previously known as Dustin Ebey, and he is a seventh grade math teacher in the Fort Worth area and an Army veteran.
With a mailing address in North Richland Hills, the campaign will be based in Texas with a campaign headquarters “coming soon,” according to Else’s website.
“America should not be stuck choosing between the ‘King of Debt’ (his self-declaration) and an 81-year old,” the website says, referring to former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, who have clinched their parties’ nominations. “Literally Anybody Else isn’t just a person, it’s a rally cry.”
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QuoteNEW YORK (AP) — Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday's total solar eclipse.
The suit filed Friday in federal court in upstate New York argues that the April 8 lockdown violates inmates' constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.
The plaintiffs are six men with varying religious backgrounds who are incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne. They include a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-Day Adventist and two practitioners of Santeria, as well as an atheist.
“A solar eclipse is a rare, natural phenomenon with great religious significance to many,” the complaint reads, noting that Bible passages describe an eclipse-like phenomenon during Jesus' crucifixion while sacred Islamic works describes a similar event when the Prophet Muhammad’s son died.
The celestial event, which was last visible in the U.S. in 2017 and won’t be seen in the country again until 2044, “warrant gathering, celebration, worship, and prayer,” the complaint reads.
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QuoteDEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Some of Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, on Tuesday condemned the deaths of seven aid workers who were killed by airstrikes in Gaza — a loss that prompted multiple charities to suspend food deliveries to Palestinians on the brink of starvation.
The deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers threatened to set back efforts by the U.S. and other countries to open a maritime corridor for aid from Cyprus to help ease the desperate conditions in northern Gaza.
President Joe Biden issued an unusually blunt criticism of Israel by its closest ally, suggesting that the incident demonstrated that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians.
“Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians,” he said, adding he was “outraged and heartbroken” by their killings.
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QuoteThe largest egg producer in the United States said Tuesday that it temporarily ceased operations at one of its Texas facilities after detecting bird flu in chickens — the latest in a steady uptick of casesamong U.S. farm animals in recent weeks.
Cal-Maine Foods said it culled about 1.6 million hens and 337,000 pullets (young hens) after some of its chickens at a Parmer County, Texas, facility tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza(HPAI), caused by influenza A viruses that spread widely among wild and domestic birds.
A dairy worker in Texas was being treated for the virus that causes avian influenza, becoming only the second known human case in the United States, state and federal officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the person tested positive for H5N1 bird flu.
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QuoteThe Buffalo Bills have reportedly found a new home for wide receiver Stefon Diggs.
Diggs will head to the Houston Texans in a blockbuster trade that ends a spectacular tenure the wide receiver had in Buffalo, ESPN reported Wednesday. It’s the second time Diggs has been traded in his career. The Bills initially acquired him from the Minnesota Vikings.
Buffalo will receive a 2025 second-round pick via the Vikings and the Texans will get a 2024 sixth-round pick and a 2025 fifth-round pick, according to the report.
Diggs emerged as a top receiver in the NFL once he was paired up with quarterback Josh Allen. He became a four-time Pro Bowler and was an All-Pro during his time in Buffalo. He had two seasons of double-digit touchdown catches and recorded four consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons, extending his streak to six consecutive years with the total.
In 2023, Diggs had 107 catches for 1,183 yards and eight touchdowns on his way to another Pro Bowl. But Buffalo was once again denied a chance for a Super Bowl appearance, thanks to a divisional round loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
It appeared Diggs signaled his time with Buffalo was coming to an end last month. He posted on X he was "ready for whatever."
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The Horseheads Animal Shelter has announced they will be closing:
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The following was sent from Chemung County Executive Christopher Moss to IDA Executive Director Joe Roman:
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The Chemung County Sheriff’s Office announces the arrest of 34-year old Amanda L. Potter of Wellsburg, for Grand Larceny in the 3rd Degree, a Class D Felony of the New York State Penal Law.According to Sheriff William Schrom, on March 20, 2024, deputies from the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office received a complaint at the Able 2 located in the Town of Horseheads, when the administration discovered that multiple unauthorized debit card transactions from an Able 2 client’s checking account occurred between October 2023 and March 2024, totaling $9,842.25.
A preliminary investigation was conducted by deputies and the case was turned over to the Criminal Investigation Division for further investigation.The investigation revealed Athat Potter, an Able2 employee, on multiple occasions would take the client’s debit card from the unit safe and withdraw several hundred dollars at a time for her personal use from automated teller machines and then return the debit card to the safe.Potter was arrested for Grand Larceny in the 3rd Degree and released on an appearance ticket to appear in the Town of Horseheads Court at a later date. -
Quote99 percent of the time, 99 percent is just about as good as 100 percent.
But when it comes to a solar eclipse, the math doesn't work that way.
“Going to an eclipse but not going into totality is like driving 99% of the way to Disneyland, looking at your kids in the back seat, and then turning around and driving home because it is not the experience,” says Deb Ross, chair of Rochester’s eclipse task force.
She picked up that analogy at the national eclipse meeting we both attended last fall in San Antonio.
Remember the Alamo, because it's one of the places where that 99 percent will make a huge difference come April 8th.
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QuoteA proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill roughly half a million barred owls to protect the spotted owl has conservationists and animal welfare advocates debating the moral issue of killing one species to protect another.
The proposal, published in November, garnered attention in recent days after dozens of wildlife protection and animal welfare organizations signed a letter opposing the plan.
In a March 25 letter responding to the proposal, a group of 75 organizations urged Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to scrap what it calls a "reckless" plan. "Non-lethal management actions to protect spotted owls and their habitats should be made the priority action," it read.
KISS Sells Band's Catalog, IP In Estimated $300 Million Deal
in Pop Culture
Posted
Gene Simmons in his interview with Dan Rather on AXS-TV in 2021