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After drone kills US contractor, US hits targets in Syria

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

By Lou Kesten, Bassem Mroue and Jon Gambrell | Associated PressBEIRUT — A strike Thursday by a suspected Iranian-made drone killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans in northeast Syria, and U.S. forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the Pentagon said. Activists said the U.S. bombing killed at least four people.While it’s not the first time the U.S. and Iran have traded strikes in Syria, the attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts to deescalate tensions across the wider Middle East, whose rival powers have made steps toward détente in recent days after years of turmoil.U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the American intelligence community had determined the drone was of Iranian origin, but offered no other immediate evidence to support the claim. The drone hit a coalition base in the northeast Syrian city of Hasaka. The wounded included f...

Hailey Bieber ‘death threats’ force Selena Gomez to say ‘stop’ the hate and bullying

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

Selena Gomez has finally spoken out on the supposed feud that’s been going on between her and Hailey Bieber, telling fans she’s unhappy to hear that Bieber has been the target of “death threats and hateful negativity.”In a statement Friday, Gomez said she heard from Hailey Bieber herself to say that she’s been tormented by the recent scrutiny of their relationship. That scrutiny has included reminders that Gomez once dated Justin Bieber, the supermodel’s husband, and suggestions that Bieber might be the “mean girl” in the situation.With her statement, posted in an Instagram Story, Gomez didn’t exactly try to shut down discussion about their supposed feud or say that she and Bieber had called a truce. But she asked her fans and others on social media to tone down the rhetoric.“Hailey Bieber reached out to me and let me know that she has been receiving death threats and such hateful negativity,” Gomez wrote in an Instagram Story, s...

Passenger’s death on private jet was not caused by turbulence from weather

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

The death of a woman on a private jet this month was caused by turbulence — but it was not related to the weather, the investigation report says.Dana Hyde.Credit: Millennium Challenge Corporation Dana Hyde, 55, a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney who had served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, suffered fatal injuries March 3 while on a corporate jet over New England. The initial statement from the Federal Aviation Administration said the craft had encountered “severe turbulence.”The report by the National Transportation Safety Board said the aircraft experienced a force about four times the pull of gravity when the pilots, who were attempting to resolve warning messages,  disabled a setting that is used to stabilize the aircraft.“As soon as the switch position was moved, the airplane abruptly pitched up,” the preliminary report said.Over the course a few seconds, the passengers were subjected to violent movement — 3.8Gs up, then 2.3Gs downwar...

Meta sued by San Mateo County Board of Education over social media addiction

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

By Joel Rosenblatt | BloombergMeta Platforms Inc. was sued by the school board in the company’s home county for allegedly addicting students to its social media platforms and contributing to a mental health crisis.The San Mateo County Board of Education added the parent company of Facebook and Instagram to a complaint it filed March 13 against other social media giants, including Google, TikTok and Snap. Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, is about four miles from the county seat in Redwood City.The complaint is similar to a first-of-its-kind suit filed in January by the Seattle public school district which alleges the companies designed their platforms to be addictive and to deliver harmful content to adolescents and teens. A handful of other school districts in locales from Florida to Arizona have also lodged suits, as have scores of individual youths and their parents.When The Scrolling Doesn’t Stop: Social Media Lawsuits Pile UpSan Mateo’s board of education says it’s...

Amid massive protests, Macron delays King Charles’ visit to France

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

By Sylvie Corbet and Thomas Adamson | Associated PressPARIS — Ongoing unrest across France and calls for a new round of demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension plan persuaded officials to postpone a planned state visit next week by Britain’s King Charles III.Charles had been scheduled to arrive in France on Sunday to celebrate France and Britain’s renewed friendship. But the protests and strikes against Macron’s decision to raise France’s retirement age from 62 to 64 promised to impact his visit, with workers refusing to roll out the red carpet for the king’s arrival.Violence peaked during Thursday’s ninth union-organized nationwide marches. Over 450 protesters were arrested in Paris and beyond as demonstrations nationwide drew more than a million people.There were scattered protest actions on Friday. Train traffic was slowed, rows of trucks blocked access to Marseille’s port for several hours and debris littered the...

Hotline mailbag: The Fox factor, NCAA units, Friday night lights (on Amazon), Pac-12 survival odds, the presidents talk and more

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

The Hotline mailbag is published every Friday. Send questions to [email protected] and include ‘mailbag’ in the subject line — or hit me on Twitter: @WilnerHotline.Please note: Several topics related to Pac-12 media rights and expansion will be answered separately, in forthcoming articles.Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity.What’s the deal with Fox? — @BuffaloakkGood question: What is the deal with Fox?This week alone, there have been varying reports about Fox’s involvement in the Pac-12 media negotiations — none of them mutually exclusive: Fox can be interested in a package of Pac-12 games but not actively involved at this point.The situation reflects just how nuanced media negotiations can be and just how secretive the Pac-12’s process has been.Our view hasn’t changed: Fox has a lot of Saturday night broadcast windows on FS1 that are currently devoted to Pac-12 content and must be filled in the next contract c...

‘Truly diabolical criminal’ gets more time for breaking out of California jail

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

A convicted torturer and former international fugitive accused of masterminding an audacious 2016 escape from an Orange County jail was sentenced Friday, March 24, to two years and eight months behind bars for his role in the headline-grabbing jailbreak.A week after an Orange County Superior Court jury convicted Hossein Nayeri of taking part in the brazen break-out from the Men’s Central jail in Santa Ana and also found him guilty of stealing a van while on the lam, Nayeri’s lengthy legal journey appears to have come to an end.This case won’t likely affect Nayeri much — he was already sentenced to a life in prison.Over the past decade Nayeri, now 44, has become one of Orange County’s most notorious inmates, a man District Attorney Todd Spitzer recently described as “one of America’s most dangerous criminals,” who past prosecutors have called a “psychopath,” a “truly diabolical criminal” and compared to the fictional Hannibal Lecter.Orange County Superior Court Judge Larry Yellin, ju...

How much could women’s March Madness be worth to Pac-12 schools and the conference?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

It’s been two years since, arguably, the greatest March Madness in Pac-12 history.On the men’s side, all five schools (Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA and USC) that made the Big Dance in the Indianapolis bubble won at least one game. The conference had four schools in the Sweet 16, three in the Elite Eight and one, UCLA, in the Final Four.Down in San Antonio for the women’s tournament, things were even better. Six schools (Arizona, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA and Washington State) went dancing, with five winning a game, three making the Sweet 16 and two, Stanford and Arizona, going all the way to an all-Pac-12 national championship game.Between the two tournaments, Pac-12 schools picked up 28 wins in 2021.But the financial impact of those wins on the conference, in a financial sense, couldn’t be any different.On the men’s side, the Pac-12 brought home nearly $40 million from the 2021 tournament.On the women’s side? $0.The reason is the unit system, which sends about 19...

4 of 5 Bay Area storm victims identified

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

(KRON) -- Storm conditions from the latest atmospheric river to rip through the Bay Area claimed the lives of five people. Falling trees and limbs were the main culprits, taken down by the storm's severe winds and rain.Two people were killed in San Francisco Tuesday just 20 minutes apart in two separate storm-related incidents and both by fallen trees, according to San Francisco police. They have been identified as Ryan Taylor, 36, of Clark County, Nev., and Qiaoying Han, 55, of San Francisco County, according to the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office.City officials said they recorded more than 700 reports of fallen trees and limbs in San Francisco during Tuesday's storm. MORE: Storm kills 5 in San Francisco Bay Area Elsewhere in the Bay Area, a van driver was killed near Portola Valley while driving on Alpine Road near I-280 when a eucalyptus tree fell on his van. He has been identified as Jesus Cruz Diaz, 29, of San Jose. Colleagues of his remembered Cruz as a skilled plumb...

Texas Republicans Just Proposed a Bounty on Drag Shows

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:54:10 GMT

Members of the drag show community listen in during a meeting at the Texas Capitol on March 23, 2023, in Austin, Texas.Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesGiven Republicans’ relentless legislative attempts to erase trans and gender nonconforming people, a new bill in Texas that LGBTQ+ advocates are describing as the “drag bounty hunter bill” may seem like a drop in the ocean. This fact alone is intolerable. There is, however, something particularly barbaric in the bill’s explicit encouragement of citizen harassment to drive gender variance out of public life.The proposed legislation defines “drag” as any “performance in which a performer exhibits a gender that is different than the performer’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs in a lascivious manner before an audience.”The inclusion of “lascivious” might suggest that the bill is only aimed at performances in venues that already exclude minors, l...