Ingested Articles

This year's women’s basketball NCAA Tournament may be one of the most wide-open in recent years with nearly a dozen teams having a good chance to win the championship. The uncertainty seems apropos after a pandemic-stressed season of stops, pauses and cancellations. The top seeds Stanford, South Carolina, N.C. State and UConn are definitely the favorites to win the title on April 4 at the Alamodome. The four No. 2s also are among the favorites to win it all with Louisville, Maryland, Baylor and Texas A&M all title contenders.

NASCAR is returning to its roots. Even as the good ol’ boys attempt to break with the uglier parts of their history, the sport has embraced a more traditional footprint with its 2021 schedule. That includes Atlanta Motor Speedway, which on Sunday is hosting the first of two Cup races. NASCAR will return to the track in July, the first time since 2010 that the tri-oval has staged a pair of events. The drivers are certainly pleased to be making a couple of visits to one of their favorite tracks, a treacherous, high-speed layout that produces plenty of thrills.

Britain said Saturday that half the country’s adults have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine as the government races to reach everyone over age 18 by the end of July. The National Health Service has put shots in the arms of 26.9 million people, or 51% of the adult population. The NHS passed the halfway point by delivering 589,689 first doses on Friday, the highest daily total since a mass vaccination program began in early December. The director of a London-based health policy think tank says while Britain should be proud of the success of its vaccination drive, it's time to start thinking about sharing surplus supplies with the rest of the world.

Police in central Germany have used water cannons, pepper spray and batons against people trying to break through barriers during a protest against coronavirus restrictions. Protests against government measures to rein in the pandemic also were reported in Britain, Austria, Finland, Romania and Switzerland on Saturday. German news agency dpa says more than 20,000 people participated in the protest in the central German city of Kassel and most didn’t comply with infection-control protocols such as wearing face masks. The news agency reported that some protesters attacked several journalists. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that the government has to reimpose some restrictions as COVID-19 cases are accelerating.

Sister Jean Delores Schmidt, fully vaccinated and eight months past her 101st birthday, is back at the NCAA Tournament. The chaplain for Loyola Chicago's basketball team was on hand to watch her beloved Ramblers put away Georgia Tech in the tourney's first full day of action after the pandemic forced cancellation of the event last year. The time away hardly blunted its reputation for producing upsets. Lower-seeded teams won six of the 16 games played in the South and Midwest Regions, highlighted by No. 15 Oral Roberts stunning Big Ten powerhouse and No. 2 seed Ohio State.    

U.S. relations with its two biggest geo-political rivals are facing severe tests as President Joe Biden tries to assert America's place in the world and distinguish himself from his predecessor. Airing myriad complaints, the Biden administration took an extraordinarily tough line with China and Russia tis past week. Public spats between the countries erupted as Biden characterized Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "killer” and his top national security aides excoriated China for a litany of issues. Moscow and Beijing both fired back, setting the stage for months, if not more, of escalating tensions. 

Small businesses in border towns across the U.S. are reeling from the economic fallout of the partial closure of North America’s international boundaries. Restrictions on nonessential travel were put in place a year ago to curb the spread of the virus and have been extended almost every month since. Small businesses, residents and local chambers of commerce say the financial toll has been steep, as have the disruptions to life in communities where it’s common to shop, work and sleep in two different countries. And as more Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19 and infection rates fall across the U.S., many are hoping the restrictions will soon be eased. 

Prosecutors say a man who is accused in a New Jersey murder and is considered a person of interest in four New Mexico slayings told investigators he is responsible for a total of 16 slayings. NJ.com reports that assistant prosecutor Alec Gutierrez alleged Friday in court that 47-year-old Sean Lannon said he was responsible for the killings in New Jersey and New Mexico along with “11 other individuals.” Lannon was arrested Wednesday in St. Louis. Public defender Frank Unger challenged probable cause for the New Jersey murder charge and unsuccessfully argued for pretrial release of his client.

A deadly rampage at three Georgia massage businesses, where the employees were mostly of Asian descent, has prompted Asian American women to openly share stories of being sexually harassed or demeaned based on their race. They say dealing with men who cling to a perpetual narrative that Asian women are exotic and submissive is a frequent occurrence they’re forced to tolerate. While the suspect, a 21-year-old white man, hasn’t been charged with hate crimes, advocates and scholars say race is an inherent component in Tuesday's killings in the Atlanta area that points to a larger discussion on the deep history of fetishizing Asian women.

A New Orleans entrepreneur is celebrating the work of frontline health care workers with an online project called “Dear Nurses.” Robert Fogarty is the founder of Dear World, a special event business and also a nonprofit storytelling site. The Dear Nurses project features his signature Dear World style: individual portraits of 39 health care workers with special messages written on their bare faces, forearms necks or chests.  In accompanying personal essays, the subjects explain the sometimes cryptic messages scrawled on their skin. Those messages give insights into the challenges, pain and stress of dealing with the pandemic.

Meteorologists in Iceland say the eruption of a long-dormant volcano is easing and shouldn’t interfere with air travel. The Icelandic Meteorological Office says fissure eruption began that began Friday night sent streams of lava flowing across a small valley about 20 miles southwest of Iceland's capital, Reykjavik. The agency called the eruption “minor” and the country's international airport said Saturday that flights have remained on schedule since the eruption began. The Department of Emergency Management said it doesn’t anticipate evacuations, unless levels of volcanic gases rise significantly. In 2010, an eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano disrupted air traffic between Europe and North America because of concerns volcanic ash and dust could damage jet engines. 

Turkey has withdrawn from a European treaty protecting women from violence that it was the first to sign 10 years ago and that bears the name of its largest city. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decree early Saturday annulling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention is a blow to women’s rights advocates who say the agreement is crucial to combat domestic violence. Violence against women and killing of women is on the rise, according to rights groups. Some officials from Erdogan’s Islam-oriented party had advocated a review of the agreement, claiming it encourages divorce and promotes LGBT culture, which they say are contrary to the country’s conservative values.

As the coronavirus made an end-of-the-year surge across New York, some nursing homes proved especially helpless at stopping the spread of COVID-19, despite having nine months to stockpile protective equipment and refine preventative measures. That's according to recently released public records. At least 15 homes each saw at least 30 patients die between November and early February. Most of the deaths occurred in a matter of weeks. Seven homes had more than 40 patients die. That tally does not include specialized nursing homes that treat only COVID-19 patients. Most New York nursing homes reported fatalities in the single digits during that time period.

The Biden administration is facing growing questions about why it wasn't more prepared for an influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration is scrambling to build up capacity to care for 14,000 young undocumented migrants now in federal custody, and more are likely on the way. Immigration experts say the predicament was predictable. Biden administration officials blame the Trump administration for making a mess of the immigration system. Border patrol officials have encountered more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youths taken into custody for all of the previous budget year.

School counselors in many urban, high needs districts have been consumed with efforts to help students engage with their schoolwork since the pandemic hit. Counselors everywhere have played important roles in guiding students through the stress and uncertainty, but the burden has been especially heavy in poor districts that typically also have fewer counselors per student. Those demands highlight one way the pandemic is likely to worsen inequities in the education system as those with the most on their plates have the least amount of time to help students plan for the future.

Maine’s baby eel fishermen hope for a more stable season in 2021 as they seek one of the most valuable natural resources in New England. The fishermen seek elvers so they can be sold as seedstock to Asian aquaculture companies. They are then raised to maturity and sold as food like sushi. Maine has the only significant fishery for the eels in the U.S. They sometimes fetch more than $2,000 per pound. The season starts on Monday. That's just over a year after the coronavirus pandemic upended the 2020 season. Prices plummeted last year.

Doubts linger more than a century later about the precise location of heroics that won American World War I Sergeant Alvin York a Medal of Honor. The life and heroism of the Tennessee native are the subject of a 2014 book by Doug Mastriano, now a Pennsylvania state senator. He claims to have pinpointed the location and he organized construction of a trail there. But a researcher is challenging the book’s accuracy and research methods, and others say they have archival and archaeological studies to show the correct location is probably south of Mastriano’s favored spot in northern France.

MOSCOW (AP) — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev marked the Nowruz holiday Saturday by lighting a ceremonial fire outside Shusha, a culturally revered city that Azerbaijan took from Armenian forces in last autumn’s war. Shusha, a center of Azeri culture for…

Residents of Myanmar’s second biggest city are helping striking railway workers move out of their state-supplied housing after the authorities said they would have to leave if they kept supporting the protest movement against last month’s military takeover. The state railway workers last month went on strike as key and early supporters of the civil disobedience movement against the Feb. 1 coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Mandalay residents carried the workers’ furniture and other household items to trucks, van and pickup trucks Saturday. Anti-coup protests continued in cities and town across Myanmar despite a crackdown by security forces that has taken more than 200 lives.

While Italy is better managing its latest coronavirus surge, one thing that hasn't changed is that those who are dying are predominantly elderly. Promises to vaccinate all Italians over 80 by the end of March have fallen woefully short, amid well-documented interruptions of vaccine supplies and organizational shortfalls. Just one third of Italy’s 7.3 million vaccine doses administered so far have gone to those over 80, with more than half of them still waiting for the first jab. The new government of Premier Mario Draghi has pledged to accelerate the vaccination campaign. It is aiming to vaccinate 80% of the population by September.