Search Results for: news

There are very limited options to get out and about for the hundreds of players in Indiana for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  They can head to a minor league ballpark to play around on the field. and get a breath of fresh air. Otherwise, they are largely limited to their hotels, the convention center for practices and meeting rooms to talk strategy. The players at Wisconsin are enjoying some pingpong and spikeball in their rooms.

Gonzaga has turned into an offensive juggernaut through a combination of roster continuity, discipline and adaptability. The Bulldogs are on pace to be one of the best offensive teams in college basketball history as they head into the NCAA Tournament undefeated. Gonzaga attacks quickly in transition and runs a motion-based half-court offense that forces opponents to make difficult choices. The Zags run few plays but have multiple options off each and players who know how to read and react to make the right decision.

After weeks spent swearing in Cabinet members, appearing alongside President Joe Biden and making stops in the Washington area, Vice President Kamala Harris was back on the road this week for her first big outing since taking office. She helped kick off the administration’s public relations blitz to help people understand how the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan can ease their financial suffering. She also wants them to know that Republican lawmakers opposed the plan. Politics and policy are both part of Harris' portfolio as she settles into her new role.

New York’s Assembly has hired the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP to lead its impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Wednesday that the top Manhattan firm gives the Assembly Judiciary Committee the experience needed to handle the investigation thoroughly and quickly. Leaders in the Democrat-controlled Assembly said last week they would investigate allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior by Cuomo. The Democratic governor has denied touching any women inappropriately and has said he will not resign. Two women accusing the governor quickly criticized the Assembly's choice of law firm.

A rare 15th century porcelain bowl made in China that somehow turned up at a Connecticut yard sale and sold for just $35 has been auctioned off for nearly $722,000. The small white bowl adorned with cobalt blue paintings of flowers and other designs was sold Wednesday at a Sotheby's auction. It's one of only seven such bowls known to exist in the world. The names of the seller and buyer were not disclosed. Sotheby’s had estimated its value at $300,000 to $500,000. Sotheby's says an antiques enthusiast came across the Ming Dynasty piece at a yard sale in the New Haven area last year.

NEW YORK (AP) — Chris Smith didn’t initially think the 2019 college bribery scandal made for a good documentary subject. He was editing “Fyre,” the hit Netflix documentary about the music-festival fiasco, when his longtime collaborator, Jon Karmen, suggested another…

Nearly 30 teams out of the 68 in the NCAA men's basketball tournament had to pause their seasons because of positive tests for the coronavirus. Some had to shut down twice. Infectious disease experts say there could be a benefit to that. They say players and coaches from those teams should be carrying antibodies that could protect them from reinfection during March Madness. Dr. Dana Hawkinson at the University of Kansas Health System says there is hope that those who have been infected have less risk of getting it again or spreading it.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has used his first floor speech on Capitol Hill to blast a wave of Republican-backed measures that would make it harder to cast ballots in many states. Warnock is Georgia's first Black senator, and his election helped secure Democrats' Senate majority. In his speech Wednesday, he noted the country’s history of allowing voter suppression against minorities and the poor, and he warned that some Republican lawmakers are trying to reopen those chapters with “draconian” restrictions he cast as a reaction against Democratic victories like his. Warnock says, “We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era."

Zack Snyder never really believed that his cut of “Justice League” would see the light of day. It has technically existed since January 2017, but it wasn’t in any shape to be released. It was four hours, in black and…

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Palestinian Authority said Wednesday it will receive just over 60,000 coronavirus vaccine doses over the next 48 hours, the first shipment provided by a World Health Organization partnership aimed at helping poor countries. That's only enough…

Sports bars all over the country are again able to show March Madness after cities and states across the country have relaxed or totally done away with restrictions that were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Fans like Alex Kedzie of Chicago say the experience of watching the games in a favorite watering hole provides a welcome return to some sort of normalcy. But some public health experts worry that crowded bars may lead to an increase in coronavirus cases and deaths. Only a limited number of fans will be allowed in the stands to watch the games in Indiana. As for those who choose to watch at bars or restaurants, their experiences will vary depending on their location.

With all the stops, starts and pauses across women’s basketball, this has been a season of survive and advance just to reach the NCAA Tournament. Each of the 64 teams in this year's tourney and the four on stand-by have been affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. The luckiest teams were merely inconvenienced by a game being canceled or rescheduled due to an opponent's positive test results or tracing issues. Duke, Virginia and Vanderbilt were among the teams that decided to end their seasons and stop trying to play through the pandemic. But the journey is not over, and teams recognize their dreams can still be derailed by the virus.

The political crisis engulfing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has triggered a flurry of comparisons to Virginia's Ralph Northam. Both high-profile Democrats have found themselves at odds with their party and faced widespread calls for their resignations. But Northam’s supporters and some outside political observers say that’s where the similarities end. Northam has effectively recovered two years after a scandal erupted over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook. He has evolved from a one-time pariah to a leader whose endorsement is coveted in this year’s competitive statewide elections. The accusations against Cuomo deal with alleged behaviors during his term in office; those against Northam stem from a time decades before he entered politics. 

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — In the latest crackdown on Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party, Turkish authorities on Wednesday stripped a prominent legislator and human rights advocate of his parliamentary seat and took a step toward disbanding the entire party. Omer Faruk…

An unexpected group, not known for activism, emerged in 2020 as an unlikely financier of social change: corporations. The philanthropy research organization Candid says corporations pledged about $8.2 billion out of the $12 billion in contributions. Experts say its the first time direct corporate giving to racial equity causes has reached this magnitude. But tracking those funds can pose a challenge since many of the initial pledges lack details on where the money is going. Candid's figures don’t even count other types of investment pledges by companies, which a report by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company December found reached $66 billion in October. 

Paige Bueckers is the third freshman to ever make The Associated Press women's All-America team. The UConn star has already delivered record-breaking performances for the top-ranked Huskies. Bueckers received 28 first place votes from the national panel of 30 media members that vote each week in the AP Top 25 poll. She was joined by Dana Evans of Louisville, Aliyah Boston of South Carolina, Rhyne Howard of Kentucky and NaLyssa Smith of Baylor.

For years, West Virginia has had the nation's highest rate of drug overdose deaths. Now the state is wrestling with another, not entirely unrelated health emergency: a spike in HIV cases related to intravenous drug use. The surge is being attributed at least in part to the cancellation of a needle exchange program in the county where the capital of Charleston is located. Needle exchanges offer clean syringes to injection drug users who have not been able to quit the habit altogether. Critics of the programs say they don't do enough to prevent or stop drug abuse. 

A former Olympian and longtime track coach has pleaded not guilty to sexually molesting boys while working at a sports camp in western Massachusetts in the 1970s. Sixty-nine-year-old Conrad Mainwaring of Los Angeles was ordered held on $200,000 bail at his arraignment Tuesday. Massachusetts authorities started investigating after a 2019 ESPN report in which more than 50 men alleged Mainwaring abused them. Mainwaring was a hurdler who represented Antigua and Barbuda in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. His attorney says that they are old allegations and that his client is entitled to a fair trial. Mainwaring declined to comment after the hearing.

A new report finds that minority students are significantly underrepresented when it comes to  getting nominations from members of Congress to study at military service academies in the United States. The analysis released Wednesday by they the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center and the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School found congressional members have awarded 6% of their total nominations to Black students and 8% to Hispanic students. White students received 74% of the nominations. About 15% of students in public schools nationwide are Black and 27% are Hispanic. 

President Joe Biden defended his decision to waive any punishment for Saudi Arabia's crown prince in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, claiming that acting against the Saudi royal would have been diplomatically unprecedented for the United States. Biden, in…