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Alaska couple reunited with cat 26 days after home collapsed into river swollen by glacial outburst

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

By MARK THIESSEN (Associated Press)ANCHORAGE, ALaska (AP) — A pair of Alaska teachers needed good news after they lost nearly all their possessions when their house collapsed into a river swollen by a glacial-outburst flood and their cat went missing.Elizabeth Wilkins was holding onto hope that if any animal would survive the house falling into the Mendenhall River on Aug. 5, it would be Leo, the couple’s resilient big-eyed, black-and-white cat who shows no fear of bears.“I knew that he’s pretty smart, and so I felt pretty confident that he would escape and be OK somewhere,” she said.That faith paid off 26 days after the flood when Tonya Mead posted a photo of Leo to the Juneau Community Collective Facebook page. Wilkins immediately knew it was Leo, the “COVID kitten” they rescued in 2020. She rushed to meet Mead.“I just started walking down the street calling for him, and he just ran out and was like, ‘Oh hey, here I am, you kno...

No longer stranded, tens of thousands clean up and head home after Burning Man floods

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The traffic jam leaving the Burning Man festival eased up considerably Tuesday as the exodus from the mud-caked Nevada desert entered a second day following massive rain that left tens of thousands of partygoers stranded there for days.A pair of brothers from Arizona who took their 67-year-old mother with them to Burning Man for the first time spent 11 hours into early Tuesday morning just getting out of the festival site about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno. “It was a perfect, typical Burning Man weather until Friday — then the rain started coming down hard,” said Phillip Martin, 47. “Then it turned into Mud Fest.”Event organizers began letting traffic flow out on the main road around 2 p.m. local time Monday — even as they urged attendees to delay their exit to help ease traffic.By Tuesday morning, wait times had dropped from roughly five hours to two to three hours, according to the official Burning Man account on X, formerly known as...

Civil rights lawsuit in North Dakota accuses a white supremacist group of racial intimidation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

Two nonprofits have sued a white nationalist hate group in North Dakota, alleging that it committed racial intimidation by defacing businesses and public property around the city of Fargo with the group’s logo and other graffiti.The lawsuit filed against Patriot Front in federal court on Friday alleges that the group, two of the group’s leaders and 10 others violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which the complaint says “was designed to prevent precisely the kind of conspiratorial racist activity that Defendants perpetrated in this case.” The lawsuit, filed by the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, the Immigrant Development Center and the center’s executive director, says Patriot Front also posted “anti-immigrant propaganda” days after a man of Syrian descent fatally shot a Fargo police officer and wounded two others in July. The suit seeks a jury trial and damages of an amount to be determined at trial, as well as attorneys’ fees and other relief.No attorney is...

California mountain and desert towns dig out of the mud tropical storm

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. (AP) — Crews in mountain and desert towns worked to clear away mud and debris Tuesday in the aftermath of a tropical storm that hit Southern California.The system was dissipating as it moved over the Rocky Mountains.Hilary dumped record rainfall over California’s deserts, including in the stark Death Valley that experienced its single-rainiest day on record on Sunday. As Hilary moved northeast into the neighboring state of Nevada, flooding was reported, power was out and a boil-water order was issued for about 400 households in the Mount Charleston area, where the only road in and out was washed out. The area is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Las Vegas.Hilary first slammed into Mexico’s arid Baja California Peninsula as a hurricane, causing one death and widespread flooding before becoming a tropical storm. So far no deaths, serious injuries or extreme damages have been reported in California, though officials in San Bernardino said Tuesday they ...

Man who killed 6 members of a Nebraska family in 1975 dies after complaining of chest pain

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A man who killed six members of a Nebraska family nearly 50 years ago has died after complaining about chest pain. Erwin Charles Simants, who was 77, died Thursday at a Lincoln hospital, his attorney, Robert Lindemeier, told the Lincoln Journal Star.Simants initially was sentenced to die in the electric chair for shooting Henry and Audrey Kellie, along with their son, David, and three of their grandchildren in 1975. He had been hired to do odd jobs for the family at their home in Sutherland, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of North Platte. Two of the victims also were sexually assaulted.But that sentence was overturned in 1979, when the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered a new trial because the sheriff, a trial witness, played cards with some of the jurors while they were sequestered.At retrial he was found not responsible by reason of insanity. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and spent the rest of his life at a state psychiatric hospital.The second insanity v...

Lawsuit claims mobile home park managers conspired to fix and inflate lot rental prices

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — A lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses nine mobile home community management companies and a mobile home market data provider of conspiring to fix and inflate lot rental prices at more than 150 locations across the U.S. The lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Chicago claims the management companies bought up mobile home parks and used “competitively sensitive market data” provided by Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Datacomp Appraisal Systems Inc. to exchange pricing information and conspire to raise rents.“In the face of these significant manufactured home lot rent increases, some manufactured home residents were not only facing severe financial pressures, but even the threat of eviction,” Gregory Asciolla, an attorney with Chicago-based DiCello Levitt, one of the law firms filing the suit, said in a news release.“These individuals — whose median annual household income is approximately $35,000 — were overcharged for what was meant to be affordable housing...

Coco Gauff reaches her first US Open semifinal at age 19. Novak Djokovic makes it to his 13th

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Coco Gauff knows what it takes to reach a Grand Slam final. Been there, done that. What she hasn’t experienced is winning a major championship. So her first trip to the semifinals at the U.S. Open does not leave her satisfied at all, no matter how dominant the performance was that got her to that stage.“The dreams never came with the people in the stands and autographs. That was never in the dreams,” the 19-year-old from Florida said. “It was just, like, the trophy.”That hardware is getting closer. Gauff dealt just fine with the heat, the humidity and a big-hitting opponent to defeat Jelena Ostapenko 6-0, 6-2 on Tuesday, becoming the first American teenager to reach the final four at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 2001.“Even though (by) the semifinals, (in) theory, if you want to win, there’s two matches left, you can’t think like that,” Gauff said. “I’m still in the mindset that I’m in the beginning of the tournament. That’s what I have learne...

Joe Jonas files for divorce from Sophie Turner after 4 years of marriage, 2 daughters

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — Joe Jonas filed for divorce from Sophie Turner on Tuesday after four years of marriage and two children. The 34-year-old Jonas Brothers singer filed to end his marriage with the 27-year-old star of “Game of Thrones” and “X-Men” actor in Florida’s Miami-Dade County Court.The filing says “the marriage between the parties is irretrievably broken.”Turner and Jonas married in a secretive ceremony at a Las Vegas wedding chapel on May 1, 2019, after the Billboard Music Awards. Country duo Dan + Shay performed at the wedding.The couple had a daughter, Willa, in 2020, and last year had another daughter whose name they have not made public.Jonas is seeking joint custody of the girls, according to the divorce documents. The two had a prenuptial-agreement that Jonas expects will be enforced, according to the filing.Representatives for Jonas and Turner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The couple said in interviews that mutual friends had long wanted to...

Public housing battle over Chicago Fire FC training facility site heads to court

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

CHICAGO — Community members are fighting back, even as construction starts on a new Chicago Fire FC soccer team training facility.At issue is 25 acres of public land on the Near West Side, owned by the Chicago Housing Authority, once part of the ABLA Homes demolished years ago.In recent months, the CHA leased the land to the Chicago Fire FC soccer club as part of a 40-year agreement to develop a new practice facility. Fire FC paid $8 million upfront with an annual graduated fee to be paid down the line. Lionel Messi’s MLS arrival has ticket sales, price impact on Soldier Field match vs Chicago Fire FC The Fire FC reached a deal with former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the closing months of her time in office. But a coalition of community-based groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday saying the city broke a promise to redevelop 775 public housing units on the site. The group filing suit said only 245 units have been constructed. On Wednesday, the case goes before a federal judge....

'It’s so senseless': Chicago man shot and killed near youth football game in Blue Island

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:45:31 GMT

BLUE ISLAND, Ill. — A man is dead after being shot and killed shortly before a youth football game near Memorial Park in Blue Island Sunday evening."As we were going on the field, we heard what we thought were fireworks then we saw fans running back towards the stadium," said Durand Hodges, a parent and coach of the Garfield Park Gators 10U Pop Warner football team. "In the parking lot, there was an altercation and someone had been shot."Hodges said fans from a previous game between the 13U Elmhurst Bears and Dixmoor Vikings were seen arguing inside the stadium, and the altercation spilled outside. West Side youth football team reach goal, will travel to national championship According to the Blue Island Police Department (BIPD), officers were called to the 12800 block of Highland Avenue around 7:30 p.m. for a person who was shot. When officers arrived, they found a 32-year-old man from Chicago who had been shot in the neck.The victim was taken from the scene by ambulance to Advoc...