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Odds for more sports betting expansion could fade after rapid growth to 38 states

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — At his suburban St. Louis home, Brett Koenig can pull out his smartphone and open a sports betting app. But he can’t place a bet. He is blocked by a pop-up message noting he is not in a legal location. Missouri is one of a dozen states where sports wagering remains illegal more than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to adopt it.“It just seems silly that everyone else can do it and we can’t,” said Koenig, who has launched a social media campaign called “Let MO Play” to rally support for legal sports betting in his home state.Other states have reaped a total of over $4 billion of taxes from more than $280 billion wagered on sports since 2018. Vermont will become the latest to accept sports bets, starting Jan. 11, But the odds for expansion to additional states appear iffy in 2024 because of political resistance and the sometimes competing financial interests of existing gambling operators. “The handful of st...

Live updates | Israel’s forces raid a West Bank refugee camp as its military expands Gaza offensive

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, killing at least six Palestinians, Palestinian health authorities said early Wednesday. The Israeli military had also expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory Tuesday.Residents reported shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps in the tiny, cramped enclave. The built-up towns hold Palestinians whose families fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s independence. The camps are now crowded with Palestinians who fled northern Gaza in the early stages of Israel’s ground offensive.More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead. About 1,200 people wer...

Deported by US, arrested in Venezuela: One family’s saga highlights Biden’s migration challenge

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — Pedro Naranjo idolized his father growing up and followed him into the Venezuelan air force to fly helicopters. So deep was their bond that when the older Naranjo feared being jailed for plotting against Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government, father and son fled to the United States together.Now the two have been separated by an overstretched U.S. immigration system that has left the retired Gen. Pedro Naranjo in legal limbo in the U.S. His loyal son, a Venezuelan air force lieutenant, sits in a Venezuelan military prison after he was deported by the Biden administration as part of an attempt to discourage asylum-seekers from the turbulent South American country.“We never had a plan B,” the older Naranjo said in a phone interview from Houston. He was released after 10 days in U.S. custody and is now awaiting the outcome of his own asylum request. “It never crossed our mind that the U.S., as an ally of the Venezuelan opposition and democracies over the world, a defender ...

Burning Man survived a muddy quagmire. Will the experiment last 30 more years?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The blank canvass of desert wilderness in northern Nevada seemed the perfect place in 1992 for artistic anarchists to relocate their annual burning of a towering, anonymous effigy. It was goodbye to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, hello to the Nevada playa, the long-ago floor of an inland sea.The tiny gathering became Burning Man’s surrealistic circus, fueled by acts of kindness and avant-garde theatrics, sometimes with a dose of hallucinogens or nudity. The spectacle flourished as the festival ballooned over the next three decades.Some say it grew too much, too fast.Things came to a head in 2011 when tickets sold out for the first time. Organizers responded with a short-lived lottery system that left people out of what was supposed to be a radically inclusive event. As Burning Man matured, luxurious accommodations proliferated, as did the population of billionaires and celebrities.Katherine Chen, a sociology professor in New York City who wrote a 2009 book abou...

Photographer Cecil Williams’ vision gives South Carolina its only civil rights museum

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) — Much of how South Carolina has seen its civil rights history has been through the lens of photographer Cecil Williams. From sit-ins to prayer protests to portraits of African Americans integrating universities and rising to federal judges, Williams has snapped it. After years of work, Williams’ millions of photographs are being digitized and categorized and his chief dream of a civil rights museum marking how Black Americans fought segregation and discrimination in the state is about to move out of his old house and into a much bigger, and more prominent, building in Orangeburg.“Images can be very powerful storytelling,” said Williams, who turned 85 last month. “And the struggle to get the rights we were due under the U.S. Constitution is a very powerful story.”While Williams’ story and those in his images will be remembered, preservationists and historians worry plenty of African American history is being lost as those who lived during the civil ...

Nikki Haley has bet her 2024 bid on South Carolina. But much of her home state leans toward Trump

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

GILBERT, S.C. (AP) — Standing inside a rustic barn a short drive from the state capital, Henry McMaster shocked many South Carolina Republicans seven years ago by backing Donald Trump for president.Then the lieutenant governor, McMaster became the highest-ranking state official to endorse Trump in 2016. The event was in Lexington County, the adopted political home of then-Gov. Nikki Haley, who had repeatedly criticized Trump and endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.Trump would win the 2016 primary in South Carolina and eventually the presidency. After campaigning against him, Haley would accept his nomination as United Nations ambassador, making McMaster governor.That complicated history is coming to the fore as Haley mounts a spirited effort to become the leading Republican alternative to Trump. Her strategy is centered on a strong showing in next month’s Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary before much of the campaign’s focus shifts to South Carolina, where the Feb. 24 contest cou...

Americans sour on the primary election process and major political parties, an AP-NORC poll says

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the GOP primary process just about to start, many Republicans aren’t certain that votes will be counted correctly in their presidential primary contest, amid widespread pessimism about the future of both the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.About one-third of Republicans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that votes in the upcoming Republican primary elections and caucuses will be counted correctly. About three in 10 Republicans report a “moderate” amount of confidence, and 32% say they have “only a little” or “none at all.” In contrast, 72% of Democrats have high confidence their party will count votes accurately in its primary contests. Democrats are also slightly more likely than Republicans to have a high level of confidence in the Republican Party’s vote count being accurate.Republicans continue to be broadly doubtful about votes bein...

As the Endangered Species Act turns 50, those who first enforced it reflect on its mixed legacy

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — On Dec. 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act. “Nothing,” he said, “is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.” The powerful new law charged the federal government with saving every endangered plant and animal in America and enjoyed nearly unanimous bipartisan support.The Act was so sweeping that, in retrospect, it was bound to become controversial, especially since it allowed species to be listed as endangered without consideration for the economic consequences. In that way it pitted two American values against each other: the idea that Americans should preserve their incredible natural resources (the United States invented the national park, after all) and the notion that capitalism was king and private property inviolate.Left to navigate this minefield was a group of young biologists in Washington — the first Office of Endangered Species.THE SNA...

A US delegation to meet with Mexican government for talks on the surge of migrants at border

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A top U.S. delegation is to meet with Mexico’s president Wednesday in what many see as a bid to get Mexico to do more to stem a surge of migrants reaching the U.S. southwestern border. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said he is willing to help, but also says he wants to see progress in U.S. relations with Cuba and Venezuela, two of the top senders of migrants, and more development aid for the region. Both sides face strong pressure to reach an agreement after past steps like limiting direct travel into Mexico or deporting some migrants failed to stop the influx. This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily at the southwest U.S. border. The U.S. has struggled to process thousands of migrants at the border, or house them once they reach northern cities. Mexican industries were stung last week when the U.S. briefly closed two vital Texas railway crossings, arguing border patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with the surge. ...

Influence of slow moving upper-air disturbance continues

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:12:15 GMT

Wednesday's clouds and sprinkles are to build into more widespread rain overnight and ThursdayWGN WEATHER HEADLINESONLY ONE MONTH IN 2023 (MARCH) FINISHED WITH A BELOW NORMAL TEMP and only 0.2 degrees BELOW NORMAL. The warming was most pronounced in the winter months.2023 TEMPS HAVE BEEN QUITE SOMETHING IN CHICAGO: Obscured by the ups and downs in temps which occur over the course of ANY YEAR here is the MAGNITUDE OF 2023's WARMTH here in Chicago:TO DATE: 2023 is running a eye-catching 2.7 degrees ABOVE NORMAL — QUITE A DEPARTURE FOR A FULL YEAR — with an average temp of 54.4 degrees. That places 2023 in among the warmest 2% of years since 1871. And if we look at the HIGH TEMPS in 2023 to date, 2023 ranks 2nd warmest placing high temps for the year among the top 1.3% of annual high temps in the 153 years since 1871.What's more, the NOAA Midwestern Regional Climate Center indicates THE PAST 2 YEARS rank 4th warmest of the past 153 years here in Chicago with a temp surplus over the pa...