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Oklahoma vs. Alcorn State Predictions & Picks: Spread, Total – December 7
The injury report for the Boston Celtics (23-8) heading into their game against the Indiana Pacers (15-17) currently features two players. The Pacers have five injured players listed on the report. The matchup is scheduled for 6:00 PM ET on Sunday, December 29. Watch the NBA, other live sports and more on Fubo. What is Fubo? Fubo is a streaming service that gives you access to your favorite live sports and shows on demand. Use our link to sign up. Last time out, the Celtics bested the Pacers 142-105 on Friday. Jaylen Brown led the Celtics in the win with 44 points, while Tyrese Haliburton scored 19 in the losing effort for the Pacers. Sign up for NBA League Pass to get live and on-demand access to NBA games. Get tickets for any NBA game this season at StubHub. Catch NBA action all season long on Fubo. Not all offers available in all states, please visit BetMGM for the latest promotions for your area. Must be 21+ to gamble, please wager responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, contact 1-800-GAMBLER .
World reaches $300 bn climate finance deal at COP29Burlington Public Library Continues “Letters to Santa” Program Amidst Postal Strike
When the sing-along screenings of “ Wicked ” go down beginning Christmas Day, I’ll be there — but not because I have any intention of personally raising my voice in song. (Or maybe I’ll join in just with Dr. Dillamond, the goat professor, whose glottal peculiarities probably come closest to the sounds I could produce.) I do have a natural curiosity about what luck a full house of fans will have in singing along with musical-theater songs this sophisticated... this full of stops and starts and sudden shifts from major to minor chords. There’ll surely be some trained singers and actors filling the AMC seats who can keep up with these tunes. For the rest of us, there may come a realization: I’m not that girl , and probably neither are you. So what other reason is there to look forward to the official multiplex sing-alongs, if not, like, singing along? That’s easy: the subtitles. Which is to say: The songs in “Wicked” are so good — some of the best that musical theater has ever produced, to my mind — that there’s a benefit in enjoying a setting that allows you to focus in on the songcraft without having your attention waylaid by all the visual distractions the film is very understandably providing. As a 20-year aficionado of “Wicked” as a show, my only problem with “Wicked” as a movie is how director John Chu and editor Myron Kerstein are sometimes redirecting our attention to something else charming or dazzling that’s happening on screen, when what I most want is two-and-a-half hours of nonstop closeups of Ariana Grande or Cynthia Erivo delivering classic lyrics. This isn’t a serious complaint, on my part; I get that it’s a movie musical. But I’ll be pleased to see every one of lyrics popping up on the bottom of cinema screens, come Dec. 25. Because for a select subset of “Wicked” fans, the star isn’t really Erivo or Grande, grand as they both are — it’s Stephen Schwartz . Of course, there is a way to have the crux of the experience I’m anticipating without waiting for Christmas. It’s to stream or buy “ Wicked: The Soundtrack ” while settling in at Genius.com or some other lyric site to follow the bouncing ball, as it were. Even if you feel like you’ve gotten the basic grist of the lyrics through the theatrical presentation, there’s a lot of richness and nuance that’s easy to miss amid the cross-cutting, CGI, razzle-dazzle and diva-ness of it all. The album puts a further exclamation point on Schwartz’s rare brilliance as both melodist and lyricist, a la Sondheim. It’s not heresy to say that Schwartz feels like a populist Sondheim with what he did with “Wicked.” The whole score is dark, convoluted, unwieldy and subversive ... and if it sometimes comes out as something that feels to people like bubblegum, that’s just further testifies to the massiveness of the accomplishment. The first and most basic thing to say about the soundtrack is that they didn’t blow it. You don’t have to use too much of your imagination to think about how a score like this could have been egregiously updated. (Raise your hand if you imagined for a second that the Ozdust Ball could have adopted an EDM beat for a few bars. It does not.) With Schwartz himself co-producing the album with Greg Wells (“Greatest Showman”) and original music-director/arranger Stephen Oremus, it simply sounds like what the legit version would if it had something like double the pit size. And for a young audience of budding theater kids, it’s going to open them up for good (no pun intended) to the sound as well as form of traditional Broadway, even with content that might feel to them as fresh as a combination of Taylor Swift and today’s headlines. There’s not much that Grande and Erivo do that doesn’t squarely follow the template established by Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel two decades ago. But their vocal performances still manage to sound surprising in small and important ways. The epic opening number, “No One Mourns the Wicked,” allows Grande to run a hell of a gamut — foretelling the moments of both dumb-blonde comedy and operatic tragedy she’ll get to hit thoughout the duration of the score. I knew she could go high-and-nasal in the pursuit of mirth (hey, I saw “Sam & Cat”), but hearing her repeat the completely ironic line “Good news” at full Sarah Brightman sopranic strength is an immediate tip-off she’ll be nailing the full range of stuff to come, too. Erivo takes longer to fully prove herself, by design. Actually, she holds back enough that it’s not till halfway through “Defying Gravity” that it feels like she’s giving it her full belt. Even though the movie has already given her “The Wizard and I” as a showstopper a whole lot earlier than that, Erivo seems to be holding just a little of her full power in reserve, for the moment when she’s fully awakened. The brilliance of those songs as first-act twins is that “The Wizard and I” is a classic “I want” song, whereas “Gravity” has to go above and beyond it as — literally — an I don’t want song. Erivo and those working with her on the vocals have been wise here: You’ve got to hold a little back, even if it’s just 5%, when you have probably the greatest middle-finger number in Broadway history on the horizon. While we all wait for that, what pleasures Erivo provides in some of the build-up numbers, by having lots of low-ley, conversational and even naïve-sounding vocal moments that establish her as a lovable innocent before she’s a righteously pissed goddess. Having just reaffirmed the case for “Defying Gravity” as an all-time corker, which Erivo delivers flawlessly, is it weird to say that I reserve an even slightly greater fondness for her tender rendition of “I’m Not That Girl”? Even if it is, here’s making the case for “I’m Not That Girl” as “Wicked’s” sleeper song, the one that’s never going to be as uber-popular as... well, you know, but will knock you down flat if you hear it at the right, forlorn time in your life. Its mid-first-act stage placement, or mid-movie here, marks it as a time-passer for some people, close to completely un-integral when it comes to advancing the plot. By Schwartz’s standards, it’s simple and un-ambitious, being the only song in the entire score without a single key change, let alone multiples. It’s also the only one that doesn’t include the slightest bit of narrative information, interpolations of other themes, or any other complicating factors keeping it from being a stand-alone. And standing alone is what it’s about, all right. You don’t even have to be a Swiftie to bask in the emo grief of lines like “Don’t wish, don’t start / Wishing only wounds the heart.” Playing this ballad for all the gentle fatalism it’s worth, Erivo is 100% That Girl. Other songs bear singling out. Jonathan Bailey does a fine job of sliding down the surface of things with “Dancing Through Life,” which — in one of “Wicked’s” many usurpings of expectations — seems to be setting Fiyero up to be a Gaston- or Prince Hans-style hunk-villain. Before that rug gets pulled to give him his humanity, he gives callow a good name. And “Life’s more painless for the brainless” (and the follow-up “thoughtless/fraughtless” coupling) would be a good line even if Schwartz weren’t foreshadowing his fate in the next act/movie. The revolving library sets during this sequence are a marvel of production design, but another example of how badly you need to hear the soundtrack on its own to catch every bit of the lyrics’ amusing nihilism. “What Is This Feeling?” delivers two things everyone wants: it’s a patter song, or as close to one as “Wicked” gets — and, more important, it’s the first chance to see how well Grande and Erivo harmonize as frenemies, before the much heavier vocal pas de deux they do in debating the merits of “Defying Gravity.” (Spoiler alert ahead.) Then, the originators of that song, Menzel and Chenoweth, show up in new verses Schwartz has penned to afford them a celebrated cameo in “One Short Day.” Schwartz’s all-new additional compositions won’t come till Part 2, but the interstitial bit he added here offers a good omen for bigger musical surprises in a year. “Popular” has that overt Ronald Reagan allusion that everybody picked up on when the show first opened, but that few newcomers to the song probably would now, 20 years later — the reference to “Great Communicators,” who come up for mention by Galinda as being more powerful than bright. It’s just a passing bit of political subtext, embedded almost unnoticeably in the frothiest number, a joke that already had a little dust on it when it first appeared, while everyone’s focused on Ariana Grande being pretty — and pretty spectacular — in pink. But the opening and closing numbers of Part 1 of “Wicked”? This is music that’s so inherently political, these bookends practically count as protest songs. “Defying Gravity” is a paean to activism, as Glinda and Elphaba debate and then sorrowfully settle their differences across the complacency/risk divide. Here, it’s as deeply moving and stirring as ever — a song for anyone who ever had to make the conscious decision in life to take the red pill and deal with the consequences, or admired someone else who did. Yet the song that always gets me the most is the one that’s almost innocuously hidden in plain sight right at the outset: “No One Mourns the Wicked.” On first listen, it feels like a standard, fairly innocuous musical scene-setter, even if, watching the film, that Wicker Woman being set up for burning does look ominious. On second or third listen, and beyond, it can feel devastating. Schwartz and his collaborators are framing the story with an Oz that is populated by an angry, self-righteous, deluded and even bloodthirsty mob... led by a woman who is going along with the great lie, in hopes of eventually rebuilding a land that fell into genocide and fascism under corrupt leadership. Light-hearted holiday fare to let us forget all about America’s problems, right? It’s in “No One Mourns the Wicked” that we get the score at its most haunting, with a cast of seeming thousands calling for retribution while Grande rolls through piercing high notes, pretending to put her approving stamp on the national travesty before her. If this doesn’t give you a chill, you’re not really listening. But who is, at the beginning of a film, as coats and popcorn are still being shuffled and a movie has barely begun to reveal its cards? That’s one more way in which “Wicked: The Soundtrack” becomes an essential post-movie listen, to really take in all the groundwork Schwartz and company have laid in foreshadowing what is actually at least as much a sociopolitical tragedy as a fantasy musical-comedy. It’s the ability to encompass all these elements, so masterfully, that makes “Wicked” not just the greatest song score of our time (or at least tied with “Hamilton” for that) but one of the greats of all time. And listen, if you just want to forego the darker, societally allegorical stuff and just spin “Popular” over and over and over again until you’ve worn the grooves off the stream, that’s OK, too. We’ve all been there. And thanks to how well Erivo and Grande deliver this material, we’ll stay in that female-friendship-trumps- everything mode a lot longer. See you at the sing-along.Oklahoma State WR Da'Wain Lofton plans to enter transfer portalA baseline scenario for the global economy in 2025THE TEXAS TRIBUNE – Tony Coleman recognizes the signs all too well. A cow drools strings of saliva. Then it starts to limp, each step slower. Then it grows stiff. Then it’s quick. There’s nothing to be done. The cow dies. Since early 2023, the Grandview rancher has watched more than 35 of his 150 Black Angus cattle perish. July was especially brutal. In the span of a week, Coleman lost a 3-week-old calf; a cow; and Little Red, a strong bull full of spirit, leaving Coleman with nothing but unanswered questions. “This is destroying our lives,” Coleman said. “You never know what you're going to get every day when you get down here.” Next door, James Farmer has lost two calves, and found two of his wife’s beloved horses toppled to the ground like dominos, their bodies swarmed by buzzards. “It's hard for me to tell her, because I know she's gonna break down,” he said. “Why are our animals dying? Just back to back? It never ends.” Months before, the men said they noticed a gag-inducing sewage smell drifting from smoking piles of fertilizer on their neighbor’s property. Heavy rains then washed some of the fertilizer onto their land. Soon after, they said they found fish floating dead in the stock ponds their livestock drink from. They contacted the county with their concerns, triggering a nine-month investigation. That’s when their cattle and horses began to die. An environmental crime investigator in Johnson County collected samples of the dead animals’ tissue and organs, the water they drank from, the soil and the fertilizer that was applied next door. After the county received test results, the two families finally got their answer: The animals had been killed by something in the fertilizer. The fertilizer had been made with biosolids, part of an effort to find a climate-friendly method to recycle municipal sewage. But the fertilizer also contained synthetic and highly hazardous chemicals known as PFAS, which are found in hundreds of household products and have had devastating effects on farms and ranches that inadvertently spread them on their land. An untold number of farms and ranches across Texas and the rest of the nation may have also used fertilizer made from sewage tainted with these “forever chemicals” — which don’t break down in the environment — without knowing it. PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are man-made chemicals used since the 1940s that have a singular ability to repel oil and water and resist heat. They are used in products like nonstick cookware, pizza boxes, waterproof mascara, toilet paper, soaps and rain jackets. There are more than 12,000 types of PFAS, but researchers have only studied the health effects of roughly 150. They can contaminate food and water and build up in the body over time. Exposure to certain PFAS has been linked to cancer , low birth rates and birth defects, damage to the liver and immune system, and other serious health problems. One study found the chemicals in the blood of nearly 97% of all Americans. Due to their widespread use in consumer products, forever chemicals have been discharged into waterways by chemical manufacturers, trucked to landfills with household trash or flushed into city sewers via toilets, sinks, showers and washing machines. Then they end up in local wastewater treatment plants where the solids are separated from sewage. Fertilizer companies who are often paid to haul these biosolids away process them into fertilizer that’s sold to farmers and ranchers as a cheaper alternative to chemical fertilizers. A number of Texas wastewater plants have contracts with fertilizer companies to take their biosolids, including Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Arlington. Nationally, more than half of sewage sludge was treated and spread on land, according to one study ; 19 billion pounds of it was spread on American farms between 2016 and 2021, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found in 2022. Wastewater treatment and biosolids experts call this an environmental win-win because those solids don’t go to landfills or incinerators — processes that create greenhouse gasses, which contribute to climate change. But nobody knows how much of that fertilizer is contaminated with PFAS, which can be absorbed by crops, consumed by livestock, and then enter the food supply. There are no requirements to test biosolids for PFAS, or to warn farmers and ranchers that they could be using contaminated fertilizer made with biosolids on their land. “Some people are saying, [PFAS contamination] are isolated incidents. No, they're not. I guarantee that this is a problem in every single state that uses biosolids,” said Kyla Bennett, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee who is now a science policy director for the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “The reason we're not hearing about it all over the country, in all 50 states, is because nobody's looking for this problem,” Bennett added. According to EPA data analyzed by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group in 2022, an estimated 5% of all crop fields in the U.S. — up to 20 million acres — could have used fertilizer made with biosolids. In Texas, more than 157,000 dry metric tons of biosolids-based fertilizer were applied to agricultural lands in 2018. While the EPA recently set limits for a handful of the chemicals in drinking water, those rules do not cover biosolids. “The evidence is out there” that PFAS are a health hazard, Bennett said. “We shouldn’t have to wait [for the EPA to act].” Without federal regulations, some states have taken action , requiring wastewater treatment plants to test their biosolids for PFAS or setting their own limits for PFAS in biosolids. Texas is not among them. State environmental regulators said in a statement they’re not required to by law. Coleman and other Johnson County farmers who know their land is contaminated are now faced with an existential dilemma: Do they sell their cattle and their crops, knowing they’re likely laced with PFAS, or face financial ruin? Coleman and Farmer have both decided not to sell any cattle. That means the men now run zombie farms. They pay to feed animals and harvest hay that they won’t sell — a single 900-pound steer could sell for $4,800, Coleman said. “Everything we plant here is just sucking this [PFAS] stuff up,” Coleman said. “The cows drink the water and eat the grass. For them there is no escaping.” Anxiety in Johnson County In February, Johnson County residents packed the courthouse and listened intently as Dana Ames, an environmental crime investigator for the county, and other local officials explained the findings from the nine-month investigation into the noxious smells and dead livestock. Ames, who spent $35,000 of the county’s money on the investigation and sent samples to a lab in Pennsylvania, told residents that the liver of the Coleman’s stillborn calf contained 610,000 parts per trillion of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, one of the many types of forever chemicals. The tissue from a calf belonging to Farmer that died a week after being born tested at 320 ppt of PFOS. Currently, there are no federal food safety standards for PFAS. In Maine, which in 2016 became the first state to detect PFAS contamination at a farm, state officials issued limits for beef containing PFOS at 3.4 parts per billion and milk containing PFOS at 210 parts per trillion — meaning that beef or milk exceeding these levels should be considered unsafe for consumption. Maine, which has discovered 78 contaminated farms and shut five of them down, has been the only state to set its own PFAS limits for food. Samples of the pond water where the ranching families’ livestock drink from ranged from 84 ppt to 1,333 ppt of PFAS. The county also tested the fertilizer their neighbor spread on his farm and found 27 types of PFAS chemicals, including four out of the five the EPA has set limits for in drinking water. “These people were led to believe this was safe and a cheap fertilizer,” County Commissioner Larry Woolley said at the meeting. “And this isn’t just isolated to this one incident or multiple counties. This is going on all over.” “The amount of beef and milk that’s gone into the food chain, who knows what their PFAS levels are? The level of victimization is widespread,” he added. The Colemans, Farmer and four other local farmers have sued Synagro, the Maryland-based company that produced the biosolids-based fertilizer applied on their neighbor’s fields, and Renda Environmental, a Texas-based fertilizer company that sold to the neighbor before Synagro. The lawsuit claims the companies knew about the contaminants in the fertilizer and failed to provide adequate warnings to its customers. Synagro denies the allegations. Kip Cleverley, a spokesperson with the company, said the company did its own testing on the land where the fertilizer was applied and preliminary results found PFAS levels in the single digits parts per trillion in the surface water. The company did not provide its test results to the Tribune, saying its analysis was still in progress. “The data strongly suggests that the farm where biosolids were used could not be a source for the PFAS allegedly found on the plaintiffs’ farms,” Cleverley said. Renda Environmental told the Tribune the company does not comment on pending litigation. In a separate lawsuit filed against the EPA in June by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on behalf of the farmers, the group claimed the agency failed to implement restrictions on PFAS in biosolids despite knowing the health risks posed by the chemicals. Johnson County later joined the suit. “My heart breaks [for the farmers],” said Bennett, the group's science policy director. “It could be years until the EPA sets biosolids regulations. Somebody needs to hold their feet to the fire ... farmers are losing their livelihoods.” The biosolids used to create the fertilizer that allegedly contaminated the Colemans’ and Farmers’ farms came from Fort Worth’s Village Creek Water Reclamation Facility, which treats sewage from 1 million people, many industries and 23 communities in North Texas. It generates between 27,000 to 31,000 tons of biosolids per year. Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for Fort Worth Water, said the fertilizer pellets produced by Synagro meet EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requirements. Gugliuzza added the city had tested some of its biosolids for PFAS even though it’s not required. Those results showed PFAS in the biosolids, but Gugliuzza said that’s the case at wastewater facilities across the country. Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants, industrial, and agricultural customers in North America — including Fort Worth — to turn biosolids, which one employee described as resembling chocolate milk, into fertilizer that it markets as nutrient rich and environmentally friendly. In 2022 Synagro processed 6.5 million tons of biosolids nationwide. “The [EPA] has not suggested that any changes in biosolids management is required because of the presence of trace amounts of PFAS,” Cleverly, the company spokesperson, said. In September, the EPA responded to the lawsuit saying it has complete discretion over which pollutants to regulate under federal law — so it can't be sued. But the agency is now studying the presence of PFAS in wastewater and sewage sludge nationally and conducting a risk assessment on the use of biosolids and sewage sludge containing the two most widely used and studied forever chemicals — PFOA and PFOS — focusing on health risks through exposure to soil, water, crops, meat and dairy. It expects to publish the results by the end of this year, which will determine whether new federal rules are necessary. Who should be responsible for removing forever chemicals? In Texas, most biosolids end up in a landfill. But the rest is diverted for agricultural use in Texas. At San Antonio’s wastewater treatment plant, water is removed from sewage sludge by using a machine that squeezes it between two tensioned belts or by spreading it in drying beds so the sun evaporates the moisture. Once it’s dried to a crumb-like texture, the biosolids are piled into black mountains then transported to other facilities where two Texas compost companies turn it into fertilizer. Pitched as a cost-effective way to improve soil fertility, biosolids have been applied to land in the U.S. since the 1970s . Scientists say they contain nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that helps plants grow. The EPA only requires wastewater treatment plants to test biosolids for heavy metals and pathogens that can be harmful to health. If the EPA issues new restrictions on PFAS in biosolids, utilities fear they are likely to bear the responsibility for removing the chemicals from wastewater. “If we are required to treat a particular chemical that is not covered in the way you already treat, you have to design a whole new system,” said Ed Guzman, the senior vice president and chief legal and ethics officer at the San Antonio Water System. “You have to put it in place and that all takes time. It takes money.” The cost of removal is significant: A 2023 report by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found that it would cost between $2.7 million and $18 million per pound to remove and destroy PFAS from municipal wastewater, depending on facility size, and between $1 million and $2.7 million per pound of PFAS removed from biosolids. Adam Krantz, the CEO of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, a group representing municipal wastewater treatment agencies, said the cost of remediation could be passed down to water utility customers, but argues that "polluters should pay."“It really is the corporate polluter that needs to foot the bill for this as the wrongdoer,” he said. Others, like Janine Burke-Wells, executive director for the North East Biosolids & Residuals Association, which represents wastewater treatment facilities and biosolids producers, said that the responsibility to curb PFAS should fall on everyone. “Unless we really eliminate all the sources of PFAS there's always going to be a background level because [PFAS] is in everything,” Burke-Wells said. One county doing what it can In Johnson County, Woolley drives his silver pickup down rural roads, pointing out hay bales and miles of milo grain, corn and wheat — crops the county commissioner says have been blessed by heavy rainfall earlier this year. Woolley, a former agriculture teacher who moved to Grandivew in 1982, says he’s spent sleepless nights worrying about PFAS’ impacts on ranching families in this county of 180,000 residents. “I lay awake at night thinking of the magnitude of this whole deal. It’s just crazy,” Woolley said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. I think there's gonna be so much public outcry on this ... it's gonna be hard for our state officials to ignore that.” Following the county’s investigation, Woolley led the charge to pass a local resolution urging farmers to stop using biosolids on their land. The resolution called for Fort Worth to stop sending its biosolids to fertilizer companies until the TCEQ tests them for the presence of PFAS and asked the EPA to set limits on PFAS in biosolids. The resolution also called on state lawmakers to regulate the application of biosolids-based fertilizer on farmland or give power to counties to do so. “That’s the hard part,” Woolley said. “We don’t have authority to ban biosolids.” In July, neighboring Ellis County passed a similar resolution calling for regulation and legislation to restrict the application of biosolids on farms and ranches until further testing is done. Since then, Kaufman, Henderson, Somervell and Wise counties have done the same. Woolley has traveled around the state to sound the alarm about PFAS at conferences for county officials. He said he and his staff are preparing to go to Austin to meet with state lawmakers during the next legislative session. He hopes they will introduce new bills that will address PFAS contamination in biosolids, including giving counties money to test for the contaminants, and require TCEQ to test biosolids statewide for forever chemicals. So far, there have been no bills filed by state lawmakers regarding PFAS contamination in biosolids ahead of the legislative session that begins in January. In 2021, Michigan began requiring all municipal wastewater treatment plants to test their biosolids for PFAS before spreading them on agricultural land. The state also began prohibiting the application of biosolids containing more than 150 parts per billion of PFOS on agricultural land. Since then, the state has lowered that threshold to 100 ppb and added another type of PFAS to the list, PFOA. What experts refer to as the "Michigan model" has now been embraced by other states including California, Wisconsin and Washington. Connecticut and Maine have banned the use of biosolids on agricultural fields. Ellen Mallory, a professor of sustainable agriculture at The University of Maine, said state response has been crucial given the lack of standards at the federal level. “The important part here is it's really hard to have any response to PFAS contamination if we don't have any standards. So a state like Texas that has no standards, what do you do? How do you help farmers determine if their food is safe or not?” she said. Meanwhile, Tony Coleman and his wife are still watching their livestock die. They pack dead cattle in a big cooler, load them onto a trailer and drive 140 miles to a laboratory at College Station where vet technicians perform a necropsy and remove tissue to be tested for PFAS. The couple both work two jobs and are looking for a third. They're worried they have lost the ability to make a living off their own land. “We can't consciously sell you a side of beef and then you eat it and you get sick. What kind of people does that make us?” Coleman said. Disclosure: San Antonio Water System has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here . This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune . The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Published 5:58 pm Wednesday, December 11, 2024 By Data Skrive The UConn Huskies versus the Notre Dame Fighting Irish is the only game on the college basketball schedule on Thursday that features a ranked team in action. Watch women’s college basketball, other live sports and more on Fubo. What is Fubo? Fubo is a streaming service that gives you access to your favorite live sports and shows on demand. Use our link to sign up. Catch tons of live women’s college basketball , plus original programming, with ESPN+ or the Disney Bundle.
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Homeland Security shares new details of mysterious drone flights over New JerseyAccording to the Cooperativa de Porcicultores, around 230 million pounds of pork are consumed on the island, of which only 5% is produced locally, the rest comes from abroad December 28, 2024 - 5:33 PM Whether it’s a la vara , chops or other types of cuts, Puerto Ricans like to eat lechón both during the Christmas season and throughout the year. But in order to prepare these traditional dishes, how many lechones are slaughtered in Puerto Rico during the year?. Discover the trendiest destinations to visit in 2025 Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve from the T-Mobile District “changed the game for Puerto Rico” 2024 could end up as another record year for hotels and short-term rentals
Fans react to Mariah Carey failing to hit her iconic high note during her Christmas concertThe Palestinian Football Association [PFA] has issued a powerful call for international action in light of what it describes as the systematic targeting of Palestinian athletes and sports infrastructure by Israeli forces. According to the PFA, at least 704 athletes, including 400 football players and 94 children, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. In a statement released on Dec. 17, the PFA voiced gratitude for the Norwegian Football Association [NFA] and its president, Lise Klaveness, who publicly suggested FIFA examine Israeli violations of international humanitarian law . Palestinian soccer authorities ask FIFA to completely expel Israel from sport 6 NBA stars you won't see at the 2023 FIBA World Cup Klaveness stressed the moral complexities surrounding Norway's participation in World Cup qualifiers against Israel, fearing that such matches cannot be seen as purely sporting events when innocent civilians, including athletes, continue to suffer in Gaza. The PFA praised Norway’s stance as a reflection of the growing global sentiment against these alleged violations. "Millions worldwide," the PFA claims, share the belief that FIFA and the broader international football community must address what it calls "gross human rights violations" by Israel. The PFA also claims that Israeli occupation forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian sports, destroying facilities and ending the lives of countless athletes. They argue that these actions directly violate FIFA statutes, which are supposed to be constructed on the principles of justice, respect, and unity. The organization also accuses the Israel Football Association [IFA] of collaboration in these actions, citing examples of racism, the use of football to support territorial annexation, and a failure to uphold the sport's fundamental values. In its statement, the PFA reiterated its call for FIFA to take a firm stance against Israel, including suspending all sporting activities with the country until it complies with international law. DON'T MISS Palestinian athletes applauded at Olympics as Imane Khelif shows support Palestine protestors clash with Israel fans at Paris Olympics after bomb scare Olympics bomb alert strikes ahead of Israel match as police put area on lockdown FIFA deferred the judgment on the appeal to ban Israel last October. "The FIFA Disciplinary Committee will be mandated to initiate an investigation into the alleged discrimination offense raised by the Palestine Football Association, read FIFA's statement. "The FIFA Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee will be entrusted with the mission to investigate, and subsequently advise the FIFA Council on the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine." FIFA's decision to steer clear of action against Israel despite calls for sanctions has caused significant backlash online, drawing comparisons to the organization's historic bans. In the past, FIFA took firm stances, barring apartheid South Africa and later forcing Russian athletes to compete as "neutral individuals" following the invasion of Ukraine . Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub has been outspoken about urging FIFA to bar Israel from sports over alleged human rights violations. "It's not a political issue for me," he said on the subject. "It's a moral issue. It's a legal issue. It's an ethical issue," he said.
Coinciding with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which falls on December 3 every year and with an aim to support this group, increase community awareness of their issues and work to care for them, Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), Qatar Stars League (QSL) and Qatar Paralympic Committee (QPC) participated in the ‘Paralympic Inspirations Day’ on Monday, 2024, at Aspire Ladies Sport Hall, with the participation of a number of players and school students. The events were attended by HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, former Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, and HE Dr Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kuwari, Minister of State and President of Qatar National Library, in addition to officials from the participating entities: Abdullah Nasser al-Naemi, Acting CEO of AZF and Director General of Aspire Logistics; Khaled Ali al-Mawlawi, Acting Director General of Aspetar; Hani Taleb Ballan, CEO of QSL; Hassan Rabiah al-Kuwari, Executive Director of Sales, Marketing and Communication at QSL; Dr Ahmed Khellil Abbassi, Executive Director of Competitions and Football Development at QSL; Dr Hassan al-Ansari, Secretary-General of QPC; and Amir al-Mulla, Executive Director of QPC. A number of guests and dignitaries, Ooredoo Stars League players, stars and former players as well as representatives of media outlets also attended the event. The opening speech was delivered by Ali Radhi Arshad, wheelchair champion, and Abdelkarim Hassan, player of Al Wakrah and Qatar national team, and everyone was welcomed and the importance of unifying efforts to continue to promote and support athletes from different categories in order to achieve all goals and aspirations was emphasised. The events included distinctive sections and various sports activities, most notably standing long jump, obstacle race, floor hockey, basketball, football bowling and other games, and medals were distributed to the participating students and players. Al-Kuwari said: “I would like to express our happiness in organising this event in co-operation with Aspire Zone Foundation and Qatar Paralympic Committee, which coincides with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, whom we’re proud of and appreciate, as they’re an essential part of society and supporting them is a duty of everyone. From this view point, we were keen, in co-operation with our partners, to celebrate their international day. I can only express my highest appreciation and gratitude to them, and I take this opportunity to thank all those who co-operated and participated with us. “Thanks also to all those who were present and everyone who contributed towards making this a distinguished event.” Al-Naemi said: “AZF is proud to host the 2024 Paralympic Games Day at Aspire as we believe that sports are not limited to a specific category and that they’re available to all ages and abilities. The AZF is always keen to involve people with disabilities in the various sports activities by Aspire as part of our social responsibility. We’re also keen to benefit from our worldclass facilities equipped according to the latest international standards to suit all requirements. We thank the co-operation of QSL and QPC for the event’s success.” Dr al-Ansari said: “As we celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we’re reiterating our support for this group of the society, which deserves more attention and focus. QPC would like to thank the Qatar Olympic Committee for its great support and encouragement for our activities aimed at the uplift of our athletes with disabilities and creating a feeling of oneness among them. Such events and activities help them further discover their talents. I thank the Qatar Stars League and Aspire Zone Foundation for joining us in this noble cause.” Related Story UDST hosts 'Move Smart' event Dreama, MSDF celebrate Children’s Day with innovative artwork at HIA