DAVISON – The Oxford Wildcats were perfect in the shootout and slipped past the Lake Orion Dragons 2-1 (SO) in Thursday’s district final.

“Lake Orion was good tonight, very, very good, and they had a fantastic season. I knew we were going to get their best,” Oxford head coach Adam Bican said. “It’s good just to get out of here with a win.”

The Wildcats made all three of their kicks, and Wildcats goalie Nolan Mauser saved all three Lake Orion kicks to give Oxford the victory.

“Obviously, I was nervous going to pens, but I just stayed confident in my abilities and made some saves,” Mauser said. “I do a decent job of waiting, not letting them fool me or deceive me, and I just read their legs and trust my instincts.”

The game was an up-and-down affair with both teams playing very direct. Oxford broke on top with 14:53 to play in the first half when Ryan Pietsch laid off a ball at the top of the penalty area for Tristan Warthun, who fired a swerving shot through a crowd and just inside the right post for a 1-0 Oxford lead.

Lake Orion tied the game just before halftime when Deniz Redzep played a ball out of midfield that Billy Kappler headed in with 2:36 on the first half clock.

The momentum went back and forth in this one as neither team could maintain control for an extended period of time. The Wildcats ended up with a slight edge in shots, amassing 21 total attempts versus 18 shots for Lake Orion.

“Both teams played really hard. You saw both teams compete. They both had opportunities. It sucks that it had to end that way (penalty kicks), but someone has to advance,” Lake Orion head coach Jason Wise said.

Oxford’s effort was spearheaded by the play of Ryan Clark and Drew Cady, who were both all over the field for the Wildcats.

“While we’re out on the field, while we’re huddling, we talk about all the times we’ve ran bleachers. All the sweat, hard work, tears we’ve done,” Clark said. “It was a great game. It was fun to play them again because we played them in regular season, and we played them last year three times.”

Lake Orion was led by the play of Austin Negri and center backs Will Farmer and Matt Toffolo.

With the win, Oxford (14-1-5) claims its second straight district title and will move on to regionals next week where the Wildcats will face the winner of Friday night’s game between West Bloomfield and Walled Lake Central.

“We’ll probably go take a look at them,” Bican said. “We played West Bloomfield earlier. But it really does not matter what happened in the regular season. You can learn a couple things about people, but when it’s the postseason everybody is up. So we’re looking for another really strong challenge, and we are not looking past that game. I promise you.”

Photo gallery from No. 4 Oxford vs. Lake Orion in boys soccer district championship action

Lake Orion finishes the year 11-4-2 and won the Oakland Activities Association White Division.

“We had a good number of guys coming back, and there is a lot of experience. But I thought the spirit’s up from the guys. They really bought in, and they really gelled as a team. I thought that was what was really nice,” Wise said.

The Dragons will graduate 14 seniors as they move up to play in the OAA Red next year.

“It’s going to be like a whole new roster, or half a whole new roster next year, and a lot of those seniors do put in some solid minutes. So it’s going to be interesting in the Red.”

Fourth-ranked Oxford defeated Lake Orion 2-1 in penalty kicks to win the D1 district held at Davison High School on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024.

 

 

AUBURN HILLS – The majority of Cranbrook-Kingswood’s players that took the field Thursday night know all too well how difficult it is to defeat the same side three times in a season.

Last fall, the Cranes lost to Orchard Lake St. Mary’s twice in the regular season, then defeated the Eaglets 3-0 for a district championship.

This year Cranbrook won both games prior to the postseason, and its players were all too aware of how hard it’d be to avoid falling victim to that identical pattern with the two sides matched up at the same stage of the postseason for the second year in a row.

“The people that were here last year, which is most of us, we knew what we were feeling last year was a ton of anger, a ton of grit coming into this game, and last year we ended up winning,” Cranbrook senior Paul Lee said. “We knew they were going to come in with the same intensity, and that we had to play really, really well to come up with the win.”

The Cranes got that elusive third win over St. Mary’s Thursday night at Avondale High School, winning 1-0 for their third consecutive district title.

It marked new territory, though, for first-year head coach Jacob Nunner, who before playing at Michigan was familiar to being between the sticks in the CHSL at Warren De La Salle.

“It’s fantastic,” Nunner said. “An unbelievable feeling. This school has been so welcoming. I’m surrounded by great people, I have a great AD, fantastic coaching staff and players. We’ve been working. Props to these boys, they deserved it. Whether in the gym, on the field, in the film room, they’ve been working hard and it’s just nice to see all the work pay off into something tangible.”

In a match full of opportunities born out of set pieces, it was fitting that the lone ball to cross the line came from one. With 18:07 left in the opening half, Cranbrook won a long free kick that may have taken a deflection off an opposing player after being served in by Lee and couldn’t be kept from going in despite an outstretched effort by St. Mary’s goalkeeper Mason Lanfear.

“We rehearse a lot of different types of set pieces in training, so that one, to see it executed in training and then executed here, it was fantastic to see,” Nunner said. “You want it whipped and driven in, and obviously when you put service into the box, sometimes bad things happen. I think one of their defenders maybe mishit it. We needed it. It was big for our momentum.”

Added Lee, “I just tried to hit it in a dangerous area. I didn’t even see what happened; I thought my teammate scored it.”

St. Mary’s came out direct and in control of possession the first 10 minutes before both teams began to carve out chances as the half wore on. Lanfear had to come far off his line and withstood heavy contact to deny one attack, then the Eaglets produced a nervy moment from a corner kick just several minutes before Cranbrook got its goal.

The Eaglets were perhaps unlucky not to come away level at intermission with their looks in the last two minutes, one of which included Gab Richer’s pass from near the end line that flashed across the goalmouth but didn’t connect with a teammate.

“I thought we had a good game plan, stuck to the game plan,” St. Mary’s head coach Keith Jeffrey said. “Our work rate was good. We knew we had to match their intensity because that’s a team that’s well-coached and plays with intensity. And we created a lot actually. I thought we were unlucky to be down 1-0 at half, but at the end of the day, sometimes that’s the way that goes.

“We knew they’re very organized. They’ve got a great center back in Paul. (Senior Milo Kiezun’s) very effective, he’s the nucleus for them. We wanted to make it difficult on them, then try to hit some dangerous balls in … We tried to (makes changes and) give them a different look, made some adjustments, and they made some adjustments. Again, I thought we had chances, corners and free kicks. I thought we could hit a few more diagonal balls in the  box, but they found a way to defend and get balls out.”

After a number of big moments in those first 40 minutes, Cranbrook managed to subdue the Eaglets for much of the second half. The most favorable chance came in the final few minutes when again Lanfear was called into action and gave a shot attempt a right-handed punch while elevated, then had to fend off the continued attack when he hit the ground to give the Eaglets a look at tying the match on the other end, but St. Mary’s attack never got in for any sort of grade-A opportunity before time ran out.

Photo gallery of Cranbrook vs. OLSM in Division 2 boys soccer district championship action

St. Mary's, who defeated Holly and Waterford Kettering both by scores of 2-1 to reach Thursday's final, finishes the season with a record of 9-11.

"I think our team was very dangerous, very competitive," Jeffrey said. "You take away the record -- a lot of the games we lost in the last, like, five minutes of the game, very unlucky again. But the team competed, showed up every day. I've got a lot of returners. We're still young, goalie's a freshman, we'll be returning two captains. The future's bright, man."

Cranbrook defeated Avondale and Brother Rice to get to Thursday's district final. The Cranes (10-5-1) now get a few days off to prepare for fifth-ranked Mason next Wednesday in Goodrich.

"We're looking forward to it," Nunner said. "We'll be up for it."

 

Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood scored off a set piece in the opening half, the difference for the Cranes in their 1-0 district championship victory over Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 in Auburn Hills.

DETROIT (AP) — Artemi Panarin had his eighth career hat trick and the New York Rangers rolled to a 5-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night.

Panarin became the first Rangers player to have multiple points in the first four games of a season. He scored twice on the power play. Vincent Trocheck also had a power- play goal and assisted on all of Panarin’s goals.

Jonathan Quick made 29 saves in his season debut. Victor Mancini also scored.

The Rangers have won the last five meetings, including twice this week. New York had a 4-1 home victory over Detroit on Monday night.

Moritz Seider and J.T. Compher scored for Detroit. Red Wings goalie Cam Talbot was pulled in the second period after allowing five goals.

Takeaways

Rangers: The power play ranked third in the league last season with four players recording at least 11 goals, including Panarin and Trocheck. It looks just as dangerous this season with Panarin leading the way with three man-advantage goals.

Red Wings: Detroit just missed the playoffs last season, in large part because it was 25th in goals allowed (3.33). The Red Wings are off to a 1-3 start while giving up 15 goals in the losses.

Key moment

The Red Wings had a 5-on-3 advantage after the Rangers committed two penalties in the first six minutes. Detroit, which has only one power-play goal in 13 attempts this season, failed to cash in. Just over a minute after the Rangers’ penalty kill, Panarin scored on New York’s first shot on goal.

Key stat

Panarin has 39 points in 24 career games against the Red Wings, including 15 goals. He has at least one point in 10 of the last 11 meetings.

Up next

Rangers: At Toronto on Saturday night.

Red Wings: At Nashville on Saturday.

By KATE BRUMBACK and JEFF AMY

ATLANTA (AP) — National and state Republicans on Thursday appealed a judge’s ruling that said seven election rules recently passed by Georgia’s State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”

The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are appealing a ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox, who ruled Wednesday that the State Election Board did not have the authority to pass the rules and ordered it to immediately inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.

The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention — one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

In a statement Thursday announcing the appeal. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley accused Cox of “the very worst of judicial activism.”

“By overturning the Georgia State Election Board’s commonsense rules passed to safeguard Georgia’s elections, the judge sided with the Democrats in their attacks on transparency, accountability, and the integrity of our elections,” Whatley said. “We have immediately appealed this egregious order to ensure commonsense rules are in place for the election — we will not let this stand.”

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Eternal Vigilance Action, an organization founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican. The suit argued that the State Election Board overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.

The ruling was hailed as a victory by Democrats and voting rights groups, who say rules the State Election Board has passed in recent months could be used by allies of Donald Trump to cast doubt on results if the former president loses the presidential election to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Recent appointments to the five-member board have put three Trump-endorsed Republicans in the majority. They have passed new rules over the objections of the board’s lone Democrat and the nonpartisan chair.

County election officials from around the state — the people who run the elections — have voiced concerns over the flood of new rules taking effect so close to Election Day.

The other rules Cox said are illegal and unconstitutional are ones that: require someone delivering an absentee ballot in person to provide a signature and photo ID; demand video surveillance and recording of ballot drop boxes after polls close during early voting; expand the mandatory designated areas where partisan poll watchers can stand at tabulation centers; and require daily public updates of the number of votes cast during early voting.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, TikTok approved advertisements that contained election disinformation even though it has a ban on political ads, according to a report published Thursday by the nonprofit Global Witness.

The technology and environmental watchdog group submitted ads that it designed to test how well systems at social media companies work in detecting different types of election misinformation.

The group, which did a similar investigation two years ago, did find that the companies — especially Facebook — have improved their content-moderation systems since then.

But it called out TikTok for approving four of the eight ads submitted for review that contained falsehoods about the election. That’s despite the platform’s ban on all political ads in place since 2019.

The ads never appeared on TikTok because Global Witness pulled them before they went online.

“Four ads were incorrectly approved during the first stage of moderation, but did not run on our platform,” TikTok spokesman Ben Rathe said. “We do not allow political advertising and will continue to enforce this policy on an ongoing basis.”

Facebook, which is owned by Meta Platforms Inc., “did much better” and approved just one of the eight submitted ads, according to the report.

In a statement, Meta said while “this report is extremely limited in scope and as a result not reflective of how we enforce our policies at scale, we nonetheless are continually evaluating and improving our enforcement efforts.”

Google’s YouTube did the best, Global Witness said, approving four ads but not letting any publish. It asked for more identification from the Global Witness testers before it would publish them and “paused” their account when they didn’t. However, the report said it is not clear whether the ads would have gone through had Global Witness provided the required identification.

Google did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

Companies nearly always have stricter policies for paid ads than they do for regular posts from users. The ads submitted by Global Witness included outright false claims about the election — such as stating that Americans can vote online — as well as false information designed to suppress voting, like claims that voters must pass an English test before casting a ballot. Other fake ads encouraged violence or threatened electoral workers and processes.

The ads Global Witness submitted were text-based, but the group said it translated them into what it called “algospeak.” This is a widely used trick to try to bypass internet companies’ text-focused content moderation systems by substituting numbers and symbols as stand-in for letters, making it harder for automated systems to “read” the text.

By Christine Fernando, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump has had a tough time finding a consistent message to questions about abortion and reproductive rights.

The former president has constantly shifted his stances or offered vague, contradictory and at times nonsensical answers to questions on an issue that has become a major vulnerability for Republicans in this year’s election. Trump has been trying to win over voters, especially women, skeptical about his views, especially after he nominated three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the nationwide right to abortion two years ago.

The latest example came this week when the Republican presidential nominee said some abortion laws are “too tough” and would be “redone.”

“It’s going to be redone,” he said during a Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday. “They’re going to, you’re going to, you end up with a vote of the people. They’re too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone because already there’s a movement in those states.”

Trump did not specify if he meant he would take some kind of action if he wins in November, and he did not say which states or laws he was talking about. He did not elaborate on what he meant by “redone.”

He also seemed to be contradicting his own stand when referencing the strict abortion bans passed in Republican-controlled states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump recently said he would vote against a constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot that is aimed at overturning the state’s six-week abortion ban. That decision came after he had criticized the law as too harsh.

Trump has shifted between boasting about nominating the justices who helped strike down federal protections for abortion and trying to appear more neutral. It’s been an attempt to thread the divide between his base of anti-abortion supporters and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights.

About 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the past two years.

Trump also has been repeating the narrative that he returned the question of abortion rights to states, even though voters do not have a direct say on that or any other issue in about half the states. This is particularly true for those living in the South, where Republican-controlled legislatures, many of which have been gerrymandered to give the GOP disproportionate power, have enacted some of the strictest abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Currently, 13 states have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, while four more ban it after six weeks — before many women know they’re pregnant.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups and their Republican allies in state governments are using an array of strategies to counter proposed ballot initiatives in at least eight states this year.

Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s fluctuating stances on reproductive rights.

Flip-flopping on Florida

On Tuesday, Trump claimed some abortion laws are “too tough” and would be “redone.”

But in August, Trump said he would vote against a state ballot measure that is attempting to repeal the six-week abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

That came a day after he seemed to indicate he would vote in favor of the measure. Trump previously called Florida’s six-week ban a “terrible mistake” and too extreme. In an April Time magazine interview, Trump repeated that he “thought six weeks is too severe.”

Trump on vetoing a national ban

Trump’s latest flip-flopping has involved his views on a national abortion ban.

During the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a national abortion ban: “Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it.”

This came just weeks after Trump repeatedly declined to say during the presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris whether he would veto a national abortion ban if he were elected.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said in an interview with NBC News before the presidential debate that Trump would veto a ban. In response to debate moderators prompting him about Vance’s statement, Trump said: “I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness. And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”

‘Pro-choice’ to 15-week ban

Trump’s shifting abortion policy stances began when the former reality TV star and developer started flirting with running for office.

He once called himself “very pro-choice.” But before becoming president, Trump said he “would indeed support a ban,” according to his book “The America We Deserve,” which was published in 2000.

In his first year as president, he said he was “pro-life with exceptions” but also said “there has to be some form of punishment” for women seeking abortions — a position he quickly reversed.

At the 2018 annual March for Life, Trump voiced support for a federal ban on abortion on or after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

More recently, Trump suggested in March that he might support a national ban on abortions around 15 weeks before announcing that he instead would leave the matter to the states.

Views on abortion pills, prosecuting women

In the Time interview, Trump said it should be left up to the states to decide whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor women’s pregnancies.

“The states are going to make that decision,” Trump said. “The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

Democrats have seized on the comments he made in 2016, saying “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.

Trump also declined to comment on access to the abortion pill mifepristone, claiming that he has “pretty strong views” on the matter. He said he would make a statement on the issue, but it never came.

Trump responded similarly when asked about his views on the Comstock Act, a 19th century law that has been revived by anti-abortion groups seeking to block the mailing of mifepristone.

IVF and contraception

In May, Trump said during an interview with a Pittsburgh television station that he was open to supporting regulations on contraception and that his campaign would release a policy on the issue “very shortly.” He later said his comments were misinterpreted.

In the KDKA interview, Trump was asked, “Do you support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception?”

“We’re looking at that and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly,” Trump responded.

Trump has not since released a policy statement on contraception.

Trump also has offered contradictory statements on in vitro fertilization.

During the Fox News town hall, which was taped Tuesday, Trump declared that he is “the father of IVF,” despite acknowledging during his answer that he needed an explanation of IVF in February after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law.

Trump said he instructed Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., to “explain IVF very quickly” to him in the aftermath of the ruling.

As concerns over access to fertility treatments rose, Trump pledged to promote IVF by requiring health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for it. Such a move would be at odds with the actions of much of his own party.

Even as the Republican Party has tried to create a national narrative that it is receptive to IVF, these messaging efforts have been undercut by GOP state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A Novi man has been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for violently raping young children, which he filmed and posted on the internet, officials said.

U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain handed down the sentencing Oct. 17 to Glenn Dennison, 33, who pleaded guilty to charges this past April.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office-Eastern District of Michigan, Dennison filmed his violent sexual assaults of three minor children who were all under the age of 10 — with the youngest just two years old when the abuse began. The sexual assaults became known when he posted images of child sexual abuse on a public website in 2022, officials said.

A search warrant executed at Dennison’s Novi home by Homeland Securty Investigations agents in July 2022 turned up multiple files of sexual abuse of the three children on his cell phone, officials said.

“This defendant was a caregiver and preyed on the vulnerable children in his care,” U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison stated in a news release. “Our commitment to protecting children in our community and bringing to justice those who abuse them is unwavering. This sentence underscores that commitment.”

Added HSI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Angie Salazar:“Child rapists can manipulate their way into children’s lives and this perpetrator was convicted for monstrous acts against children in his care. We will never stop protecting and serving our community and seeking justice for victims. That being said these cases that prey upon innocent children are among the most difficult to investigate. I am ever grateful to our team for the work they do and I want to bring attention to the fact that these crimes tend to be hidden in plain sight.”

Suspected child exploitation can be reported to the HSI tip line at 1-877-4-HSI-TIP.

Insanity defense planned for woman accused of child abuse, contributing to delinquency of minor

It’s a 2 year-plus sentence — but no added prison time for Commerce man convicted in child porn case 

Murder after spitting in sink lands Pontiac man in prison for decades

Teen killer of GM executive and wife paroled from prison

 

Patrick Clarke, TravelPulse (TNS)

Travelers searching for America’s safest cities may want to head to New England this holiday season.

The experts at WalletHub recently compared more than 180 cities across the U.S., analyzing more than 40 key indicators of safety, such as traffic fatalities and assaults per capita, unemployment rate, natural disaster risk level and the percentage of the population that’s uninsured to determine which locales are the safest to visit in 2024.

Vermont was the big winner, with South Burlington and Burlington ranking first and fourth, respectively. Meanwhile, Warwick, Rhode Island ranks third, with Portland, Maine also making the top 10 at number nine.

South Burlington ranks first for financial security, a category that accounts for 20 of the 100 points and considers a variety of factors like poverty rate, unemployment, job security and retirement plan access, among other things.

According to WalletHub, Warwick — a city just south of Providence — boasts the fewest thefts per 1,000 residents and the second-fewest assaults per capita.

Casper, Wyoming, and Boise, Idaho, rank second and fifth, respectively, while other top 10 safest cities include Yonkers, New York (sixth); Cedar Rapids, Iowa (seventh); Columbia, Maryland (eighth) and Virginia Beach, Virginia (10th).

Columbia — a suburban destination just outside of Baltimore — ranks first for home and community safety, a category that accounts for 60 of the 100 points.

Factors examined in this area include the presence of terrorist attacks; the number of mass shootings; murders and non-negligent manslaughters per capita; forcible rapes and hate crimes per capita, among other safety indicators.

The 10 most safe US cities

1. South Burlington, Vermont2. Casper, Wyoming3. Warwick, Rhode Island4. Burlington, Vermont5. Boise, Idaho6. Yonkers, New York7. Cedar Rapids, Iowa8. Columbia, Maryland9. Portland, Maine10. Virginia Beach, Virginia

Memphis, Tennessee, has the unfortunate distinction of being the least safe city in the country, based on WalletHub’s research, ranking 180th for home and community safety and 181st for financial security.

Memphis is tied for the most traffic fatalities and assaults per capita and has the lowest percentage of households with emergency savings.

Other poor-performing places include Detroit; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore; Cleveland; Oakland, California; Philadelphia and San Bernardino, California.

Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any city that WalletHub examined and is tied for the most assaults per capita.

Houston, which ranks 171st out of 182 cities, has the highest natural disaster risk level while Washington, D.C., ranks top five in terms of hate crimes per capita.

The 10 least safe US cities

1. Memphis, Tennessee2. Detroit, Michigan3. Fort Lauderdale, Florida4. Baton Rouge, Louisiana5. New Orleans, Louisiana6. Baltimore, Maryland7. Cleveland, Ohio8. Oakland, California9. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania10. San Bernardino, California

©2024 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Liam Payne’s cause of death has been revealed less than 24 hours after the One Direction alum’s fatal fall from the balcony of a Buenos Aires hotel, which local authorities say was a jump.

A medical-legal autopsy conducted early Thursday showed that the 31-year-old pop star suffered polytrauma resulting in both internal and external bleeding, according to Argentine newspaper La Nación.

Payne sustained “a cranial fracture and extremely serious injuries that led to his immediate death,” Alberto Crescenti, head of the Emergency Medical Care System (SAME), told the outlet.

Further details, including whether Payne had substances in his system, are pending a complete autopsy. The cause of the three-story fall from the balcony of the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, where he’d been staying for multiple days, is also under investigation.

Payne “jumped from the balcony of his room,” Buenos Aires Security Ministry communications director Pablo Policicchio said in a statement to The Associated Press and People later Thursday morning.

The Daily News has reached out to the Ministry for comment.

In a call to emergency services just after 5 p.m. local time, minutes before Payne’s fatal plunge, a man who identified himself as the hotel’s chief receptionist reported that a guest was “high on drugs” and “trashing the room.”

Upon being asked if the guest was being aggressive, the line was cut off, before the receptionist called back and said the guest had “had too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room.” The receptionist asked authorities to “urgently” send someone and said he was unsure “whether his life may be in danger,” referencing the balcony in the room.

At the time of his death, Payne had reportedly been in the South American country for more than two weeks. Payne and girlfriend Kate Cassidy, who returned to the U.S. earlier this week, reportedly supported former bandmate Niall Horan at his Buenos Aires show on Oct. 2.

Payne and Horan previously were members of British boy band sensation One Direction along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. Both Styles’ mother and Horan’s older brother are among those who have paid tribute to Payne.

It’s unclear how Payne’s remains will be transferred to his native U.K., though the British Embassy in Argentina told La Nación it is “supporting Payne’s family and … are in contact with the local authorities.”

Liam Payne had consumed “too many drugs and alcohol” and was “trashing the entire room” of the Buenos Aires hotel where he was staying, according to a call made to emergency services moments before the former One Direction singer’s tragic death.

Two 911 recordings released late on Wednesday offer more details of the chaotic scene that unfolded before the 31-year-old British pop star fell from a third-floor balcony of the CasaSur Palermo hotel.

In the first call, a man named Esteban, who describes himself as the chief receptionist of the hotel, is heard telling a 911 dispatcher that one of their guests is “high on drugs” and “trashing the room,” adding “we need someone to come.”

El llamado al 911, antes de la muerte de Liam Payne: “Tenemos un huésped que está sobrepasado de droga y alcohol” | por José María Costa (@jmcos) https://t.co/0r84Lcvtup pic.twitter.com/CswJl31xTJ

— LA NACION (@LANACION) October 16, 2024

The line gets cut off as the dispatcher asks Esteban if the guest is being aggressive.

He then calls back and explains the situation again. “We’ve got a guest who has had too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room and we need you to send someone, please.”

Esteban appears to fear for Payne’s life, as he’s heard asking the dispatcher to send help “urgently.”

“I don’t know whether his life may be in danger — the guest’s life,” he says.

“He is in a room with a balcony and well, we’re a little afraid that he…” Esteban continues but is cut off by the dispatcher, who asks how long the guest has stayed at the hotel.

‘He’s been here for two or three days,” Esteban says, asking the dispatcher again to send somebody “urgently.”

The dispatcher then informs Esteban that both local authorities and the Emergency Medical Care System, or SAME, have been informed.

Así encontraron la habitación del hotel desde donde cayó Liam Payne, el excantante de One Direction https://t.co/n86SzPv8jN pic.twitter.com/05enYom8BE

— LA NACION (@LANACION) October 17, 2024

The calls were made around 5 p.m., local time, the Buenos Aires-based newspaper La Nación reported.

According to the publication, police later found aluminum foil, candles, a lighter and traces of a “white powder” substance in the room where Payne was staying.

Forensic analysis will determine if drugs may have been consumed in the room before his death.

The newspaper also published a photograph, said to be from the room, showing a smashed television screen next to what appears to be a bottle and a glass of champagne.

Payne, who has previously spoken publicly about struggles with substance abuse, said in a 2021 interview he was worried about “how far [his] rock bottom was going to be.”

As shocking news about the singer’s death emerged, fans of One Direction gathered outside the posh hotel for an impromptu vigil to honor the singer and celebrate his life.

A Pontiac man was sentenced Thursday for a slaying that happened after someone had spit in a sink.

At the hearing in Oakland County Circuit Court, Judge Jeffery Matis sent Sadarie Deshawn Donalson to prison for 30 to 60 years for the fatal shooting of Cornelius Jones, 33.
Donalson was convicted of second-degree murder at the conclusion of a jury trial in August.

The shooting happened Feb. 21 in an apartment in the 200 block of Carriage Circle Drive, where Donalson reportedly spit into Jones’ sink, which Jones reportedly said was “disrespectful,” based on witness reports. Investigators said that sparked an argument, and Jones told Donalson and his companion, Pontiac resident Dewaun Benion, to leave his home.

The two men left, then returned — and a physical fight between Benion and Jones ensued, leading to the shooting. Donalson shot Jones twice, and Jones died soon after at a local hospital.

Donalson and Benion fled the scene but were subsequently arrested.

Along with the murder conviction, the jury found Donalson guilty of assaulting/resisting/obstructing a police officer, carrying a concealed weapon and two counts of felony firearm in connection with the shooting. For those crimes, Matis sentenced him to 365 days in prison, with credit for 239 days served.

In August, prior to Donalson’s trial, Benion, 22, pleaded no contest to assault with intent to do great bodily harm in connection with the confrontation. He was sentenced to a year in jail with credit for 169 days served. Oakland County Jail records show his scheduled release date is Dec. 21.

It’s a 2 year-plus sentence — but no added prison time for Commerce man convicted in child porn case 

Teen killer of GM executive and wife paroled from prison

An Oakland County man is being held in connection with the homicide of a businessman who was found shot to death at his Harrison Township place of employment, according to the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office.

The 28-year-old Southfield man was arrested Tuesday at his job location somewhere in Macomb County, Sheriff Anthony Wickersham said. The sheriff said he wasn’t ready to release additional information.

“We are still trying to nail down all of the details,” Wickersham said Wednesday. “This was a real whodunit for a day or so, but our detectives have received help from different law enforcement agencies and were able to put something together.”

Wickersham said he would not comment on a possible motive.

The homicide happened at Immanuel and Associates warehouse on Executive Drive, near Interstate 94 and North River Road. Roger Palmer was found dead in the office at 6:30 a.m. Friday.

Palmer, 54, of Detroit, was discovered sitting at his desk with a gunshot wound to the head, investigators said.

After reviewing area surveillance videos, sheriff’s investigators learned an unknown male suspect wearing a mask parked his silver SUV near the business shortly after 5 a.m. He walked to Immanuel & Associates and gained entry into the building.

Palmer arrived to work shortly after 6 a.m. At approximately 6:20 a.m., the suspect was seen walking back to his vehicle before fleeing on southbound Executive Drive.

Detectives from the Sheriff’s Office “worked tirelessly to identify a suspect,” authorities said in a news release. Collaborating agencies included Macomb Area Computer Enforcement (MACE), Michigan State Police, the Sheriff’s Enforcement Team (SET), U.S. Marshals Service, and the FBI.

Wickersham said detectives plan to submit their findings to the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office Thursday or Friday, at which time more information will be released on the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Man found dead inside Harrison Township business

Utica City Council awards two marijuana licenses in M-59, M-53 area

US agency adopts rule to make it easier for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions

October’s supermoon pairs with a comet for a special nighttime spectacle

Judge chastises Oxford shooter’s appeals attorneys for trying to ‘circumvent’ court rules

By Simone Jasper, The Charlotte Observer

A couple’s wedding night turned “tragic” when the groom was shot to death in front of his bride, loved ones told news outlets.

Tyrek Burton, 37, was outside a North Carolina wedding venue when he was killed during a possible road-rage incident late Saturday, Oct. 12, the Greensboro Police Department wrote in a news release and told TV stations.

“It was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of his life, and it turned into something tragic,” the groom’s sister, Brittany Burton, told WGHP.

Police responded just before 9 p.m. to a reported shooting at an event center. At the scene, they found Tyrek Burton in the parking lot with life-threatening injuries. Crews worked to save the man, who later died, officers said.

“It was shocking,” Nysheria Holloway, his sister-in-law, told WRAL. “It was terrible.”

The groom had only been married to Holloway’s sister, Kiara, for about seven hours before his death, TV stations reported.

Relatives told news outlets that Burton left his reception for a short time before being followed by a driver who accused the groom of cutting him off. He was shot to death in front of his new wife, WXII reported.

Tyrek Burton is remembered in news reports as a hard-working father to four daughters. He had dated his wife for more than a decade.

“He was nothing but good and I demand justice,” Carolyn Burton, the groom’s mother, told WFMY. “I demand it. I don’t want to wait years for it. He doesn’t deserve what he got.”

As of Oct. 14, police said they were conducting a homicide investigation and didn’t share details about potential suspects. Officers ask anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 336-373-1000.

Police and Facebook users believed to be the groom’s mom and sister didn’t immediately share additional information with McClatchy News on Oct. 16.

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©2024 The Charlotte Observer. Visit at charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

RICHBURG, S.C. — In densely built towns, wildfires can trigger a deadly domino effect, with flames leaping from home to home until an entire neighborhood is destroyed.

How does construction and landscaping contribute to this catastrophic chain reaction? Is there a better way to build? To find out, a rural South Carolina research center is creating giant wind storms and burning down houses — while gathering detailed data.

“We can watch failures here that you can’t watch out in the real world,” said Christina Gropp of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center, a nonprofit funded by the insurance industry. Its scientists conduct studies to better understand building materials, designs and landscaping. It also hosts research by outside experts from UC Berkeley.

On a lonely stretch of road south of the city of Charlotte, next to a quaint country church and cemetery surrounded by fragrant pines, the 90-acre Center has a unique mission: advance building science by studying and reproducing wildfires, as well as hail storms and hurricanes. The goal is to identify new techniques and materials that create resiliency.

Its effort comes as wildfires are sending California’s insurance market into crisis. Grappling with escalating losses due to the magnitude and frequency of fires, many insurers are leaving the state. Homeowners are burdened with skyrocketing premiums — and some are losing coverage altogether.

There’s growing evidence that urban or suburban communities, not just remote mountain towns, are vulnerable to wind-driven fires, as evidenced by the destruction of Lahaina, Hawaii in 2023 and parts of Santa Rosa in 2017, say experts.

The Center’s work is influencing building codes, land use ordinances, architectural designs, retrofit applications and insurance coverage — changing how we construct and protect our homes.

Its experts make recommendations to state building code advisory committees and share research findings with consumers, builders, manufacturers, insurance companies, FEMA and the California Department of Insurance, among others, said Anne Cope, IBHS’s chief engineer.

“We need to better understand how to how to build our communities,” said UC Berkeley professor Michael Gollner of the Berkeley Fire Research Lab, who with professor Allen Goldstein is using the campus to conduct experiments about structure-to-structure spread and toxic emissions.

“Some protection measures work, and others don’t, so we figure out how to fix them,” Gollner said. “This ‘real world’ testing is expensive and hard — and desperately needed.”

The $40 million Center’s enormous wind tunnel — six stories tall — is the only place in the world that can conduct realistic wildfire ember storms to test the survival of full-scale one- and two-story buildings in a controlled, repeatable experiment. Embers, created by igniting wood chips in an underground chamber, are blown aloft by more than 100 powerful fans, each nearly six feet across.

Center scientists also can test the flammability of specific construction materials in an instrument called a cone calorimeter, which measures oxygen consumption, heat release rate, and smoke and toxic gas emissions.

In one $200,000 experiment, funded in part by California, it ignites a small home, decorated with a new sofa, chairs, tables, twin bed and modern kitchen appliances. High-tech sensors and other instruments record the fire’s temperature, flame velocity and more. As it burns, cameras document the threat to an adjacent home.

Hovering over the burning house, a UC-Berkeley drone collects smoke samples for analysis.

The Center can also mimic other natural disasters. In a realistic hail storm, cannons blast tiny ice balls — which vary in size and density, like real hail — at structures. Suspended water spigots recreate a fierce hurricane, dropping up to 8 inches of windblown rain every hour.

Out on its lawn, a “roof farm” of 96 different shingled panels is revealing the deterioration caused by severe weather, sun exposure and temperature fluctuations.

[]

Center scientists rushed off campus to investigate the deadly disasters in Paradise and Lahaina, picking through the rubble to better understand patterns of damage.

“We ask: ‘What was the first element of a house that got damaged? What was different about this, or that, building?’” said Faraz Hedayati, lead research engineer at the research center, who worked on investigations. “We can say: ‘This was the fire path. This is where it entered the house.’ We connect the dots.”

Its newest report. released this month, analyzed 170 burned homes in Lahaina. The report concluded that the density of homes and “connective fuels,” such as trees, secondary buildings, wooden fences and vehicles, contributed to the devastation.

Also important, according to the report, is the preparedness of homes located on the edge of a community. If constructed with fire-resistant materials and defensible space, these homes serve as the first line of defense, reducing the risk that the fire will spread to the larger community.

After each investigation, the scientists bring their observations back to the Center, where they can take a closer look at vulnerabilities.

Some of their discoveries have led to familiar recommendations, such as the elimination of all vegetation and wooden fencing within five feet of a home. Others are more novel. For new construction, they advocate the use of noncombustible siding and decks, simple roof and building shapes, enclosed eaves and metal reinforcement on vinyl frame windows.

“I’m optimistic that in the next 10 to 20 years, we’re going to have better building codes,” Hedayati said.

The Center also takes its research on the road.

At its most recent demonstration earlier this month at the Marin Fairground’s “Ember Stomp” in San Rafael, sponsored by Fire Safe Marin, residents gathered to watch drip torches set small spot fires — representing burning embers — in wood mulch around side-by-side structures. A conventionally built shed was quickly reduced to a pile of ashes. A fire-resistant shed withstood the flames.

California’s wildfire building code, passed in 2007, was designed to reduce a home’s risk of igniting.

In new homes, wood shake shingles aren’t allowed. Decks must be made of fire-resistant material, such as treated wood, tile or light concrete. Attic vents need to be covered in mesh to block embers. Homes must also have “defensible space,” limiting the amount of flammable vegetation immediately around them.

But these requirements are not as rigorous as the research center’s “Wildfire Prepared Home” designation program, where owners can have inspectors certify they completed a menu of retrofits and qualify for this special designation, and potentially a lower insurance bill. Of the roughly 4,900 California homeowners who have applied for this designation, about 800 are now certified.

Retrofitting can be expensive. While Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in 2022 announced a requirement that insurers provide discounts to consumers for wildfire mitigations, homeowners complain that they’re not getting much, if any, credit for undertaking fixes.

In an era of climate change and severe weather, the Center’s research is revealing the weaknesses of existing building codes and products, said UC Berkeley’s Gollner.

“As scientists, we’re trying to get the knowledge out there to the decision-makers and public officials,” he said.

“It’s hard,” he said. “But there’s more and more push to do the right thing.”

They spent hours gathered with strangers on the concrete steps along Lake Michigan, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness. Shortly after 9 p.m., the starry sky lit up with shimmering waves of green and purple. On cue, amazed gasps and cheers rippled through the crowd as they celebrated having caught from the city a magical sight many travelers spend their lives chasing: the Northern Lights.

Last Thursday’s aurora display was a sky-gazing event accessible to millions across the country. Some may have missed the show due to timing or light pollution, but upcoming occurrences this week — a radiant comet back in the solar system for the first time in 80,000 years and the brightest, biggest moon of the year — offer similar awe-inspiring opportunities.

Looking up at celestial phenomena such as the Northern Lights can boost feelings of empathy and collective belonging, feelings many believe are in short supply as a sense of divisiveness marks this fraught election cycle. A record-high 80% of Americans believe the nation is divided.

“What we’re finding is that experiences that bring about awe and, most predominantly, really powerful fleeting experiences … seem to attune people and connect us to one another,” said Paul Piff, a social psychologist and professor at the University of California Irvine. “It connects us to what’s bigger than ourselves, motivates us to care for others and the greater good.”

In his research with collaborators, Piff found that after marveling at natural beauty such as scenic landscapes and observing heavenly phenomena such as the 2017 total solar eclipse, people report less entitlement and more selfless views. They also engage in kinder, more compassionate and empathetic behavior.

So far, this year has had no shortage of spectacles: The last two months each saw supermoons, the annual Perseids meteor shower put on a sparkly show in August, geomagnetic storms from sun activity also made the Northern Lights visible at lower latitudes in mid-May, and 99% of Americans witnessed at least partially the total solar eclipse that darkened skies in 15 states in April.

Starting Sunday, an age-old comet has become visible from the Northern Hemisphere as it approaches the sun. On Thursday night, the brightest full moon of the year will light up skies across the United States as Earth’s celestial companion gets almost 17,000 miles closer.

While the social effects of watching something awe-inspiring might only last for a month, experts say people who consistently seek out such experiences can benefit from longer-term positive impacts.

And the cosmic shows are far from over. As Election Day comes and goes, the next couple of months will offer dazzling comet and meteor shows — an active sun might even bring out the Northern Lights yet again — and with them, chances for anyone frustrated with an increasingly polarized America to feel a renewed sense of connection to humanity and the cosmos.

From awe to agreeableness

A Gallup survey in August found most Americans (80%) believe the country is more divided than ever before. In 2016, 77% saw the nation as divided and in 2004, that percentage was 65%. The survey also found that 74% to 83% of citizens from all backgrounds and major subgroups share this negative view of national unity, regardless of gender, age, race, political affiliation and educational attainment.

“This is just kind of the perception that is out there, and I’m sure that perception is informed by reality,” said Jeff Jones, senior editor at Gallup.

In 2023, a Gallup survey found that more than half of Americans believed the state of moral values in the country was poor, and a record-high 83% thought it was worsening. More specifically, respondents expressed the most discontent with how people treat each other.

On the national stage, that incivility has only increased as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris trade insults ahead of the November presidential election. Heated attacks, rude remarks and lies have become the norm in the highest echelons of government.

Piff said this kind of divisiveness and polarization is driven, in part, by psychological tendencies to view one’s own beliefs and attitudes as “the only right way toward truth.”

“American society is hyper-polarized. People feel like the other side — whatever the other side may be — is different, wrong, immoral,” Piff said. “We live in these increasingly curated and insular social worlds where we’re surrounded by people that either agree with us or people on the other side who seem so different and extreme.”

Experiencing something awesome can provide common ground for people who are entrenched in their own worldviews or feel apathetic toward others who think differently, according to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California Berkeley.

“The echo chambers, the repulsive rhetoric and the dehumanization of our times have really countered these broader tendencies to think: We’re a democracy, we’re meant to disagree, it’s healthy in the spirit of freedom and liberty,” he said.

In a 2021 study, Keltner and another researcher found that after people watched a nature documentary they felt less strongly about capital punishment, perceived the country to be less polarized regarding the existence of racial bias in the criminal justice system, and expressed a reduced desire to be socially distant from those with different viewpoints.

Piff explained that powerful natural phenomena can have a humbling effect on people, steering them toward agreeableness and social cohesion.

“When you experience or perceive something that’s so vast, so complicated, so powerful … it makes you feel like you need to reconfigure, readjust or update your mental schema, your understanding of the world,” Piff said.

In one of Piff’s studies, participants stood in a towering grove of some of the tallest eucalyptus trees in North America for a minute. Other participants were asked to look up at a comparably tall building for the same amount of time. After their respective tasks, a researcher approached both groups to hand out questionnaires and, in the process, faked an accidental stumble, dropping a bunch of pens on the floor.

Participants who had contemplated the trees bent down to pick up more of the dropped pens than those who had been asked to look at the building; researchers used the number of pens participants picked up to measure helpfulness.

And in the questionnaire that they subsequently filled out, participants who had viewed the trees reported reduced feelings of entitlement, saying they deserved less pay and disagreeing with statements such as “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than others” or “If I were on the Titanic, I would deserve to be on the first lifeboat.”

Building on that study, Piff and other researchers studied the social effects of the 2017 solar eclipse, comparing the experiences of people in the path of totality — those who, directly under the moon’s shadow across the continental U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina, experienced complete darkness — versus people not in the path who saw a much less dramatic partial eclipse.

“Individuals who resided within the path of totality who experienced the eclipse in its fullness — and, you might say, its full awesomeness or its full power — exhibited more awe,” Piff said. “And as a result of that increased awe experience, they became less self-focused, less likely to talk about themselves.”

It was reflected in their language: Total eclipse viewers were likelier to use collective pronouns such as “we” and “us.” They also exhibited increased tendencies toward caring for others and collective well-being.

“When people experience awe,” Piff said, “the way that they define themselves, the terms that they use to define themselves, go from small social categories like ‘I’m a Californian’ or ‘I’m a Democrat’ to more inclusive social categories like ‘I’m a human,’ ‘I’m a member of the human species,’ ‘I’m a living organism.’”

Little communities

After the first big burst of the Northern Lights display Thursday, hopeful spectators who’d heard about it on social media rushed to the lakefront — a combination of amateur enthusiasts, seasoned skygazers and photographers with all kinds of expertise.

South Loop resident Sam del Rosario, 52, saw the show from Northwestern University Lakefill and Lighthouse Park. He has also chased the 2017 and 2024 eclipses that passed over southern Illinois. He said celestial events and his job as a hospice social worker have given him perspective.

“Those kinds of experiences, for me, are an intersection of … the hard sciences, something that is predictable, a culmination of human knowledge. But it’s also something that’s very emotional and very spiritual,” del Rosario said. “And I love when those things converge because it just shows how much we know, but also how much we don’t know.”

On the night of May 11, local photographer Josh Mellin headed to Museum Campus hoping to catch a glimpse and capture a shot of the Northern Lights, which had been visible from the city the night before. The crowd of similarly minded photographers dwindled after hours of fruitless waiting, and then it was “like a light switch turned on,” green fluttering and dancing across the sky. Everyone started screaming and shouting.

“We rolled the dice together. There was a community aspect to that, which I think drove us all to stay out,” he said. “You don’t get to meet up with people like that as often. It’s nice to just put (differences) aside.”

The group was on such a high of having experienced it together, Mellin said, that they weren’t ready to go back home to sleep. He headed to a bar for drinks and appetizers with three other photographers, two of whom he had just met, to wait for another possible burst forecast for 3 a.m.

Jones from Gallup polling said that dwindling association between people with different viewpoints is evident as more people now disapprove of marriage across political party lines: In 1958, 33% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans wanted their child to marry someone from the same party, according to Gallup data. In 2016, a political scientist asked a similar question and found that 60% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans wanted their child to marry someone from the same political party.

“It just kind of speaks to, politics has just been this very divisive force now, while in the past it was there, but it wasn’t quite at the same level,” Jones said. “You would have Democrats marrying Republicans, and they’d get along just fine.”

Since the dawn of time, humans have looked to the skies. Astronomy informed early navigation and the creation of the internationally recognized Julian calendar.

As director of public observing at the Adler Planetarium for three decades, Michelle Nichols has witnessed what she calls “little temporary communities” grow around telescopes and under “the sky we all share.”

It never gets old: “It’s the most remarkable thing,” she said.

“It’s a way to interact with folks who you’ve never met,” Nichols said. “I mean, we don’t ask people what their backgrounds are — we don’t care. We don’t ask people their political or religious affiliation — we don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It helps to connect us all as human beings.”

Lasting effects of everyday awe

After the solar eclipse in 2017, Piff and his fellow researchers documented awe-induced pro-social patterns of behavior returned to a baseline within a six-week window.

“That’s not to say that the effects are as fleeting as the eclipse itself,” he said, “but they seem to kind of go back to people’s normal, sort of default modes.”

Yet making a habit of more intentionally and repeatedly seeking out similarly awe-inspiring experiences — such as observing the night sky, a beautiful sunset or landscape — can sustain selfless, empathetic tendencies and overall mental well-being.

“Basically, one experience isn’t enough,” Piff said. “But if you orient yourself, learn to attend to the world in ways that bring about awe, which I think is a simple practice that people can do, then you’ll experience more of it, even in mundane or quotidian ways. And because of those more frequent experiences, you’ll experience a lot of its more long-lasting benefits.”

Keltner, who has authored a book about cultivating “everyday wonder,” said that listening to a powerful piece of music, looking at the night sky and reading about big ideas, including freedom of speech, “all have the potential of making us aware of our more common humanity, our shared concerns.”

Nichols from the planetarium said awe doesn’t necessarily have to come from witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime event such as a solar eclipse, which is rare and not as accessible to everyone.

She recalled a few years ago when, during an event in the Adler’s observatory, a woman approached a large telescope that was pointed at the moon and looked through.

“She was so excited, you could tell, and she stopped for a second,” Nichols said. “She backed up, sat down, and she started crying because it was so moving of an experience.”

“The mundane stuff is also just as impactful,” she added, echoing Piff.

It’s a matter of keeping an eye out for what’s happening and saying: “The universe has given me this, and I’m going to give it a try.”

Give awe a try

• Dubbed “comet of the year,” comet C/2023 A3 or Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, is speeding across the inner solar system and will be visible to the naked eye across the Northern Hemisphere through the end of October. According to NASA, the best time to spot it will be from Monday through Oct. 24 when it’s low on the western horizon shortly after sunset. The comet will rise higher each evening but appear dimmer. Comets are cosmic snowballs, which experts call “frozen leftovers” of dust, rock and ice from when the solar system was formed. As comets orbit closer to the sun, they heat up and their ice particles evaporate, trailing dust in a tail that can stretch millions of miles. They look like fuzzy balls with a wispy tail that points away from the sun.
• A newly discovered comet, C/2024 S1 ATLAS, is also approaching Earth and will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere beginning Oct. 28. If it survives its close encounter with the sun, it will be at its brightest before sunrise Oct. 29 through Oct. 31 — maybe even more so than Venus. It might also grow a big, curved tail.
• Thursday’s supermoon will be closest to Earth, only 222,055 miles away compared with its usual average distance of 238,900 miles. According to the Adler Planetarium, it will appear up to 30% brighter and almost 15% bigger than a full moon does at its farthest point.
• There’s still one more supermoon to see this year. On Nov. 15, the full moon will reach peak illumination at 3:28 p.m. and be around 225,000 miles from Earth. It will be visible from Chicago as it rises at 4:05 p.m. from the northeast.
• Traveling at 22 miles per second, as many as 120 bright, yellow meteors could be visible each hour at night on Dec. 13 through Dec. 14 as one of the largest and most reliable annual showers reaches its peak. The Geminids meteor shower is named after the Gemini constellation, from which they appear to radiate. While meteors are colloquially recognized as shooting stars, they are not caused by stars but rather rocks and metal bits, often from comets burning in Earth’s atmosphere when the planet runs into a trail of debris. In the case of the Geminids, which first began appearing in the 1800s, that debris comes not from a comet but from a small asteroid called Phaethon.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s son, Tyler Jay Boebert, pleaded guilty to attempted identity theft in Garfield County Court in Colorado last week and was sentenced to community service and a deferred judgement.

Tyler Boebert, 19, was arrested in February after Rifle, Colorado, police alleged he was involved in a string of car break-ins and stolen credit cards that were used to buy food, diesel and other items.

He initially faced 22 charges in the case, all but one of which were dismissed as part of a plea agreement, according to court records.

He pleaded guilty to one count of attempted identity theft, a felony, in county court Thursday.

If Boebert completes the deferred sentence, including 80 hours of community service, the felony conviction will be dismissed, according to the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.

Christopher Vondracek | (TNS) The Minnesota Star Tribune

The dogs were tired. The small army of press stalking him needed to put down cameras. And Gov. Tim Walz was fiddling with removing shells from his gun.

Nothing could’ve prepared us for the political bombshell that came next.

As the governor on this idyllic October morning southwest of Sleepy Eye fussed with the firearm, two dozen blaze orange-vested reporters watching, our own Minnesota Star Tribune photojournalist Anthony Soufflé asked Walz if he owned the gun.

“This is mine,” the 60-year-old responded.

And then Walz, who in his first year in Congress de-throned former Rep. Collin Peterson as the top-shot for Democrats in the Congressional Shootout of clay pigeons, dispensed a dad joke that would’ve landed well on the gingham tablecloth of the farmhouses he represented for a dozen years in Washington D.C.

“Borrowing a gun is like borrowing underwear,” Walz said, to chuckles from the press.

And, then … well, actually that was it.

Walz talked about his semiautomatic shotgun, a Beretta A-400, mentioned he liked the more forgiving recoil on his shoulders, and then — flipping up the shotgun, shells removed — walked along the tall grass back to the farmsite where he sat on a pick-up, ate venison sticks and talked hunting dogs.

Little did any of us know, however, at that moment, buzzing over the internet around the world, the biggest news event of the day, perhaps an October Surprise, for this vice presidential candidate was, at least in the eyes of the internet, already hatched.

Walz didn’t know how to use his gun.

A CBS reporter standing next to me had managed to dispatch to X a roughly 30-second clip of Walz un-jamming a gun, and within seconds, the rapacious reviews came pouring in accusing “Tampon Timmy” of more rural cosplay, of being caught redhanded lip-synching at the Super Bowl. As if a Holiday Inn guest had just been handed a stethoscope ahead of surgery.

I, standing in the field, didn’t know any of this at the time. But when I returned to Minneapolis that night, while my wife and sister-in-law made dinner and peppered me with questions, I opened up my phone to check in on reactions to my story and, instead, saw a piece from the Daily Mail in London.

“Tim Walz roasted over pheasant hunting stunt,” read the headline.

Huh? I scanned the story.

Was it the underwear joke? Nope.

The fact that he’d hadn’t shot a bird? Too timid.

No, according to trolls on the internet, Walz inelegantly un-loaded his shotgun shells.

But there were other “hot takes” on the day’s big event.

A Trump campaign page had shared what they called “another angle of Tim Walz fumbling around for his gun” and noted, “Tampon has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.”

Even Rep. Brad Finstad, the southern Minnesota congressman who represents not only Walz’s old district but also hunted in the same county as the governor Saturday morning, put out a photo of himself with two pheasants he shot on X, saying, “Great day for pheasant hunting in Brown County where we typically hunt with our shotguns.”

Was the insinuation that the governor hadn’t even brought his gun?

Sure enough, yes. All across the internet, people had interpreted a still photograph of the governor arriving in the motorcade and walking up to the DNR officer to get his license checked as evidence that Walz had never even picked up a shotgun, had simply done a blaze orange vogue.

Look, I’m the paper’s agriculture reporter. Corn, soybeans, occasionally cultivated wild rice. It’s a good gig. Sometimes, due to scheduling conflicts on our politics team, I get to fill-in on the other commodity: power. I’ve seen turkeys (not) pardoned in a gilded room at the Capitol. I’ve interviewed senators about flooding in southern Minnesota. Last August, I sat on a rainy stage for 30 minutes chatting with Royce White, the GOP Senate candidate, outside the Star Tribune booth at the State Fair. (I lost a beloved vintage blazer!)

And in some ways, lamenting the social juggernaut of misinformation is a little passé. To borrow an agricultural film metaphor, we are not in Kansas anymore.

But the internet is complicating our democracy. Two weekends ago, I sat on a patio overlooking the Root River in lovely Lanesboro when I overheard a patron insist to a table next to us that the government had orchestrated the tragic hurricane in the U.S. to take out conservative voters.

Even back in August, I had two dear friends insist to me that, actually, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance did alight onto a monologue about romantic relationships with couches in his memoir (he didn’t).

These are smart people. Well-intentioned people. We’ve just been overwhelmed by the medium. I’m not a hunter. I went to graduate school for literature. We are in need of rhetorical flotation devices to keep us afloat in the floods.

So here’s what actually happened last Saturday morning.

First-off, there might not be a Casey’s or Kwik Trip between the Twin Cities and New Ulm that carries a blaze orange stocking cap. That’s a missed opportunity. Because I searched nearly nearly every single one on my pre-dawn ride down from Minneapolis Saturday morning to the appointed meeting-place on a gravel road to get wanded by Secret Service.

Second, hunting is the most Downton Abbey thing we do in American politics. It’s not the foxes and hounds and horses and bugle calls. But it is a little silly. How can you shoot a bird with 20 reporters, 15 staffers, and 5 social media influencers in tow?

Still, I get it. There is a romantic showmanship to the day. The prairie presents well. And you got to dress warmly, which my east coast colleagues — in hoodies and sneakers — didn’t. So we sat there seemingly an eternity before, right before 9 a.m., Walz’s motorcade arrived, and the governor got smiling to walk over and get his pheasant credentials checked by the DNR officer.

Then, yes, we did do a bit of “fake-news.” One of the photographers requested views of faces of the hunting party — consisting of Walz, the president of Pheasants Forever, a local landowner, and a Nobles County hunter. So, for a performative few minutes, without taking any shots, the group walked toward the mobile media row, holding guns.

Then, finally, around 9:09 a.m., or so, according to the time-stamp on my phone, the actual hunting started.

Quickly enough, as we walked toward some increasingly tall-grass, a fluttering ball of might — a rooster — flew out of the grass.

“Rooster! Rooster!”

Bam. The bird fell.

Walz called out “Nice shot.”

Much to the disappointment of the huddled press, the Nobles County hunter, Scott Rall, had downed the bird. But Rall’s intrepid dogs couldn’t actually find the pheasant in the cover. We searched for a while and kept moving.

Over the next 60 minutes or so, with my phone increasingly teetering toward battery doom, we climbed through thickets, tripped over buried logs. The hunters communicated with each other wonderfully in a ridiculous situation. When a hen flew out, they’d call out “Hen! Hen!”, a hunter’s version of “stand down.” When the dogs excitedly dove up-and-down in the grass, Walz prepped everyone to get ready for a bird.

Yes, he didn’t take a shot. Would that have played better or worse with undecideds in Pennsylvania? I don’t know. There may’ve been chances. Mostly hens flew out. In one moment, a rooster emerged, but the bird was quite young. Maybe other hunters would’ve pulled the trigger. A journalist from an outdoors magazine next to me told another outdoors reporter: “I would’ve blasted it.”

Regardless, about an hour into the hunt, I was quite relieved the governor didn’t fire his shotgun. A rooster sprung up in the opposite direction, clearing over the heads of the pursuing press corps. Everyone, with cameras, ducked. Everyone, that is, except me. I tried following the bird with my cellphone camera. When I turned, Walz — who’d called out “don’t shoot” — was clutching his gun upright. Then he broke the nervous laughter.

“Every vice president joke there ever was was about to be made right there,” Walz said.

The joke was probably his best shot of the day.

Then we kept hunting. And hunting. Which for the reporters meant, walking. And walking. I was reminded of the apocryphal Mark Twain quote that “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Then, my phone died. Fortunately, I had a laptop in my backpack, so I recharged my phone so that, about an hour later, I was able to record the governor just as he was removing his shotgun shells … and apparently ending his political career.

Then, we walked back to the farmsite. The social media influencers awaited. The Diet Mountain Dew needed to be swigged. One influencer asked the governor his favorite food. Another talked about restoring the country to “sanity.” I mostly just wanted to get on the road to internet and some beef jerky. But we had to wait for a security phalanx rolling a half-dozen cars deep, security against physical threats.

Bringing gun-toting hunters around with a vice presidential candidate in this political environment certainly could be scary. But really the most dangerous place, apparently, was just opening up your phone.

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