Louisiana’scontroversial law requiring public schools and colleges to post the TenCommandments violatesthe U.S. Constitution and cannot be enforced, afederal appeals court ruled unanimously Friday,upholding alower court’s decision and raising the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to weighin.
Athree-judgepanel on the 5th
U.S. CircuitCourt of Appealsruled that the law,which took effect Jan. 1, is “plainly unconstitutional.”
The ruling affirmsalower court’s order barring the state from enforcing the law,which says that TenCommandments posters must be displayed in every classroom.
placementinschools
Passed last year by Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature, the law turbocharged the national debate over religion’sproper place in public life. Criticssay the law shattersthe historic divide in the U.S. between church and state and restricts religious freedom, while supporters —including President Donald Trump and Louisiana Gov.Jeff Landry —say it reflects America’sChristian rootsand represents amuch-needed return to traditional values in public education
Just days after Landry signed thelaw last year,amultifaith group of public-school parents suedinfederal court, saying the mandate violates students’ First Amendment right to practice their faith free of governmentinterference. Attorneys forthe state countered that the legal challenge was prematurebecause schools had not yet putupthe posters, and ar-
BY ADAM DAIGLE Acadiana business editor
gued that the TenCommandments have historical significance and educational value.
In a50-page decision, the5th Circuit panel wrote that “unwanted exposure to government-sponsored religious displays” would violate students’ First Amendment rights. If the lawgoes into effect, “studentswill be subjected to unwelcome displays of theTen Commandments for the entirety of
Green Fuels Operating, by its title alone, is emerging as an anomaly in the energy industry In an industry longrecognized as asignificant source of air pollution, the company that is planning anet-zero plant in Acadia Parish to produce marine-grade diesel and bunker fuel is touting its net-zero emissions technology,whichisgetting attention. And the company is ambitious. Operating as a subsidiary of parent company Clean Refineries Inc., the Oklahoma-based company touts 12 facilities in production in Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming and Alaska.
Yetit’sthe refinery plannedfor Acadia Parish that is expected to be its first when it’sexpected to begin operation in May
“We’reafull-line answertothe problem of building refineries in 2025,” CEO Derek Williamsonsaid. “That’skind of why we’re going at the rate we’re going at right now.There are so many peoplethat want us to be there. We hada proposal to do afacility in Westchester County,New York. Can you imagine building arefinery just north of NewYork City?” The company’sannouncement last month to convert aformer Evangeline Processing facility
OMAHA, Neb If anyone knows what to expect from LSUbaseball fans pouring into town this weekend for theCollegeWorld Series championship series, it’s LSUsuperfan Chris Guillot His succinct appraisal at Thursday’spep rally at the Tigers’ team hotel?
“The zoo starts tonight.” Youcould say Guillot is the keeper of that zoo, theman whoroams the standswhether at Alex Box Stadium or here in Omaharallying thefaithful with chants of “Go!” answered by “Tigers!” Or,“Geaux” and “Tigers,” if you prefer Omahaiscelebrating its 75th
Pope flags AI’s impact on kids’ development
ROME Pope Leo XIV warned Friday that artificial intelligence could negatively impact the intellectual, neurological and spiritual development of young people as he pressed one of the priorities of his young pontificate History’s first American pope sent a message to a conference of AI and ethics, part of which was taking place in the Vatican in a sign of the Holy See’s concern for the new technologies and what they mean for humanity
In the message, Leo said any further development of AI must be evaluated according to the “superior ethical criterion” of the need to safeguard the dignity of each human being while respecting the diversity of the world’s population.
He warned specifically that new generations are most at risk given they have never had such quick access to information.
“All of us, I am sure, are concerned for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development,” he said in the message. “Society’s well-being depends upon their being given the ability to develop their Godgiven gifts and capabilities,” and not allow them to confuse mere access to data with intelligence.
“In the end, authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data,” he said
Teen charged in Utah carnival shooting
Prosecutors in Utah charged a 16-year-old boy with four counts of murder Friday for allegedly shooting to death three people, including an infant and pregnant woman, in an apparent gang confrontation at a carnival.
In all, five people, including two teens wounded in the arm, were shot late Sunday at WestFest in West Valley City a Salt Lake City suburb.
The shooting happened a day after one at a “No Kings” protest the day before, making for an unusually violent weekend for the Salt Lake City area.
Two of those killed were bystanders: the 8-month-old boy and 41-year-old pregnant woman, Fnu Reena, 41, of West Jordan, Utah An 18-year-old man slain, Hassan Lugundi, of West Valley City, was the apparent intended target, according to a police affidavit filed in the case.
“I’m gonna tell you guys right now, I know what I hit because I know where I was aiming, and I know where I was shooting. I did not hit no baby,” the teen allegedly told police soon after the shooting.
Police learned later that Reena was eight weeks pregnant, resulting in the fourth murder count under Utah law Shot in her head, Reena had just been in for a medical checkup that day, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said at a news conference Friday
The infant, also shot in the head, was in a stroller with his twin sibling, who was unhurt. The infant was unrelated to the other victims.
NASA craft photographs
lunar lander crash site
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander
NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week. The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyobased ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January
Israel and Iran trade fire a week into war
Europe’s diplomatic effort yields no breakthrough
BY SAM MEDNICK, JON GAMBRELL and DAVID RISING Associated Press
TEL AVIV, Israel Israel and Iran traded strikes a week into their war on Friday as President Donald Trump weighed U.S. military involvement and key European ministers met with Iran’s top diplomat in Geneva in a scramble to deescalate the conflict.
But the first face-to-face meeting between Western and Iranian officials in the weeklong war concluded after four hours with no sign of an immediate breakthrough.
To give diplomacy a chance, Trump said he would put off deciding for up to two weeks whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran. U.S. participation would most likely involve strikes against Iran’s underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility, considered to be out of reach to all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.
Whether or not the U.S. joins, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military operation in Iran would continue “for as long as it takes” to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear program and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel’s top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready “for a prolonged campaign.”
As negotiations ended in Switzerland, European officials expressed hope for future negotiations Iran’s top diplomat said he was open to further dialogue.
But Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi emphasized that Tehran had no interest in negotiating with the U.S. while Israel continued attacking.
“Iran is ready to consider diplomacy if aggression ceases and the aggressor is held accountable for its committed crimes,” he told reporters.
No date was set for the next round of talks.
Iran previously agreed to limit its uranium enrichment and allow international
inspectors access to its nuclear sites under a 2015 deal with the U.S., France, China, Russia, Britain and Germany in exchange for sanctions relief. But after Trump pulled the U.S. unilaterally out of the deal during his first term, Iran began enriching uranium up to 60% — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90% — and restricting access to its nuclear facilities.
After Israel said its warplanes hit dozens of military targets across Iran, including missile-manufacturing facilities, an Iranian missile crashed into Israel’s northern city of Haifa, sending plumes of smoke billowing over the Mediterranean port and wounding at least 31 people.
The war between Israel and Iran erupted June 13, with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.
Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates Most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds wounded.
Addressing an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned against attacks on Iran’s nuclear reactors, particularly its only commercial nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr
“I want to make it absolutely and completely clear: In case of an attack on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a direct hit would result in a very high release of radioactivity to the environment,” said Rafael Grossi, chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog. “This is the nuclear site in Iran where the consequences could be most serious.”
Israel has not targeted Iran’s nuclear reactors, instead focusing its strikes on the main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, centrifuge workshops near Tehran, laboratories in Isfahan and the country’s Arak heavy water reactor southwest of the capital. Grossi has warned repeatedly that such sites should not be military targets.
Judge: Harvard can continue to host foreign students
Court blocks Trump’s efforts against college while case decided
BY COLLIN BINKLEY AP education writer
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students, delivering the Ivy League school another victory as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.
The order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston preserves the ability of Harvard to host foreign students while the case is decided.
Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 foreign students — about a quarter of its total enrollment — to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.
The university called it illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies around campus protests, admissions,
hiring and other issues. Burroughs temporarily halted the action hours after Harvard sued.
Less than two weeks later, in early June, Trump moved to block foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard, citing a different legal justification. Harvard challenged the move and Burroughs temporarily blocked that effort as well.
The stops and starts of the legal battle have unsettled current students and left others around the world waiting to find out whether they will be able to attend America’s oldest and wealthiest university
The Trump administration’s efforts to stop Harvard from enrolling international students have created an environment of “profound fear, concern, and confusion,” the university said in a court filing. Countless international students have asked about transferring from the university Harvard immigration services director Maureen Martin said.
Trump has been warring with Harvard for months after it rejected a series of government demands meant to address conservative complaints that the school has become too liberal and has tolerated anti-Jewish harassment. Trump officials have cut more than $2.6 billion in research grants, ended federal contracts and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.
Mahmoud Khalil freed from detention
Palestinian activist held for months by immigration authorities in La.
BY SOPHIE BATES and PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
JENA Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention, freed by a judge’s ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump‘s clampdown on campus protests. The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and newborn son.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn’t deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Trump administration lawyers repeated that accusation at Friday’s court hearing. It’s an accusation Khalil disputes.
Held for over three months while the Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests, Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
“Petitioner is not a flight risk and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,” he said. “Period, full stop.”
Later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone, the judge said the government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention.
Khalil must surrender his passport and can’t travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country, including New York and Michigan to visit family, New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances and Washington to lobby Congress.
Khalil was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump ‘s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza.
In issuing his ruling Friday, the judge agreed with Khalil’s lawyers that the protest leader was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. The judge noted that Khalil is now clearly a public figure. Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or at the very least, moved from Louisiana to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both U.S. citizens.
Khalil’s wife, Dr Noor Abdalla, said she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.
“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,” she said in a statement provided by Khalil’s lawyers. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”
The judge’s decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri. Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Women chant slogans Friday in Tehran, Iran, during a protest to condemn Israeli attacks on multiple cities across the country.
Khalil
Senate parliamentarian deals blow to GOP tax bill
Of
ficial: Effort to gut consumer protection agency violates rule
BY LISA MASCARO
AP congressional correspondent
WASHINGTON Republicans suffered a sizable setback Friday on one key aspect of President Donald Trump’s big bill after their plans to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other provisions from the Senate Banking Committee ran into procedural violations with the Senate parliamentarian.
Republicans in the Senate proposed zeroing-out funding for the CFPB, the landmark agency set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to save $6.4 billion. The bureau had been designed as a way to better protect Americans from financial fraud, but has been opposed by many GOP lawmakers since its inception.
The Trump administration has targeted the CFPB as an example of government over-regulation and overreach.
The findings by the Senate parliamentarian’s office, which is working overtime
scrubbing Trump’s overall bill to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule” processes, signal a tough road ahead The most daunting questions are still to come, as GOP leadership rushes to muscle Trump’s signature package to floor for votes by his Fourth of July deadline
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the chairman of the Banking Committee that drafted the provisions in question, said in a statement, “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”
For Democrats, who have been fighting Trump’s 1,000page package at every step, the parliamentarian’s advisory amounted to a significant win.
“Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who engineered the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to Congress.
Warren said that GOP proposals “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and
Mexico assesses damage from Erick
BY FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and LUIS ALBERTO CRUZ Associated Press
ACAPULCO, Mexico Authorities in southern Mexico were still assessing damage and watching rising rivers Friday as rain from the remnants of Hurricane Erick doused the region.
Torrential rains over steep coastal mountains and the landslides and flooding they could generate became the ongoing concern for officials after Erick dissipated following a landfall early Thursday on a sparsely populated stretch of coast.
The storm’s death toll remained at one Friday, a 1-year-old boy who drowned in a swollen river, President Claudia Sheinbaum said. She also said she planned to visit the affected region Friday Power had been restored
to about half the 277,000 customers who lost it and soldiers, marines and National Guard were helping to remove debris and reopen roads in Guerrero and Oaxaca state where Erick passed. Erick came ashore down southern Mexico’s Pacific coast in the morning as a Category 3 major hurricane, but it landed between the resort cities of Acapulco and Puerto Escondido. It dissipated Thursday night over the mountains in Michoacan state.
Authorities reported landslides, blocked highways, downed power lines and some flooding as coastal residents, above all in Acapulco, took the storm seriously with memories of the devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023 still fresh in their minds.
Erick had strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it approached the coast but weakened before making landfall to a Category 3.
trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”
The parliamentarian’s rulings, while advisory, are rarely, if ever ignored.
With the majority in Congress, Republicans have been drafting a sweeping package that extends some $4.5 trillion tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, in 2017, that otherwise
expire at the end of the year It adds $350 billion to national security, including billions for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it slashes some $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps and other government programs.
All told, the package is estimated to add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without health care coverage, according to the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s review of the House-passed package, which is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.
The parliamentarian’s office is responsible for determining if the package adheres to the Byrd Rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was considered one of the masters of Senate procedure. The rule essentially bars policy matters from be-
ing addressed in the budget reconciliation process. Senate GOP leaders are using the budget reconciliation process, which is increasingly how big bills move through the Congress, because it allows passage on a simple majority vote, rather than face a filibuster with the higher 60-vote threshold. But if any of the bill’s provisions violate the Byrd Rule, that means they can be challenged at the tougher 60-vote threshold, which is a tall order in the 53-47 Senate. Leaders are often forced to strip those proposals from the package, even though doing so risks losing support from lawmakers who championed those provisions.
One of the biggest questions ahead for the parliamentarian will be over the Senate GOP’s proposal to use “current policy” as opposed to “current law” to determine the baseline budget and whether the overall package adds significantly to deficits. Already the Senate parliamentarian’s office has waded through several titles of Trump’s big bill, including those from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Energy & Public Works Committee.
Judge asks if troops in L.A. violating law
Hearing comes as appeals court lets Trump keep control of National Guard
BY OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.
The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.
California Gov Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.
National Guard troops
have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and Marines briefly detained a man on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building.
The marked the first time federal troops detained a civilian since deploying to the nation’s second-largest city Breyer found Trump acted illegally when, over opposition from California’s governor the president activated the soldiers. However, the appellate decision halted the judge’s temporary restrain-
ing order Breyer asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.
California has sought a preliminary injunction giving Newsom back control of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days. Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order Newsom, a Demo-
crat said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources. The demonstrations appear to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents gathered at a parking lot with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By LUIS ALBERTO CRUZ
A resident walks through debris after Hurricane Erick hit Thursday near Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca state, Mexico
their public school education,” the judges wrote “There is no opt-out option.”
The decision was signed by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, who was appointed by President Joe Biden; Judge James Dennis, appointed by President Bill Clinton; and Judge Catharina Haynes, appointed by President George W. Bush. In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she and her team “strongly disagree” with the ruling and plan to appeal.
“We will immediately seek relief from the full Fifth Circuit and, if necessary the U.S. Supreme Court,” she said.
Murrill argued that the ruling, which upheld a U.S. District Court’s preliminary injunction in November blocking enforcement of the law, only applies to the five school districts where the plaintiffs’ children attend school: East
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anniversary this year as the permanent home of the College World Series. In that time, a few things have changed: The ballpark where the games are played used to be called Rosenblatt Stadium, south of downtown next door to the actual Omaha zoo. Now they play at Charles Schwab Field, a modern 24,500-seat venue surrounded by bars, hotels and restaurants on the north side of downtown, just a couple of Jared Jones home runs from the Missouri River
One thing hasn’t changed here in a long time: LSU fans swamp Omaha when the Tigers play Heck, a lot of them come to Omaha when the Tigers aren’t here, too. During bracket play of this year’s CWS, LSU fans haven’t always dominated at the gate as much as they’ve dominated the Jell-O shot challenge at a bar across the street from Charles Schwab Field. Arkansas had about a 2-to-1 edge on Tiger fans last Saturday for their opener, a game the Tigers won 4-1. LSU had more fans than UCLA did in their rain-interrupted game that started Monday night but finished Tuesday in a 9-5 Tigers win, but hey, that’s UCLA. College baseball has to compete with the Dodgers and surfing for fans out in SoCal. For Wednesday’s scarcely definable 6-5 LSU win over Arkansas — a game marked by three Tigers’ comebacks and multiple Razorbacks’ miscues — things
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along the Mermentau River south of Interstate 10 sent a jolt throughout the parish and the region.
It is expected to invest $110 million into the site, employ 60 and offer an average salary of $80,000, which is almost twice the parish’s median household income, according to Census data.
The project also will reunite oil and gas with a parish that has a significant history with that industry And leaders of this agriculturebased parish celebrated the news after working behind the scenes for years to lure in big industry
“We’ve said it for a few years — it’s not if it’s going to happen but when,” said Michael Doughty, board chair for the Acadia Parish Chamber of Commerce in 2024.
“We’ve got some infrastructure, both physical and intangible, that will allow people to set up here. When the message gets out that we can have big industry in Acadia again, it’s something that won’t be the last.”
The site
Rice farmer Jules Clement one day noticed bubbles coming up from the ground in his flooded rice field in Evangeline back in 1901. He had an idea. The story goes that he put an old stove pipe over the bubbles, lit a match and dropped it in. It ignited, paving the way for the first oil well in Louisiana and a boom across the state.
Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon. But attorneys for the plaintiffs have argued that any school district that complies with a law that the courts have declared unconstitutional would be subject to legal action.
The Rev Darcy Roake, an ordained minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church and the parent of a New Orleans public school student, praised Friday’s ruling.
“We are grateful for this decision, which honors the religious diversity and religious-freedom rights of public school families across Louisiana,” said Roake, who is a plaintiff in the case along with her husband, Adrian Van Young. “As an interfaith family, we believe that our children should receive their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials.”
The plaintiffs in the case identify as Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church
and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The law firm
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is serving as pro bono counsel.
Contested law
Louisiana was the first state to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in more than 40 years, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky statute in 1980. The Texas Legislature passed its own such bill this year In court, Louisiana’s attorneys argued that the 1980 ruling, Stone v. Graham, no longer applies because it was based on a standard that the Supreme Court scrapped in a 2022 case called Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which upheld a high school football coach’s right to pray on the field.
The 5th Circuit panel rejected that argument in their ruling, writing that Stone remains in effect until the Supreme Court overturns it.
“Under Stone,” the judges wrote, Louisiana’s law is “plainly unconstitutional.”
In November U.S. District Court
Judge John deGravelles ruled that the law violates the Constitution, saying it forced students “to participate in a religious exercise: reading and considering a specific version of the Ten Commandments.” He also rejected the state’s argument that the law had a secular purpose, pointing to comments by Landry who vowed to defend “Judeo-Christian” values, and the bill’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, RHaughton, who said children must learn “what God’s law is.”
Since then, schools have received conflicting guidance about how to proceed. Murrill said the law is “plainly constitutional” and provided sample Ten Commandments posters, but civil liberties groups called the law an egregious violation of students’ rights and threatened to sue school districts that complied with it.
The law dictates the size of the posters — and least 11 by 14 inches — and the text they must feature, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that begins with, “I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It
LSU coach Jay Johnson watches practice on the field
evened out But for this weekend’s championship series between LSU and Coastal Carolina (the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina school has an enrollment of about 10,300 students to LSU’s 39,600) expect LSU to have more fans in the stands and around town.
One thing’s for sure: In my reporting from Omaha, I haven’t come across a giant fiberglass Chanticleer (Coastal Carolina’s fierce rooster mascot) on a flatbed trailer to rival the Mardi Gras Mike the Tiger made for this trip.
The best-of-three championship series starts at 6 p.m. Saturday on ESPN, followed by a 1:30 p.m. game Sunday on ABC. If necessary, a third game is set for 6:30 p.m. Monday, also on ESPN.
to its history of oil and gas along the way
The sign outside Evangeline Elementary School reads “Home of the Oilers” and has an oil derrick next to it The city of Crowley, according to reports at the time, was the last city in Louisiana to lift a ban on self-serve gasoline pumps. Canal Refineries operated the Evangeline Processing facility along with its refinery in Church Point until 1997 when it ceased operations and left 52 people out of a job, reports indicate.
Having begun operations in 1948, the refinery was one of the last small refining and marketing operations in the United States.
Tristar a global energy company, bought the Evangeline site out of bankruptcy in 2018 for $2.55 million, land records show Having sat idle for possibly two years, it has 500,000 barrels of storage with 15 tanks ranging from 5,000 barrels to 80,000 barrels, along with barge-to-rail access.
“I’m kind of proud of the economic developers at the chamber for working through this issue and getting this company,” said state Rep. Chance Henry, a former president of the Acadia Parish Police Jury That’s where the boots on the ground are. And our local government officials for working through that deal and the governor for welcoming them. It looks like it’s paying off for the state as a whole.”
Fourth-year LSU coach Jay Johnson couldn’t grasp what to expect in terms of fan support when he arrived in the summer of 2021. A native of Oroville, California, in the northern part of the state, he’d spent his entire career in the west. He played and coached at tiny Point Loma Nazerene in San Diego, then was an assistant at the University of San Diego before head coaching stints at Nevada and Arizona.
Johnson’s encounters with LSU fans here in 2023 when he led the Tigers to the program’s seventh national championship were eyeopening, he said, compared to what he’d known before. Little has changed this time.
“When we were here in ’23, being with the LSU fan base was a
bringing refining back to a rural area, Williamson said.
It plans to source local crude to support regional producers alongside feedstock delivered via pipeline and barge.
“You’ve been to places in Louisiana in the middle of the week, and you see a diesel pump that has a bag on it,” Williamson said. “What’s happened is as time has scaled and these refineries have closed, it’s gotten to where the only places they refine fuel is in the metro areas. All the rural areas are deficient now We want to change that.”
The refining process
Green Fuels Operating will employ what it describes as its patented netzero emissions technology to create a next-generation hydrocarbon processing site.
It plans to develop a 20,000 barrel-per-day refining unit and use a system that it says will be an odor-free, clean refining technology It will house a full-scale waste and brine water treatment system.
The process, according to its website, employs a lowpressure, low-temperature, closed-loop system that reduces safety risks but also minimizes environmental impact with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide that will surpass government regulations.
completely different experience,” Johnson said. “Even (Thursday) morning, I’m hearing from some of the good friends I’ve made in Baton Rouge. That’s pretty cool.”
While some folks are making the trek to Omaha just for the championship series, there are plenty who have been here and are planning to be here for the duration of the CWS. Megan Foco, of Baton Rouge, and her two daughters, Ellie and Anna, have been here the whole time and haven’t made plans on going home without an eighth CWS trophy Championships run in her family: Megan Foco’s brother is former LSU pitcher Patrick Coogan, who won the 1996 CWS final against Miami (Florida) and started the Tigers’ winning
“That is a global trend, but not everybody is jumping into it instantly,” he said. “Because many of these technologies, depending on what product you’re talking about, the economics just aren’t going to work out. Others, it’s cost competitive, and those are the ones that are gravitating toward these low emissions or zero emissions.”
There is significant interest, Zappi noted, from chemical and energy companies in Louisiana along with Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, which President
Acadia Parish has become known for its rice and crawfish farms, but it’s held on
Now, CRI is under contract with Tristar and another entity with plans to acquire the site with hopes of starting construction in November in the hopes of
It’s part of an effort across all industries to reduce a carbon footprint, said Mark Zappi, executive director of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Energy Institute of Louisiana. There’s more demand for it, particularly from European countries.
also requires an accompanying “context statement” explaining that some early American textbooks featured the Ten Commandments, and says schools “may” display other historical documents alongside the posters. Schools must accept donated posters or use donated funds to print them, the law says. In recent weeks, some conservative groups have started mailing schools Ten Commandments posters designed by the state Attorney General’s Office, one of which features a statue of Moses and a photo of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson alongside the biblical text. In a footnote in their ruling, the 5th Circuit judges said it is not clear that the state’s own posters would comply with the law “We also note that the Ten Commandments are not the ‘central focus’ of each display,” they wrote, “and some displays include documents other than those permitted by” the law
Email Patrick Wall at patrick. wall@theadvocate.com.
effort in the 1997 final against Alabama.
“I’m confident,” Foco said. “After ’23, we said we’re coming next time they make it. They’ve given us a reason all week to let it ride.”
There’s slim history between LSU and Coastal Carolina in baseball, but nonetheless significant. In 2016, the Chanticleers stormed to an improbable College World Series title, their first, at the expense of both the Tigers and Johnson. Coastal upset LSU in a super regional at Alex Box Stadium, 11-8 and 4-3. The Chanticleers then beat Johnson’s first Arizona team in the CWS final in three games, losing 3-0 before coming back to win 5-4 and 4-3. This year, both teams come in supremely confident. Coastal Carolina, which won the Sun Belt Conference regular-season and tournament titles, has stitched together 26 straight wins overall. It’s the longest winning streak any team has ever brought into a CWS final. LSU, meanwhile, just twice beat one of the best teams in the nation in Arkansas, erasing a two-run deficit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Wearing a No. 4 Steven Milam jersey for the LSU starting shortstop and a Tiger tail hanging from his belt, Sidney Evans, of Natchitoches, said he predicted an LSU-Coastal championship series before the season started. He’s “cautiously optimistic” that the Tigers will return to Louisiana with college baseball’s biggest prize.
“There’s no better team to root for than the Tigers,” he said. Evans is about to be joined by a zoo full of LSU fans who feel the same way
Donald Trump has renamed the Gulf of America. Clean Refineries Inc. is also working on a project in Lafourche Parish in conjunction with Bollinger Shipyards and the U.S. Navy that involves putting its net-zero process on a ship, Williamson said. That, along with the Acadia Parish project, represents the $1 billion the company initially announced it would invest in south Louisiana, he said. In Acadia Parish, the project has been welcomed by local residents, said Acadia Parish Police Juror Troy
Lantz, whose district includes the site. He met with one resident who owns land near the site who was happy with the project.
“We had a Zoom meeting at the Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “They told us they’re going to hire everybody that they can local contractors and everybody He also told us the only noise people in that vicinity would hear would be electric motors. It’s a very clean operation.”
Email Adam Daigle at adaigle@theadvocate.com.
STAFF PHOTO By HILARy SCHEINUK
Friday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Neb
Internet,phoneoutageinmuchofGazadisruptsaid
BY FATMA KHALED Associated Press
CAIRO— Abreakdown in communications networks in central and southern Gaza has cut many Palestinians off from the outside world for the past week, further straining aid efforts and emergency services amid continuing Israeli bombardment.
Israeli strikes damaged amain connection, cutting off communications in large areas of thestrip since Tuesday,according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority,based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The telecom company Paltel said Friday that internet andlandline services were restored in some areasin southern Gaza, including Khan Younis, with repairs ongoing in other southern and central areas
Paltel warned in astatement to AP that ongoing attacks on the main network could make future maintenance impossible, especially due to ashortage of essential materials and resources.
The Gaza Strip has experienced at least 10 communications partial and full outages sincethe warbeganin October2023, according to Palestinian telecomcompany Paltel. This week’soutage has impacted aid efforts,
emergency services, suspendedacademic classes, and cut off displaced Palestinians from the rest of the territory
Palestinians in Gaza rely heavily on cell service,as unsafe roads andfuelshortages limit movement across theenclave. Humanitarians say those in affected areas will struggle to accessinformation on aid and medical services or call for ambulances
“Telecoms havebeen used as aweapon of war against civilians,” said Juliette Touma,communications director at UNRWA,the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugee that is the main service providerinGaza.
TheIDF didn’timmediately respondtorequest for comment.
The vast majority of UNRWA workers don’thave connectivity in theareas affected by the outages.Asa result, they and other aid workers have struggled to deliver aidand coordinate with oneanother,Touma told the AP
“Sometimes we get asignalwhena teammember hasthe courage togoonthe rooftopofa building,which is extremely dangerous under strikes,and theysend us amessage thatthey’re alive. Ican’t tell you how muchofarelief it is, but
Displaced Palestinians,
they’re more sporadicand lessregular,” saidTouma. Some people rely on eSims, but theyare not compatible withall devices and can only work in certain areas.
Over 70%oftelecommunications networks in Gaza has been partially or completely destroyed as of August 2024 sincethe war began, accordingtostatisticsreleased by the Palestinian Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Economy,cited by thePalestine Economic Policy ResearchInstitute However,Paltel said technical teams offered some tech-
nical solutions that would restore services. Whentheyhear nearby strikes, Palestinians without connection don’tknow whether evacuation orders are issued and where should they relocate to, said Shaina Low,the Norwegian RefugeeCouncil’s communicationsadviser
“This also means that people areisolated.Theycan’t communicate with their family andfriends inside of Gazaand understandwhat thecurrent situation is or get external support from networks outside,”she said.
Limited or unreliable mobile servicehas made it difficult forambulances and civil defense teams to reach people in need of lifesaving assistance, Low added.
Fikr Shalltoot, Gazadirector for the group Medical Aid forPalestinians, said its doctors working in hospitals andclinicsineffected areas can’tdocument or share their work with managers.
“Itis, unfortunately,like a never-ending vicious cycle of suffering because when this issue is resolved in the north, the problemappears in the south,” said MohammedShbair,vice president foradministrative and financial affairs, at al-Azhar University in Gaza.
“Students cannotreach universities because they are destroyed, and they can’t even reach areas where the internet is available in cafes or displacement tents, as they are now being targeted daily and systematically by Israelistrikes,”saidShbair, an associate professor of public law Online banking, akey alternative amidcash shortages, has also becomeunavailable.Palestinians who rely on online transfers to pay suppliers can no longer do so under the current conditions, according to Low
Theoutagecomplicates humanitarian operations andaddstothe “toxic stress” families face daily, saidUNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram “In acontext of incessant bombardments, mass casualty events linkedtofood distributions, rising malnutrition and dwindling access to clean water,connectivity is areal lifeline for families in Gaza,” she said.
Meanwhile, with Gaza’s university campuses heavily damaged, the internet has become the only way to continue education. But outages have forced educators to cancel classes and exams.
LONDON U.K. lawmakers on Friday approvedabill to allow terminallyill adultsin England and Wales to choose to end theirlives, takingit one step nearer to becoming law
The vote backing what is generally termed “assisted dying” —sometimes referredtoas“assisted suicide” —ispotentially the biggest change to social policy in the U.K. since abor-
tion was partially legalized in 1967.
MembersofParliament voted 314-291 to back the Terminally Ill Adults(End of Life) Bill followingan impassioned debate. The majority of 23 was less than the55whentheylast voted on theissuein November, meaning that somelawmakers changed theirminds in theintervening months.
Since November,the bill has been scrutinized, leading to some changes in the proposed legislation,
whichhas been shepherded throughParliament by Kim Leadbeater,the Labourlawmaker whoproposedthe bill.
“I appreciate it’sa huge moment for the country,” shetold SkyNews after the vote. “It was ahuge sense of relief becausethis is the right thingtodo.”
The bill now goes to the unelectedHouse of Lords, whichcan amendordelay policy,though it can’t overrule thelower chamber
Thebill would allow termi-
Putin: Russia has shared peace proposalswithIsraeland Iran
By The Associated Press
ST.PETERSBURG,Russia Pres-
identVladimir Putinsaid
Friday he has secured Israel’spledge to safeguard Russianpersonnel at Iran’sRussia-built nuclear power plant andthathehas reached out to both sides to try to end the week-old war
Answering questions on a variety of issues at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin also warned Ukraine thatit could lose more territoryif it keeps rejecting Russia’s conditions for peace. Putin said Russia hasproposed “some ideas” for a possible settlement between Iran and Israel that are currently being discussed. He said Moscow asked
IsraeliPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure thesecurity of Russian personnel who are working to construct two more reactors at the nuclear power plant in Iran’sportofBushehr andthathealsoraised the issue with President Donald Trump.
“PrimeMinister Netanyahu has agreed with that,and President Trump has promised to support our legitimate demands,” Putinsaid.
Buthestrongly rejected allegationsthat Moscow has failed to back its ally,Tehran, saying the Kremlin has maintained good ties with both Iran and Israel. He notedthatIsrael is home to nearly2million people from Russia and other former Soviet nations,“afactor that
we always have taken into account.”
At the same time, Putin said, Russiahas always met its obligations to Iran,adding that Moscow has firmly backed Tehran’s rightfor the peaceful use of nuclear energy He voiced concernabout the spiraling conflict, saying we “are strongly worried about what’sgoing on around the Iranian nuclear facilities andpossibleconsequences.”
Asked about Moscow’s goals in Ukraine, Putin said the Russian military is moving to extend abuffer zone in Ukraine’sSumy region following aUkrainian incursionlastyearintoRussia’sneighboringKursk region.
nally ill adultsover age 18 in England and Wales, who are deemed tohave less than six months to live, to apply for an assisted death. The bill doesn’t apply to Northern Ireland or Scotland, which is holding itsown vote on theissue.
Oneofthe mostimportant changes to the bill from last November was the dropping of the requirement thata judge sign off on any decision. Many in thelegal profession had objected.
Now any request would be subject to approvalbytwo doctors and apanel featuring asocial worker,senior legal figure and psychiatrist. Changeswerealsomade to ensure the establishment of independent advocates to support people with learning disabilities,autismormental health conditions and the creation of adisability advisory board.
Afterreceiving ago-ahead from doctors and the panel, the terminally ill person
would have to be capable of taking the fatal drugs themselves. Another big change made was that “no person,”including doctors, social care workers and pharmacists, will be obliged to take part. The bill has divided lawmakers formonths. The vote wasafree one, meaning lawmakers vote according to their conscience rather than on party lines. Alliances have formed across the political divide.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILEPHOTO By ABDELKAREEM HANA
carrying their belongings, move between southernand northern Gaza on March 21 along abeach road in the outskirts of Gaza City
BY EVELYNE MUSAMBI Associated Press
KAKUMA, Kenya— Martin Komol sighs as he inspects his cracked, mud-walled house that is onerainawayfrom fully collapsing. Nothing seems to last for him and 300,000 other refugees in this remote Kakuma camp in Kenya —now,not even food rations
Fundingfor theU.N World Food Program has dropped after the Trump administration paused supportinMarch, part of the widespread dismantlingof foreign aid by the United States, once the world’sbiggest donor That means Komol, awidowed father of five from Uganda, has beenlivingon handouts from neighbors since his latest monthly ration ran out two weeks ago. He said he survives on one meal aday,sometimesa meal every two days.
“When we can’tfind anyone
to help us, we become sick, but whenwegotothe hospital, they say it’sjust hunger and tellustogoback home,” the 59-year-oldsaid.His wife is buried here.Heisreluctant to returntoUganda,one of the more than 20 home countries of Kakuma’srefugees. Food rations have been halved. Previous ration cuts led to protestsinMarch. Monthly cashtransfers that refugees used to buy proteins and vegetables to supplement the rice, lentils and cooking oil distributed by WFP have endedthis month. Each refugee now receives 6pounds of rice per month, far below the 9kilograms recommended by the U.N. for optimal nutrition. WFP hopes to receive the next donation of rice by August. That’salong with 1kilogram of lentilsand 500milliliters of cookingoil perperson.
“Come August, we are likely to see amoredifficult scenario. If WFP doesn’treceive
any funding between now and then, it means only afraction of the refugees will be able to getassistance. It means only the most extremely vulnerable will be targeted,”said Colin Buleti, WFP’shead in Kakuma.WFP is seeking help from other donors.
As dust swirls along paths between the camp’smakeshifthouses,the youngest
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court sided with e-cigarette companiesonFriday in a ruling making it easierto sue over Food and Drug Administration decisions blockingtheir products from the multibillion-dollar vaping market. The 7-2 opinion comes as companies push back against ayearslong federal regulatory crackdownon electroniccigarettes. It’s expected to give the companies more control over which judges hear lawsuits filed against the agency Thejustices wentthe other way on vaping in an April decision, siding with the FDA in aruling upholding asweeping block on most sweet-flavored vapes insti-
tuted after aspike in youth vaping. The current casewas filed by R.J.Reynolds VaporCo., which had sold aline of popular berry and mentholflavored vapingproducts before the agency started regulating themarketunderthe TobaccoControl Act in 2016
The agency refused to authorize thecompany’sVuse Alto products,anorder that “soundedthe deathknell for asignificant portionofthe e-cigarette market,” Justice Amy ConeyBarrett wrote in the majority opinion. Thecompany isbased in North Carolina and typically would have been limited to challenging the FDAina court there or in the agency’s home base ofWashington. Instead, it joinedforces with Texas businesses thatsell
the products and sued there. Theconservative 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals allowed thelawsuittogoforward, finding that anyone whose business is hurtbythe FDAdecision can sue. Theagencyappealed to the Supreme Court, arguing thatR.J.Reynolds was attempting to find acourt favorabletoits arguments, apractice often referredto as “judge shopping. The justices, though, found thatthe law does allow other businesses affected by the FDAdecisions, like e-cigarette sellers, to sue in their home states In adissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said she would have sided with theagencyand limited where the cases can be filed.
RationshalvedatAfrican refugeecampafter aidcuts
can’tget anyshe just sleeps hungry,” Komol said. In recent weeks, they have drunk water to try to feel full.
The shrinking rations have ledtorising cases of malnutrition among children under 5and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.
At Kakuma’s largest hospital, run by the International Rescue Committee, children withmalnutrition aregiven fortified formula milk.
providing nutrient-dense porridge for children and mothers, but theflour has runout after stocks, mostly fromthe U.S., were depleted in March. Afortified peanut paste given to children who have been discharged is also running out, with current supplies available until August.
childrenrun and play,largely unaware of their parents’ fears.
But they can’t escapehunger. Komol’s 10-year-old daughter immerses herself in schoolbooks when there’s nothing to eat.
“Whenshe wasyounger she used to cry,but now she triestoask forfoodfrom theneighbors, and when she
Nutritionofficer Sammy Nyang’a said some children are brought in too late and die within the first few hours of admission. The 30-bed stabilization ward admitted 58 children in March, 146 in April and106 in May. Fifteen children died in April, up from themonthly average of five. He worries they will see morethis month.
“Now withthe cashtransfers gone, we expect more women andchildren to be unable to afford abalanced diet,” Nyang’a said.
Thehospital hadbeen
In thewardofwhimpering children, Susan Martine fromSouth Sudancares for her 2-year-old daughter, whohas sores after swelling causedbyseveremalnutrition. Themotherofthree said her family often sleeps hungry,but her older children still receive hot lunches from aWFP school feeding program.For somechildren in the camp, it’stheir only meal. The programalso facespressure fromthe aid cuts.
“I don’tknow how we will survive with the little food we have received this month,” Martine said.
BY ALANNADURKIN RICHER Associated Press
WASHINGTON Acloseally of fugitive Jalisco New Generation bossknown as “El Mencho”for years orchestrated aprolific drug trafficking operation,using a semi-submersible and other methods to avoid detection, and provided weapons to one of Mexico’smost powerful cartels, prosecutors say On Friday, José González Valencia, was sentenced in Washington’sfederal court to 30 years in aU.S.prison following his 2017 arrest at a beach resort in Brazilwhile vacationing withhis family under afake name. González Valencia, 49, known as “Chepa,” along with his two brothers, led agroup called “Los Cuinis” that financed thedrug traf-
ficking operations of Jalisco New Generation,orCJNG —the violent cartelrecently designated aforeign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. Hisbrother-in-lawisCJNG leader Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho”Oseguera Cervantes, whom foryears has been sought by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, El Mencho’s son-in-law,Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa, appeared in the same courtroom earlier Friday to plead guilty in aseparate case to a money laundering conspiracy charge. Gutierrez Ochoa wasarrested towardthe end of the Bidenadministration last year in California, where authorities have said he wasliving under abogus name after faking his own death and fleeing Mexico.
Together, theprosecutionsreflect the U.S. government’sefforts to weaken the brutal Jalisco New Generation cartel that’s responsible for importing staggering amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine andfentanyl into the U.S. and track downits elusive leader.The Trump administrationhas sought to turn up the pressure on CJNG and other cartelswiththe foreign terrorist organization designation, which gives authorities new tools to prosecute those associated with cartels. Trump’sJustice Department hasdeclared dismantling CJNG and othercartels atop priority,and Galeotti said theU.S.inrecent months has seen increased cooperation from Mexican officials.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By ANDREW KASUKU Refugees carry food on June 3atadistribution center run by the WorldFood Program at KakumaRefugee Camp in Turkana, Kenya
Coaches charged with ethics violations
Pair allegedly asked students to enroll at private gym
BY ASHLEY WHITE Staff writer
The Louisiana Board of Ethics
filed charges recently against two Lafayette volleyball coaches, arguing they asked high school players to enroll in a private league at a gym where the coaches worked over the summer
changed, making it possible for educators to receive compensation from students when they serve as tutors or coaches.
Belsom were volleyball coaches at Southside High School. Belsom has since transferred to a different school.
lated Louisiana ethics law when they asked their students on the Southside High volleyball team to enroll and pay for summer training and competition at the private gym they worked at. Dawson also is accused of using her position to coerce students to join the league.
The Ethics Board, which brought the charges in January but didn’t
The board determined Julia Dawson and Erin Belsom vio-
publish its determination until May, referred the matter to the Louisiana Division of Administrative Law, a centralized administrative hearing panel that will determine whether a violation occurred and can levy penalties if so.
Alesia Ardoin, an attorney with Sexton Law representing both coaches, said the charges were “baseless” and state law recently
“We will continue to fight these charges, and we’re certain the adjudication board will dismiss this because the charges are wholly without merit,” Ardoin told The Acadiana Advocate.
The Ethics Board charges stemmed from a 2021 incident, according to documents released by the board. At the time, Dawson and
Dawson and Belsom also are coaches for Louisiana Volleyball Lafayette, or LVL, a private gym that offers indoor and beach volleyball programs, training and has club teams. Dawson is a co-owner, co-director, program coordinator and master coach of the gym, and
Douglas Benoit fishes for bass from the banks of the Bayou Vermilion District’s retention pond in Lafayette on Thursday. Benoit said he was enjoying the Juneteenth holiday off from his job with the Lafayette Parish school system by spending time outdoors.
Lafayette leaders talk public safety
Crime
BY ADAM DAIGLE Acadiana business editor
BY COURTNEY PEDERSEN Staff writer
To answer the question of what crime looks like in the city of Lafayette, Mayor-President Monique Boulet points to Festival International. Boulet, who spoke along with Police Chief Paul Trouard at One Acadiana’s CivicCon series event Wednesday, referenced the police presence at the city’s biggest public event back in April and how people felt safe and happy among hundreds of thousands of people. Security at this
State Police and FBI. Local first responders monitored camera feeds at a com-
STAFF PHOTO By BRAD BOWIE
STAFF PHOTO By ADAM DAIGLE
Lafayette Mayor-President Monique Boulet, center, and Lafayette Police Chief Paul Trouard speak with moderator Al Patin during a CivicCon series
for the Arts.
NEWORLEANS
Facing federalcuts, AmistadCenterlaysoff staff
Historical archivehas millions of documents
BY MARIE FAZIO Staff writer
One of the nation’s oldest and most significantarchivesofBlackhistory,the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans has collectedand cared for millions of historical documents and artifacts overthe pastsix decades.
Now that workisatrisk after federalfunding cuts wiped out 40% of the organization’s$1.5 million budget,according to executivedirector Kathe Hambrick. Last week, the center was forced to lay off about half of its 14 staff members.
The cuts stem from the Trump administration’sgutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, afederal agency that awards grants to librariesand museums across the country.The agency did not say why Amistad’sgrantswere terminated, butthe cuts are inline with President Donald Trump’sefforts to end programs that promote diversity or prioritize the experiences of minority groups
The loss will make the Amistad’s work less accessible to the public as the remaining skeleton crew juggles conservation work, assisting researchers and ongoingprojects to sort and digitize its collections.
“There’sprojects we were in the midst of that we won’tbeable to finish,” said BrendaFlora, curator of moving images and recorded sound for the archive. “There’sprojects we have been promised money for that was withdrawn that we won’t be able to start.”
One lost grant would have paid for the conversion of decades-old video and audio tapes of interviewswith
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Ashland Craft and Cole Goodwin, according to the artist’swebsite.
Staff withthe Amistad Research CenterinNew Orleans sortthrough rare photosand artenclosed in archival sleevesonTuesday.
community members in Mound Bayou,a Mississippi town founded by formerly enslaved people in the 1880s. For now,the 130 hours of interviewsdonated by documentary filmmakerBrad Lichtenstein will sit in boxes untouched.
Federal courts have ordered the government to restore some of the grant funding, but the future of federal funding for museumsremains uncertain.
In the meantime, Hambrick and her remaining staff have taken matters into their own hands, launching a$1millioncampaign in March to raise money for the center and “Save Black History.”
“This isn’tjust about survival,” Hambrick said. “It’sabout reimagining how we share and safeguard Black history with the next generation.”
Federalspendingcuts
TheAmistadResearch Center is
an independent, community-based archive focused on Black history, the African Diasporaand the Civil Rights Movement, as well as other minoritygroups. It housesawide range of records and art in its space on Tulane University’scampus. Thecollection includes art by Jacob Lawrence, personalpapers of Frank SmithHorne —influential Harlem Renaissance figureand theuncle of singerand civil rights activist Lena Horne —and New Orleanspoet TomDent, as wellasold yearbooks from New Orleans high schools.They also have historical documents related to the slave ship Amistad,the archive’snamesake.
Agroup of Africans whohad been kidnapped from Sierra Leone to be sold intoslavery overthrew the Amistad’s captainand crew. The ship was ultimately recaptured, but theU.S. Supreme Courtruled that the Africans were taken illegally and were free toreturn home.
The tour’sname is taken from aline in Bryan’shit single “Country Song Came On,” which wasreleased in September from his eighth studioalbum, “Mindofa Country Boy.” Produced by father and sonJeff and Jody Stevens,the project marks the countrysuperstar’s first new album in fouryears. Bryanhas had 29 No. 1 hits andmoreRIAA-certified digital singles than any other country artist, with 68.5 million. His global streams are at 17.2 billion, and he has sold nearly 13 million albums. He played at the Cajundome in 2017 on his “What Makes YouCountry” tour andin2022 on his “Raised Up Right Tour.”
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founded and directed by Gourley
This year,Visit Lake Charles and Gourley will be putting on the third Louisiana Food &Festival on Sept. 18-21.
“I really believe thatit gives folks ataste of authentic Louisiana cuisine,” Gourley said. “I think if you’re looking for an authentic Louisiana experience, and you really want world-class beverage tastings, not just local wines and local spirits, the festival offers alot.”
The event will kickoff with Louisiana’sBest Taste Awards from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 18 at SOWELA Technical andCommunity College. VIP options are available forthe event.
Gourley said the ceremony is new this year andwill offer an interactive walkaround to try delicious creations from some of the best chefs across the state and region.
On Sept. 19, the festival will host Fire on the Lake from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Bord du Lac Park. It will include live fire cooking overlooking Lake Charles with avariety of slowcooked, grilled and smoked meats, Louisiana seafood andvegetariancreations.
Hambrickhas been bracing for blows to herorganization sinceJanuary.Amid“confusion and anguish” this spring, she launchedthe “Save Black History” campaign inspired by the partnership between educator Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who joined forces in the 1910s to start a network of 5,000 schoolsthat taught Black students in thesegregated South.
“Weare at risk,” Hambrickwrote in aMarch 1letter that was posted to Amistad’swebsite. “Wenow turn to you, our friendsand allies, to help us securethe future of Black history.”
Notlongafter,the cutsbegan.In April, Amistad received aletter from Keith Sonderling, acting executive director of the IMLS, saying thatseveral grants were being terminated immediately.
Afterthatorder,all 70 employees of the IMLS were put on leave. The IMLSdid not immediately respond to inquiries. “There’sanAmistad in every parish,”saidMiranda Restovic, presidentand executive director of theLouisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Federal cuts have created aripple effect through the “whole cultural infrastructure,” she said, forcing the state agency to cancel somegrantcycles for 2025 and reducestaff,bothhopefully shortterm solutions.
“These arevery important cultural institutions that are housing our state’s history ,” she said. “If we don’tcare aboutour history, what do we care about?”
‘Our rootsare strong’
Standing in the archive offices earlier this week, Hambrick gesturedather remaining team.
“This is who’spretty much left,”
Hambrick said. “This is boots-onthe-ground to preserve this history.”
The staff lost two research archivists who answered calls and located documents for visitors to the archive, as well as ametadata specialist who was working on sorting and digitizing the collection from the American Missionary Association.
Asmaller staff will slow the intake of new materials and throw awrench in efforts to digitizeand publish materials. The archivists —whom Hambrick refers to as her scientists —workdaily to prevent historicaldocuments and works of art from falling prey to mold, bugs and humidity.They store them in acid-freefolders andboxes and monitor their condition daily
“The reality is we will eventually have to slow down the processing on the preservation, and we may not fulfill grant obligations we currently have because they have such asmall staff,” said Felicia Render, curator of manuscripts.
“Anything that comes in is just going to have to sit until we can get to it,” Flora added.
The staff will also have less time to cull exhibits for visitingstudent groups.
“Weput outthese primary source documents, original documents, so the students can see and understand the importance of seeing history on paper,history through art,” Hambrick said, “as opposed to just going on TikTok.”
Still, Hambrick is undeterred in hermission to preserveand publicize history.The organization raised $20,000 in just 45 days.
“Our roots are strong, our community is engaged, and, with collective support, Amistad will not only endure,” she said, “we will thrive.”
The festival will wrapup with its signatureSunday Jazz Brunch from 11 a.m. to 2p.m. Sept. 21 at alocation yet to be announced. The event will feature unlimitedbeverage tastings with asouvenirglass, livemusic and abrunch with carving stations, salad bars, LouisianaSeafood stations, made-to-order omeletstations, desserts and more.
SOWELA Technical Community College is the official2025 charity partner and will receive aportion of theproceedsfromthe festival.Organizers partner with the college in many ways to involve culinary students in the festival.
”Wecreate alot of awareness for SOWELA in terms of having them apartofthe festival, and then they provide great culinaryassistants, having the students help out at all the events andtheir mobile kitchen
{/span} The Louisiana Food & Wine Festival Grand Tasting will be held from 2to 5p.m. Sept.20atBord du LacPark. There will also be options for VIP tickets for the event. The Grand Tasting will include culinary andbeveragetastings withlive music.
The United WayofSouthwest Louisiana is another festivalcharity partner andwill get100% of the proceeds from theWine & Whiskey Pull.
Tickets for the2025 festival went on saleMay 28.
The early bird sale will continue through July 31 and offer savings up to 33% on signature eventtickets. Tickets are all inclusive withunlimited food and beverages.
Gourley said ticket sales for theevent typically don’t pick up untilAugustorSeptember due to concerns of potential weather during hurricane season.
If the event is canceled duetoweather,Gourley will work to reschedule the eventand refund tickets for those who cannot attend the new festival dates.
Email Courtney Pedersen at courtney.pedersen@ theadvocate.com.
thedepartment hasput 43 new patrol officers on the street. Data compiledbyOne Acadiana shows Lafayette’s crime rate in 2023 was down 8.37% over afive-year span. Parishwide, the violent crime rate of 3.59 per every 1,000 people was about half of the state’srate.
Hired in February,Trouard is the seventh person to lead the Lafayette Police Department since 2020. “I don’twant to say, but it’s
ETHICS
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Belsom is therecreational coordinator and beach volleyballdirector
In May 2021, Dawson emailed parents of the students whomadethe volleyball team forthe 2021-2022 school year,according to EthicsBoard documents. The email laid out summer expectations, which included participating in abeach volleyballleagueonFridays in June and July of 2021. Thecost of theleaguewas $150 perteam, which could have up to three players, according to the documents Parents registered and paid
calmed down,”Boulet said. “I knowwhat’sgoing on behind the scenes,and Iknowwhy There’salot of accountability that’sbeen built into the department that you don’tsee. Alot of the little things that thechiefisdoing hascreated astabilitythat was not here a year and ahalfago.”
Trouard cited the additional officers hired and how the departmenthas changedthe wayitrecruits officers and retains them.Recruiting, he said, wasthe first thing that gotchanged.
Thedepartment also got new equipment and changed procedures and“theway that we operate,” he said. He and
through the LVLwebsite. Dawson, who is paid by LVLasa 12-month salaried employee, received $15,000 from LVLin2021. Belsom was paid $25 per hour for her work as the summer beach volleyball director; she received about $2,000 in 2021 and$2,500 in 2022 from LVL.
The EthicsBoarddeterminedthat as publicemployees withthe school district, both Dawson and Belsom violated state ethics laws when they were paid forproviding volleyball training andoverseeing competition for interested players. The Ethics Board additionally alleged
others have tried connecting with different sections of the community to get feedback.
One area of focus was traffic, andthe department has changedsome of its traffic initiatives. Another is the amount of drugs being trafficked through the city along the interstate highways in Lafayette.
“Westarted not nickel-anddiming looking for the little stuff on the street,” he said. “Westarted looking for the bigstuff. If you keep guns and you keep drugs from coming into the city of Lafayette —like Ialways tell the mayor —it’sgoing to get quiet.”
thatDawson compelledor coerced students to join the LVLleague. Ahearing before theadjudication boardhas been set for Nov.13for Dawsonand Belsom.
Aspokespersonfor the Lafayette Parish School System said thedistrict would not comment while the matter was being adjudicated.
STAFF PHOTO By CHRIS GRANGER
BUSINESS
BRIEFS
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Purdue Pharma
settlement set for vote
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s $7 billion-plus plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids will be sent to local governments, people who became addicted to the drug and other impacted groups after a judge’s ruling Friday
The nationwide settlement advanced by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane was hammered out in negotiations between the company, groups that have sued and representatives of members of the Sackler family who own the company Lane did not accept the plan itself on Friday — just that the information to be provided to the voters is adequate enough for them to decide, along with the voting procedures. Government entities, emergency room doctors, insurers, families of children born into withdrawal from the powerful prescription painkiller, individual victims and their families and others will have until Sept. 30 to vote on whether to accept the deal.
The settlement is a way to avoid trials with claims from states alone that total more than $2 trillion in damages.
This month, 49 states announced they had signed on to the proposal. Only Oklahoma, which has a separate settlement with the company, is not involved.
If approved, the settlement would be among the largest in a wave of lawsuits over the past decade as governments and others sought to hold drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies accountable for the opioid epidemic that started rising in the years after OxyContin hit the market in 1996. The other settlements together are worth about $50 billion, and most of the money is to be used to combat the crisis.
Google hits setback in antitrust penalty
LONDON — Google faced a big setback Thursday in its attempt to overturn a multibillion-dollar European Union antitrust penalty involving Android after a top court’s legal adviser sided with regulators.
The European Court of Justice’s advocate general, Juliane Kokott, recommended in a nonbinding opinion that Google’s appeal against the fine worth more than $4.7 billion should be dismissed
The case dates back to 2018, when the EU’s executive Commission slapped Google with a $5 billion fine after finding that the U.S. tech company used the dominance of its mobile Android operating system to throttle competition and reduce consumer choice.
After Google filed an initial appeal, a lower court trimmed the penalty to $3.99 billion in 2022, which the company also appealed to the Court of Justice. Kokott advised that the Court of Justice confirm the fine and uphold the lower court’s judgment, according to a news release summarizing her opinion.
Google said it was disappointed with the opinion, adding that if the court follows it, it “would discourage investment in open platforms and harm Android users, partners and app developers.” Streaming service adds AI content warnings
LONDON Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AIgenerated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters.
Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently
The app will display an on-screen label warning about “AI-generated content” and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators.
Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an “industrywide issue.”
It’s committed to “safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said.
stocks drift to mixed finish
BY STAN CHOE AP business writer
NEW YORK U.S. stocks drifted to a mixed finish on Friday in a quiet return to trading following the Juneteenth holiday.
The S&P 500 fell 0.2% to close out a second straight week of modest losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 35 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%.
Treasury yields also held relatively steady in the bond market after President Donald Trump said he will decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in Israel’s fighting with Iran. The window offers the possibility of a negotiated settlement over Iran’s nuclear program that could avoid increased fighting. The conflict has sent oil prices
Immigration moves baffle businesses Treasury yields hold steady
yo-yoing over the last week, which has in turn caused seesaw moves for the U.S. stock market, because of rising and ebbing fears that the war could disrupt the global flow of crude. Iran is a major producer of oil and also sits on the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s crude passes.
“We’re all waiting on pins and needles to see what happens with the Israel-Iran situation,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “These types of situations can stress markets, but often the best way to manage that stress is to just ride through it and not try to trade it.”
On Wall Street Kroger rose 9.8% after the grocer reported a better profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street had forecast. It also raised its forecast for an underlying measure of revenue for the full year But while Chief Financial Officer David Kennerley said it’s seeing positive momentum, the company is also still seeing an uncer-
tain overall economic environment. CarMax climbed 6.6% after the auto dealer reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected The company said it sold nearly 6% more used autos during the quarter than it did a year earlier On the losing end of Wall Street was Smith & Wesson Brands, the maker of guns. It tumbled 19.8% after reporting profit and revenue for the latest quarter that fell just shy of analysts’ expectations. Chief Financial Officer Deana McPherson said “persistent inflation, high interest rates, and uncertainty caused by tariff concerns” have been hurting sales for firearms, and the company expects demand in its upcoming fiscal year to be similar to this past year’s, depending on how inflation and tariffs play out.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 13.03 points to 5,967.84. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 35.16 to 42,206.82, and the Nasdaq compos-
ite fell 98.86 to 19,447.41.
A spate of companies has been adjusting or even withdrawing their financial forecasts for 2025 because of all the uncertainty that tariffs are creating for customers and for suppliers. Everyone is waiting to see whether Trump will reach trade deals with other countries that could lower his tariffs on imports, many of which are on pause.
It’s not just corporate America that’s waiting. The Federal Reserve has been keeping its main interest rate on hold this year, with its latest such decision coming earlier this week, because it wants to see more data about tariffs. In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively stable The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.37% from 4.38% late Wednesday The twoyear yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do, fell to 3.90% from 3.94%.
ICE raids scare off workers
BY PAUL WISEMAN AP economics writer
WASHINGTON — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job.
“There was finally a sense of calm,” said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition. That respite didn’t last long.
On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
The flip-flop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s actual policy, and Shi says now “there’s fear and worry once more.”
“That’s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally — an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term. Suddenly ICE seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,” said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration.
One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. “You can’t turn off cows,” said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.”
Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they’re in the country legally or not — have been call-
BY MICHELLE CHAPMAN AP business writer
Aflac says that it has identified suspicious activity on its network in the U.S. that may impact Social Security numbers and other personal information, calling the incident part of a cybercrime campaign against the insurance industry
The company said Friday that the intrusion was stopped within hours.
“We continue to serve our customers as we respond to this incident and can underwrite policies, review claims, and otherwise service our customers as usual,” Aflac said in a statement.
The company said it’s in the early stages of a review of the incident, and so far is unable to determine
ing out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center
“They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,” Gonzalez said. “They kind of feel like it’s based on skin color.” In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards.
“We’ve not heard of any real raids,” said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington’s Wenatchee River Valley. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.”
Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t show up for work.”
the total number of affected individuals. Aflac Inc. said potentially impacted files contain claims information, health information, Social Security numbers and other personal information related to customers, beneficiaries, employees, agents and other individuals in its U.S. business. The Columbus, Georgia, company said that it will offer free credit monitoring and identity theft protection and Medical Shield for 24 months to anyone who calls its call center Cyberattacks against companies have been rampant for years, but a string of attacks on retail companies have raised awareness of the issue because the breaches can im-
The horror stories were conveyed to Trump members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
It was another case of Trump’s political agenda slamming smack into economic reality With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry
“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual news conference.
pact customers. United Natural Foods, a wholesale distributor that supplies Whole Foods and other grocers, said earlier this month that a breach of its systems was disrupting its ability to fulfill orders leaving many stores without certain items. In the U.K., consumers could not order from the website of Marks & Spencer for more than six weeks and found fewer in-store options after hackers targeted the British clothing, home goods and food retailer A cyberattack on Co-op, a U.K. grocery chain, also led to empty shelves in some stores. A security breach detected by Victoria’s Secret last month led the popular lingerie seller to shut down its U.S. shopping site for
nearly four days, as well as to halt some in-store services. Victoria’s Secret later disclosed that its corporate systems also were affected, causing the company to delay the release of its first quarter earnings.
The North Face said that it discovered a “small-scale credential stuffing attack” on its website in April. The company reported that no credit card data was compromised and said the incident, which impacted 1,500 consumers, was “quickly contained.” Adidas disclosed last month that an “unauthorized external party” obtained some data, which was mostly contact information, through a third-party customer service provider
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By DAMIAN DOVARGANES
soccer ball sits in a strawberry field in Oxnard, Calif., on Wednesday.
ANOTHERVIEW
Of kings, presidents and primeministers
While Americans argueoverwhether we have, or need,aking, let’slookat twoworking democracies that know something aboutmonarchs— Englandand France —and see what’sgoing on in theirdomestic politics
The British monarchy,one wayoranother,has been aroundsince the 9thcentury.King Charles IIIishead ofstate and Prime Minister Keir Starmer is head of government.
Britain’stop political parties, and their commonly ascribed ideologies, are Labour (center-left/left), Conservative (center-right/right), Reform UK (farright) and Liberal Democrat (center/ center-left).
Conservatives, led by then-Prime MinisterRishi Sunak, were decimated in the2024 election.Theylost two-thirds of their seats in the House of Commons. Sunak drew 24% of the vote. Starmer’sLabourParty won 34% and captured 411 seatsout of 650, fora mammoth gain of 209. Smaller parties collected atotal of 43% of thevote, including 14% for Reform UK and 13% for Liberal Democrats.
The next British general election will be held no later than August 2029. The recentpoll average hasReform UK in first place with 29% and Labour second at 24%. Trailing are the Conservatives (17%)and Liberal Democrats (13%). Voters havebeen losing patiencewith the economy and immigration,and that’snot good for incumbents.
Reform UK —apopulist right-wingparty ledby Nigel Farage, on and off, since 2019 —startedasthe Brexit Party.Its platform focuses on nationalidentity, limiting immigration, opposingnet-zero emissions and cutting taxes. Farage has been called “Trump with a pint.”
In the contest to be the next prime minister, apoll by More in Common shows Farageand incumbent Starmercurrently neck-and-neck,with 24% and23%, respectively.Kemi Badenoch,the Conservativeleader has10%.
Across the English Channel, thelast KingofFrance was Louis XVI. He was beheaded in 1793 at age38. There went the monarchy France now has apresident— EmmanuelMacron,the youngest French head of statesince Napoleon.Its head of government, appointed bythe president,isPrime Minister FrançoisBayrou French parties are numerousand often constructed as movements or coalitions. Macronwas thefirst thirdpartycandidate to win the presidency in 2017. In fact, neither of the two major parties, Republican and Socialist, made it to the second round ofvoting that year
The nation’stop partiesare, at least fornow,and in order of National Assembly seatstheyhold: National Rally (far-right), Renaissance (centrist), La France Insoumise (left), Socialist (left), Republicans (centerright),DemocraticMovement (center), Horizons (center-right)and Ecologists (left).
Complicated party alliances are as much partof French politics as coqauvin is part of its cuisine In 2022, Macronwas thefirst incumbent to be reelected in 20 years. He won asecond five-year termunder the Renaissance banner with59% of thevote. Populist Marie Le Pen, the anti-immigration leader of National Rally,pulled 41%. While Macron’smargin waswide,Le Pen’sshowing was the best afar-rightpresidentialcandidate has ever received.
Shortly after reelection,Macron losta legislative majority andhad to form aminority coalition government. Currently,his coalitionhas 212seats (whichincludes Renaissance as wellasRepublican,DemocraticMovementand Horizon members).The opposition has 365 seats. Of those, 123 are held byNationalRally,72byLa France Insoumise, 63 by Socialists and 38 by Ecologists. The next French presidential electionis2027. Macron is term-limited, so he won’tberunning. Le Pen can’trun again duetoher conviction earlier this year formisusing European Parliament funds for partypurposes. Polls show the top contender is JordanBardella,the National Rally leader.He’spollinginthe low30s.Next is EdouardPhilippe, mayor ofLeHavre anda former prime minister appointedbyMacron;he’spolling 21%. Third is Jean-Luc Mélenchon,the founderofLaFrance Insoumise; he received 22% of thevote lasttime andis now polling 13%. Bardella is only 29. He makes Macron, elected when he was 39, seem like afogey. Youwondered, and now you know: There’sa lotof interestingpolitics going on across thepond, king or no king.
Ron Faucheux is anonpartisan political analyst, pollster and writer based in Louisiana.
Legitimizing chemtrail nonsense is
embarrassing
It seems the Louisiana Legislature was determined to bury its head in thesand where science is concerned, promoting the conspiracy theory that our government can direct the weather to be moredestructive to red states and brainwashing our citizens to promoteliberal ideology by dispersing nefarious chemicals into theair via jet engine exhaust from airliners.
Of course, these “chemtrails” as theyhave been dubbed, are actually thewhitecondensate “contrails” we have seen behind high-flying aircraft since thedawn of the jet age some 75 years ago, the result of hot air meeting cold air at altitude.
Since our ultra-conservative representatives insist on making us a laughingstock by outlawing this simple scientific fact,Ithought Iwould provide alittle humorous historical context. Prior to theWright brothers’ first flight in 1903, the vast majority of
chemcloud operations wereconducted by steam locomotives (remember theold black-and-white photographs of those beasts belching out massive clouds of smoke as they crisscrossed thecountry?) Once aircraft had taken over geoengineering chemtrail operations moreeffectively, however,steam locomotives were eventually retired from service. Andthank goodness Robert F. Kennedy Jr.has finally liberated us from more scientific claptrap by exposing the dangers of the vaccines we thought were protecting us from dreaded diseases like smallpox for hundreds of years. No doubt he’ll soon haveusback safely in the protective arms of those original scientists, the medieval doctors who understood thetrue healing mechanism of using leeches to get rid of bad blood. Here’stoour health!
WILLIAM PHILLIPS retired airline captain Mandeville
Dwight D. Eisenhower at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953.
Combustion is feeble compared to thetools of today’sinformation arsonists. Now that the Republican war on science has gone nuclear, our vocabulary needs adigital-age updatetoinclude “file deleters,” “datapurgers,” “grant cancelers” and “DOGE vandals.” The familiar anti-science arguments on issues like acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion and climatedisruption has moved into new territory with attacks on public health, now even dental hygiene.
Meanwhile, teachers,libraries, academic journals, corporate boards and universities continue to face a Republican war on “wokeness.”
June 14, the day of Trump’sbirthday parade, marked the72nd anniversary of aspeech that deserves morerecognition.
“Don’tjoin the book burners,” went the speech. “Don’tthink you are going to conceal faults by con-
cealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’tbeafraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency.”
If that caution against offending decency sounds like an invitation to prudishness or hatred against LGBTQ+ persons, think again. Eisenhower did not becomepresident by beingnaive, but only avery indecent, anti-Eisenhower would marshal themostvicious and primitive emotions in the land against its least protected citizens. The words carried an abstract meaning, but Eisenhower was speaking in concrete terms. The German Student Union bonfires of May 10, 1933, had happened only 20 years before. He had tworeal, matchbookcarrying book burners in mind. One was an army private named David Schine (look him up). The other was alawyer named Roy Cohn, aMcCarthyaide who becamementor to the 47th-greatest president of the U.S. MICHAEL BECK Baton Rouge
On May 25, more than 100,000 Louisiana homes lost power suddenly and without warning. As families celebrated Memorial Day, abrownout swept through neighborhoods. The culprit? Our overloaded power grid. Entergy confirmed the outage wastriggered by MISO, the regional transmission operator, after demand surged beyond safe limits. This wasn’tastorm. This was atypical hot day,and our grid couldn’tkeep up. As temperatures rise, so does demand for electricity.Without solutions to reduce that load, these blackouts will happen more often and with higher stakes. One answer is already working in other states: rooftop solar Even in Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, expanded rooftop and community solar are helping to relieve strain on the grid. In Texas, solar paired with batteries helped prevent outages during last summer’s record heat wave.InFlorida, major utilities are increasing grid capacity with solar to meet demand more reliably Rooftop solar can do the same here. When homes generate their own power,iteases pressure on the system, helping keep everyone’slights on. But for many Louisiana families, solar only becomes an option because of federal energy credits. Right now,though, those energy bill credits are under threat in Congress. If they’re eliminated, thousands of working families across our state could lose access to the cost savings and grid relief solar provides.
Youdon’tneed panels on your roof to benefit. Every solar home strengthens the grid and helps keep your bills stable. Urge your senators to defend residential energy credits and help keep the power on for all of us.
JHANE WILCOX
Ron Faucheux
CAROLINA BLUES
OMAHA, Neb.— Kramer Robertson doesn’tsee this weekendasachance at revenge.
At leastthat’snot how he thinksLSU or coach Jay Johnson should view this series. What happened in 2016 shouldn’tcolor theoutcome of the2025College World Series final between LSU and Coastal Carolina.
“I don’tthink that internally withthe team that they’re going to look at it as revenge, because those are separateyears,” Robertson said,“andthose losses havenothingtodo with what’sgoingtohappenthis weekend.”
But that history still counts for something.
Robertson played shortstop for theLSU team that felltoCoastal Carolinainthe Baton Rougesuper regional in 2016. Johnson —then thecoach at Arizona—lost to theChanticleers in the CWS final in excruciatingfashion afew weeks later.The Wildcatsdropped two onerungamesand hadthe game-tyingrun at third baseinthe ninth inning of Game3
The past,insome ways, can inform us of thefuture. It also can createascar forothers, including Robertson.
That’s the number of NCAA Division Ibaseball teams that began the season back in February,all with adream of ending up here.Inthe College World Series.
Only two remain.
Just one will be on top when it’s all over Ashow of hands, please, LSU Tigers and Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, if you believeyou arethe chosen ones. Oh. Both of you, huh? Not surprised. Not the way bothofthese teams got tothe CWSchampionshipseries.
The Tigers and Chanticleers go into Game 1onSaturday night convinced they are destined to win. Convinced that Excalibur has touched them on the shoulder to signify they are the chosen ones. The way they got here, why would they not?
Petrovic, Alker,Gonzalez
share lead at Firestone
TimPetrovicshota4-under 66 on Friday for ashare of the secondround lead with Steven Alker and Ricardo Gonzalez in the Kaulig Companies Championship, the third major of the year on the PGA Tour Champions. Petrovic closedwith abirdie on the par-4 ninth to match Alker and Gonzalez at 5-under135 at Firestone South. Alker,from NewZealand, had a66. Gonzalez, the Argentine player who shared the first-round lead with Soren Kjeldsen, shot68. Miguel AngelJimenezwas a stroke back after a66. Angel Cabrera, who already has won two majors this year,was 1under after a68. The winner of the tournaments gets aspot in The Players Championship at theTPC Sawgrass next year
Raleigh breaks HR mark held by Bench since1970 Cal Raleigh broke Hall of Famer Johnny Bench’s1970 record forhome runs by acatcher beforethe All-Star break, hitting his major league-leading 28th and 29th in the Seattle Mariners’ 9-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Friday
Raleigh put Seattle ahead and moved past Bench in the seventh inning with No. 29, adrive to the back of the left-field bleachers off Caleb Thielbar Raleigh needed only 73 games to break the record that Bench set in 87 games. The Seattle star shattered the mark with 22 games to spare before the All-Star game.
Barry Bonds holds theoverall record with 39 for San Francisco in 2001.
LSU has been the comeback Tigers in 2025, the self-styled Cardiac Cats. Eight times this season they’ve battled back to win from athree-run deficit or more. Wednesday night here against Arkansas,LSU was down two with two outs in the bottom of the ninth but rallied for three runs to win 6-5. Only once in 269 previous instances this season had ateam done thatin the same circumstances.
Remember Little Rock? The underwhelming Trojans whogot hot in their conference tournament andnearly torched LSU’s dreams of Omaha with a10-4 shockerinthe Baton Rouge regional? Since then, the Tigers are 6-0, including one of those huge comebackwins, rallying from 5-1 down in the regional final to beat Little Rock 10-6.
Do the Tigers believe? Youbet TedLasso’smustache they do.
“They’re built alittle bitdifferent,” ESPN college baseball analystKyle Peterson said after Wednesday’sgame. “Whenitcontinues to happen over and over and over again, obviously you start to think you are alittle bit different.” Peterson could have been speaking in the same breath about Coastal Carolina. If LSU fans think of the Chanticleers as
aslightly more souped-up version of Little Rock, they do so at their own peril.
Coastal Carolina has won 26 straight games, the longest winning streak byany team ever enteringthe CWS final. Sunday will mark two months (two months!)since the Chanticleers’ last defeat, 4-2 at College of Charleston.That night,College of Charleston’s coach, Chad Holbrook, ambledovertothe Coastal dugout afterthat game andtold thedejected Chanticleers they wouldn’t lose again Nostradamuscouldn’thave seen Coastal coming, but Holbrookdid. Now theChanticleers look in the mirror and see an unstoppableforce, andeveryone else is themovable object.
“I mean, we’re not really worried about the Tigers,” Coastal second baseman Blake Barthol said. “We’re more of just aselforiented team. We’rejust focused on our team and our team only.”
If you’re wondering whether theChanticleers come into this series with proverbial chips on their shoulders, you can stop at the end of this sentence. They do. When asked what he likes about LSUas ateam, this was pitcher Jacob Morrison’s reply:
“Not awhole lot.”
On theother side, LSU third baseman Michael Braswell was morethan willing togive Coastal Carolina its due as agreat team
Just thesecond-greatest team still playing.
“Werespect Coastal Carolina,” Braswell said. “They have a national championship. They beat coach (Jay) Johnson. What they’ve done this year is impressive. We’re excited to play them.
“We’re LSU. We’rethe Los Angeles Dodgers or the Yankees, whatever you want to call it. We have atarget on our back. If they want to be thechamps,they’ve got to beat thechamps.
The Chanticleers beat the champs back in 2016. They won asuper regional at LSU, in two games, then battled out of the loser’sbracket in the CWS to beat Johnson’sfirst team during his six-year stint at Arizona in a three-gamechampionship series.
To thinkthat there is revenge on the mind of the Tigers or their coach at this point is absurd. Most players on bothteams weren’teven teenagers when that happened. Johnson was at a different school. Coastal coach Kevin Schnall was an assistant for theChanticleers then, but that’sabout where those ties end. Coastal can pitch exception-
ally well, can get the timely hit, fields at exactlythe samelofty clip as LSU (.981) and has taken morehit by pitches (176) than any team in Division Ihistory ButLSU —after coming through theSoutheastern Conference, theSEC Tournament and the two games here against atoptier SEC team in Arkansas has quiteliterally had the best thrown at it. Many,many times.
“I thinkifyou’re at this point in theNCAA Tournament,” Johnson said, “you’vebeen battle-tested. I thinkthat’s just the way that it is. Idon’tbelieve there’sanything we have not seen.
“What Imean by that is highlevel pitching, high-level bullpen, high-level defense, offenses with speed, power,hitting skills, know how to play the game, movethe offense. Ithink we’re very prepared. Andwe’ll just leave it at that.”
BeingatLSU,this is the expectation,tobehere at the end of theyear competing foranational championship. Butnot just competing. Winning. Bringing homechampionship No. 8.
“The job’s not finished,” first baseman Jared Jones said. That’sone thing both the Tigers and Chanticleers can agree on.
AlleyesonGame7between Pacers,Thunder
BY TIM REYNOLDS AP basketball writer
OKLAHOMA CITY Game 6ofthe NBA Finals had been over for only about 10 or 15 minutes, and the Indiana Pacersand Oklahoma City Thunder were turning the page. What happened over the previous couple of hours in Indianapolishad already been deemed irrelevant.
The only thing on their minds: Game 7.
“A privilege,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.
“A great privilege,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said Aback-and-forth title matchup
—Indiana led 1-0 and 2-1,Oklahoma City led 3-2 —will endonSunday night with an ultimate game, the first winner-take-all contest in the NBA Finals since 2016. It’ll be Pacers at Thunder,one team getting the Larry O’Brien Trophy when it is over,the other left to head into the offseason wondering how they let the chance slip away
“Wehave one game for everything, for everything we’ve worked for,and so do they,” Thunder guard and reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said.“Thebetter team Sunday will win.”
History favors the hometeam in these moments: 15 of the previous 19 Game 7s in theNBA Finals were wonbythe club playing on its own court.
The Thunder played aGame 7at home earlier in these playoffs and won by32, blowing outDenver to reach theWestern Conferencefinals. Indiana’smostrecent Game 7was at Madison Square Garden in last season’s Eastern Conference semifinals; thePacers blew outNew York by 21 in that game.
All-time, home teams are 11238 in Game 7s (excluding the 2-2 record“home” teams had in the bubblein the2020 playoffs,when everythingwas playedinLake Buena Vista, Florida).But in recentyears, home sweet home has been replaced by road sweet road; visiting teams have won nine of the last 14 Game 7s played since 2021.
“It’sexciting, man. It’s so, so, exciting,” Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton said. “As abasketball fan,there’snothinglike aGame 7. There’snothing like aGame 7in the NBAFinals.Dreamed of being in this situation my whole life. So, to be here is reallyexciting. Really exciting forour group. What happened in the past doesn’tmatter.What happened today doesn’t
ä Pacers at Thunder.
7P.M. SUNDAy,ABC
matter. It’s all about one gameand approaching that the right way.”
The fact that Haliburton is playing at all right now is astoryin itself. He looked good as new in Game 6even withastrained right calf, something that he’sneeded around-the-clock treatment on this week. The Pacershaven’thad to coax him intoit; Haliburton’s own family is offering up constant reminders thatheneeds to be working on his leg.
“Myfamily has been on me,” Haliburton said. “If they call me, theyare like,‘Are youdoing treatmentright now?’ My family has been holding me accountable.”
There’salot of accountability going on among the Thunder right nowaswell. Adifferent kind, of course. They were massivefavorites going into Game 6— -3000 odds to winthe series,according to BetMGM Sportsbook. That means a $100 bet on theThunderwould have returned awhopping $103 or so if they had won the game and clinched the title. A36-9 run by Indiana turneda one-point lead early in thesecond quarter into a
full-fledgedblowoutearly in the third. And with that, aThunder team that finishedwith the best record in the NBA this season now has zero room forerror WinonSunday,and all ends well for Oklahoma City. Lose on Sunday,and they’ll go downinhistory as one of the best regular-season teams that failed to winatitle.
“If they hadwon by one, they would have probably walked out of this game withconfidence,” Thunder guard Jalen Williams said of the Pacers before leaving Indy’sarenafor the final timethis season. “That’swhatmakes them agood team. That’swhatmakes us agood team. They’re going to go into Game 7confident, and so are we.”
The Thunder flew home after the game on Thursdaynight. The Pacers were flyingtoOklahoma City on Friday afternoon.They’ll spend some time looking at film, then go through thefinalpractices —whichwon’tbemuch more than glorifiedwalk-throughs —ofthe season on Saturday
And then, Game 7. For everything
“I thinkweplayedtoexhaustion,” Pacers guard T.J. McConnell saidafterGame 6. “But we have to do it againonSunday.”
Yankees activate RH pitcher Weaver after two weeks out TheNew York Yankees activated right-handed reliever Luke Weaver from the injuredlist Friday after he missedtwo weeks with astrained lefthamstring. Weaver was injuredwarming up before aJune 1game against the LosAngeles DodgersatDodger Stadium. After beingplaced on the injured list, the Yankees thought Weaver might be out until early July or through theAll-Star break. Instead, Weaver began feeling better quickly andsaidthe pain disappeared shortly after the injury.Hetookhis final stepsinhis rehab by throwing asimulated game on Tuesday after throwing three side sessions. Weaver has a1.05 ERA with eight saves in nine opportunities in 24 appearances.
Sabalenkadefeats
Rybakina at Berlin Open
Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka staged a“crazy comeback”, saving four match points before beating Elena Rybakina 7-6, 3-6, 7-6 in the quarterfinals of the Berlin Open tennis tournament on Friday Sabalenka was6-2 downinthe final-settiebreakerbut came storming back, winning six straight points to reach her eighth semifinal of the season.
Sabalenka next faces Marketa Vondrousova,who defeated Ons Jabeur 6-4, 6-1.
Liudmila Samsonova also went through with a6-1,6-1 victory over Amanda Anisimova.
Samsonova will next meet Wang Xinyu after her opponent, Paula Badosa,was forced to withdraw due to arib injury after losing the first set 6-1.
Scheffler partofthree-way tiefor lead at Travelers ScottieSchefflerprovidedhope withalate doublebogey.Tommy Fleetwood charged through with two eaglesinthreeholes,and so did Justin Thomas withfive straight birdies. They wound up tied for the lead on ablustery Friday at the Travelers Championship.
Scheffler wascomfortablyin front when the left-to-right wind sent his ball into the fairway bunker on the par-4 17th. He wound up with a1-under 69. Fleetwood felt thewind going right-to-left. He had 240 yards to at least cover the water,264 yards to the hole, and Fleetwood chipped in for eagle on the reachable 15th and shot 65.
Thomas wished he could have hit the ball alittle better off the tee, but he stayed out of trouble leading to a64.
STAFF PHOTO By HILARy SCHEINUK
The LSU dugout comes to life after first basemanJared Jones ties the game in theeighth inning against the Arkansas Razorbacks during a6-5 victoryonWednesdayinthe CollegeWorld Series at CharlesSchwab Field in Omaha, Neb.
Scott Rabalais
2025 COLL WORLDSERIES LEGE W
No Cinderella,Coastal Carolina aims to rise to anotherechelon
BY REED DARCEY Staff writer
On Sunday,Coastal Carolina baseball coachKevinSchnall decided that he had grown tired of hearing folks mispronounce his team’smascot.
So he sat down at aCollege World Series news conference,leaned into his microphone andcarefully, yet forcefully,issued the correct pronunciation of “Chanticleers,” the monikerofthe team nowjust twowinsoverLSU away from winning its second national championship in 10 years.
“Everybody say it with me,” Schnall said. “SHON-tuh-cleers. SHON-tuh-cleers.
“Not SHAN-tuh-cleers. SHONtuh-cleers.”
Schnall may not have to correct people for much longer.Coastal Carolina is back in the CWSfinal, which begins at 6p.m. Saturday on ESPN, for the firsttime since it made asurprise title runaspart of its first trip to Omaha in 2016. That year,the Chanticleers swept LSU out of its own super regional, then won achampionship series against coach Jay Johnson’sArizonateam Coastal Carolina is not atraditional power.But it’snoCinderella. Not anymore.
This season, the SunBelt regular-season and tournamentchampions have won five more games (56) than any otherDivisionI team. They’ll begin theirseries against the Tigers on the heels of a26-game winning streak. They haven’tsufferedalosssince April 22, atwo-month stretch in which they’venot only strung together importantvictoriesoverconference foes but also collectedsome
Coastal Carolina first basemanColby Thorndykehits aline driveduring a CollegeWorld Series game on June 13 in Omaha, Neb
WHAT IS ACHANTICLEER?
Coastal Carolina’s athletic teams have one of sports’ rarest nicknames: the Chanticleers.The name comes from GeoffreyChaucer’s “The CanterburyTales”and is a reference, according to the school,to“aproud and fierce rooster.”
Thenameispronounced SHON-tuh-cleer
Coastal Carolina’steams were once called the Trojans, but in the early1960s a group of students and faculty pushedfor anew mascot.Atthe time, the school was a two-year branch of the University of South Carolina, so the decision to pick amascot more closely related to the Gamecock led to achangetoChanticleers. Scott Rabalais
impressive wins over nationally ranked teams.
Coastal Carolinaswept asuper regional at No. 4seed Auburn. Then it flewtoOmaha and beat Arizona, No. 8seed Oregon State and Louisville. The combined score of those three games was 24-9.
“Obviously, givecredit to their coaches because they’ve got those guys on point,” Louisville coach
DanMcDonnell said. “They’re a well-oiled machine. They’reefficient. And they’ve obviously put themselves in agreat position. So, congratulations to them.”
How has Coastal Carolina gotten this far?
To start, it has oneofthe best pitching staffs in the country
The top threeChanticleer arms —right-handersJacob Morrison,
CameronFlukeyand RileyEikhoff —haveacombined 26-3 record. They’vetallied282 strikeouts and only 55 walks. Just oneDivisionI team hasalower team ERA(3.20) thanCoastalCarolina, whichalso has the nation’sthird-best WHIP (1.18),the seventh-beststrikeoutto-walk ratio (3.07) and the eighthbest hits-allowed-per-nine-innings mark(7.59).
The Chanticleer hitters won’t swingfor the fences. They’ve hit only 66 homeruns this year
Buttheywill get on base, then use asmall-ball approachtocarefully moverunners around the diamond. Their on-base percentage is .410, and they’ve laid down56 sacrifice bunts —the eighth-most in the country.Theyalsolead DivisionIteams in sacrificeflies(40), and they’ve been hitbypitches 176 times —20more times than any otherteaminthe countrythisyear.
“They’vedone it in the last half of the season,” McDonnell said, “in the conference tournament, in theregionals, in supers, in Omaha, against —aswesay —the bestteams. It’simpressive what they’ve done.”
LSUand Coastal Carolina have faced off onlytwicebefore —inthe 2016 super regional at Alex Box Stadium. The Chanticleers took both of those games, stunning theTigers.
Coastal Carolina had not madeit back to Omaha until this year
Now it’s hopingtocementits status as one of the nation’stop programs.
“The Chanticleers are one of two teams in the entire country still playing,” Schnall said.“It’s incredible, but it’snot unbelievable. And it’s not unbelievable because we’ve got really good players.”
“(This year’sLSU team) also knows how difficult that loss was forsomanyfans andfor theguys that were on that (LSU)team,the coaches on that team,” Robertson said. “They want to do it morefor us. Ithink that’snot goingto be their primary goal ortheir primary focus.
“But Ithinkifyou askthem, it definitely would mean something if they could avenge some of those teams that they grew up watching.
LSU will get the chance to avenge Johnson’sWildcatsand Robertson’s Tigers on Saturday when it faces CoastalCarolina for Game 1ofthe College World Seriesfinal at Charles Schwab Field (6 p.m., ESPN).
Twowins over Coastal Carolina to deliver LSU’seighth national championship wouldn’theal the wound of 2016 for Robertson, but it would place aband-aid over it
“(A championship) would mean alot to alot of us,” Robertson said “Every alumnus is proud of this team, win or lose this series.The way they represented us, and the way they’veplayed is the standard, because LSU is the standard.”
Return to Omaha Robertson still lies awakeat night thinking about the heartbreak of 2016.
He remembers the chopper that bounced overthe outstretched glove of third baseman Chris Reid, and the dogpile that ensued as Robertson crumbled to theground in disappointment. That was Robertson’sjunior season. Aphoto of him in thatmoment—cradled in aball of grief on the grass as the Chanticleers celebrated on top of one another in the background —was hisphone background for an entire year It didn’tchange until the Tigers made it to Omaha in 2017.
“I looked at that on my phone for 365 days, every day,tomake me train harder,tomake melift harder, to make me hit more,” Robertson said.“Like that wasmysingular motivation going into the 2017 season, was to get over that hump and get to Omaha in my last chance.”
Time has healed thewound of that moment for Robertson, at least somewhat. Seeing the photo today is “more funny now” than anything else.
losses thathaunted him to thepoint where he couldn’tmuster thewill to return to Charles Schwab Field when LSU faced the Gators again in the CWS final in 2023.
Instead, Robertson sat by himself andwatched on TV as the Tigers hoisted their seventh national championship
“That win did alot for me, and it dida lot for that 2017 team mentally,”Robertson said. “It really put aband-aid on ascar.”
This year,Robertson plans on attending the CWS final. It’llbe thefirst time he’s been at Charles Schwab Fieldsince 2017, andthe first games he’ll watch from start to finish since he retired from baseballafter the 2023 season.
Robertsondoesn’tknow how he’ll feel this weekend, but he knows that now is the right time for him to return to the place —and watch histeamfaceanopponent— that inflicted so much pain.
“I had aconversation with (formerLSU president William F. Tate IV) yesterday,and that’s when I ultimately madethe decision to make the trip up to Omaha,”Robertson said.“So I’m glad Iam.” Laying it on theline
J.C. Cloney didn’tcare if he blew outhis arm.
two days of rest
He had been warming up in the tunnelduring the seventh and eighthinnings as Arizona trailed Coastal Carolina by arun entering the ninth. This was thedeciding game of the championship series, andCloneyfiguredthis would be thelast game of his career
He hadn’tbeen drafted and had graduated just before thetrip to Omaha. If this was going to be it, why not trytopitch?
“In the top of the ninth, Icame down andItoldJay,I was like,‘If this goes into(extrainnings), I’m ready.I’m an arm. Youcan have me. I’ve already warmed up as if I’m coming in,’ “Cloney said. “And Idon’tthink (Jay)said anything. It was just kind of astunned look on his face.”
Cloney never got his chance. Arizona catcher Ryan Haug struck out on afull-count pitch toend the gameinthe bottom of the ninth inning as CoastalCarolina became champions.
“I did whatever Icould to be ready to go, stretching, getting work done to ensure my armis ready to go,” Cloney said. “So it wasn’tthatwelost becausewe hada lack of teamguys. We lost because we just got beatenbya better team that day.”
couldreturn to theWildcatsin2017. Afterposting a3.11 ERA that year, Cloney wasdrafted in the ninth round by the Kansas City Royals andreached Double-A in 2019 before his career cametoaclose.
Cloney is now adistrictattorney in Orange County, California
Unlike Robertson, he believes the wound Coastal Carolinaleft with him and his Arizona teammates has healed “Theymay havewon thebattle, but (they) didn’twin the war,” Cloney said. “Like, now it’sbecoming awar.”
Cloney isn’tanLSU fan, but he’s aJay Johnson fan. He invited the coach to his wedding in January and still catchesupwiththe LSU skipper from timetotime.
But anational championship for LSU this weekend won’tcompletely make up forwhathappenedtothe Wildcats in 2016. Johnson may be facing the Chanticleers in the CWS final again, but doing it with adifferent school changes the equation.
Passingthe torch
Email KokiRileyat Koki.Riley@theadvocate.com. LSU Continued from page 1C
“I think thebestway to put it,” Cloneysaid, “ispartially yes, partially no.”
Beforeevery LSUgame, Robertson will text with Steven Milam Robertson hasbeen in Milam’s shoes.Milam,asophomore,isthelatestTiger shortstop to lead his team to the College World Series final.
The night before LSU left for Omaha this time around, Robertsonhad the chance to speak with Milamface-to-face.Hedidn’twant Milam to makethe samemistakes he made the last time he wasin Omaha, locking himselfinhis hotel room and becoming consumed by thestress of the moment.
“I justtried to give him everything that Iwould have wanted to know going into it,” Robertson said.“Mentally,physically, to the field conditions, to how the field plays, everything.
“Wehaveagoodrelationship, andwelike to saythatLSU is shortstop U, and we’re just passing the torch to him now.”
Passing the torch to Milam isn’t just asymbolic gesture for Robertson; it’saresponsibility he takes seriously. LSU meansthe world to Robertson. If he could, he happily would trade his short timeinMajorLeague Baseballfor anational championship at LSU.
Butthe quest foranother title is no longer his to bear.All he can do now is let the past stay in the past.
But heartbreak followed Robertson to Omaha the next seasonwhen the Tigers lost to Floridain the College World Series. Those defeats keep himupatnight even more,
Cloneyhad tosseda122-pitch complete game shutout for Arizona on Monday in Game 1ofthe College World Series final, but he was readytocome into Game 3on
The strikeoutended Arizona’s hopes of anational title, but it wasn’tthe end of Cloney’scareer Johnsonhelped theleft-hander enroll in agraduate program so he
“This is absolutelynot about me,” Robertson said. “This is about supporting them.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO By GERALD HERBERT
LSU shortstop Kramer Robertson reacts as Coastal Carolina celebrates after LSU lost in the bottom of the ninth inning of asuper regional game on June 12, 2016, at Alex BoxStadium. Coastal Carolina advanced to theCollegeWorld Series.
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By CORy EADS
Hot spot
BR restaurateurs bring Calif.-based hot chicken chain to former Uno Dos Tacos location
BY SERENA PUANG Staff writer
Dave’s Hot Chicken, original-
ly a late-night stand in East Hollywood, California, is branching out to Louisiana. The first location opens June 20 at 640 Arlington Creek Centre, Baton Rouge, in the building that was formerly Uno Dos Tacos.
The chain is expanding rapidly in the United States, with about 150 new locations opened or planned to open this year Regional manager Jorge Frausto said the brand is hoping to eventually have several locations in Louisiana — possibly in New Orleans and Lafayette. But the expansion is starting here in the capital city
Dave’s Hot Chicken is known for its Nashville-style hot chicken served as tenders or sliders on a potato bun. The menu features four combo meal options at seven different spice levels, along with shakes and slushers. The business was founded in 2017, with three friends bringing folding tables and portable fryers to a parking lot. By 2019, the former CEO and co-founder of Wetzel’s Pretzels reached a deal to franchise the business. Rapper Drake is an investor in Dave’s. Frausto, from El Paso, Texas was sent to Louisiana to scout possible locations and markets. He said he was impressed by the culture and welcoming nature of Louisiana, especially in Baton Rouge. Given the company’s history as a small startup renting out a single parking spot in California, he feels a sense of connection to the city because of the way he saw people here fighting for their dreams and overcoming challenges.
“We will be part of the community,” Frausto said. “We’re not just a company that comes from outside.”
The business will partner with local churches and community organizations to host events and fundraisers.
In Baton Rouge, the restaurant has local restaurateurs at the helm. Tommy Wiggins, the franchisee, opened Baton Rouge’s Cheba Hut (a cannabisthemed sandwich shop on Ben Hur Road). The general manager is Brandon Thomsen, who helped open what is now Chow Yum and used to own Oak and Smoke in Prairieville.
“We’re just excited for the opportunity to showcase Dave’s in Louisiana,” Thomsen said. “It’s an amazing brand, and it’s a company that puts their people first.” As part of his training, Thomsen flew out to San Diego for almost the whole month of May “I was out there for 27 days, and I had it (Dave’s) 16 times,” he said.
Frausto said Dave’s chicken is halal and breaded tender by tender The menu also features nonchicken, cauliflower-based
Summer bug season is here, Louisiana. These pesky critters are invading your homes, yards.
BY HANNAH LEVITAN Staff writer
Summer is bug season in Louisiana, and June’s warm temperatures and recent heavy rains have brought out pesky critters that can wreak havoc in your home, bite your skin and create general annoyances.
Mosquitoes, ants and flies are already buzzing about, and insects like termites and roaches are beginning to swarm or emerge, especially as Louisiana sees more precipitation, according to Aaron Ashbrook, an assistant entomology professor at LSU.
In past years, more of these pests would already be out and about by mid-June, but because of Louisiana’s abnormal winter, some insects are behind schedule.
Here’s everything you need to know about 2025 summer bug season.
Mosquitoes, ants, flies. Oh my!
Mosquitoes, ants and flies are common household sights in Louisiana. But these pests are currently ramping up across the state, thanks to one factor that’s driving up populations.
“It’s going to be a big year for mosquitoes, most likely, because
of all the rain,” Ashbrook said.
Last week, New Orleans city officials announced that mosquitoes on the east bank of New Orleans tested positive for West Nile virus, prompting widespread mosquito control treatment.
Like mosquitoes, fire ants also flourish after heavy rain, resulting in larger-than-average, red mounds.
“When there’s a lot of rain, their mounds are going to be forming at the top of the soil and so we’re more likely to encounter them,” Ashbrook said. Though they’re known for their painful stings and bites, fire ants also control flea and tick levels, according to the LSU Ag Center Considering that tick season is particularly bad this year, increased fire ant activity may be a silver lining in helping to keep
ä See BUGS, page 6C
FILE PHOTO By BRETT DUKE
Haley Marquette with the St.Tammany Parish Mosquito Abatement District applies larvicide oil to a ditch in Slidell.
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
Termites swarm around a light at night in Louisiana.
PHOTO By APRIL BUFFINGTON
Dave’s 1 tender & 1 slider with fries and a Frozen Hi-C Flashing Fruit Punch at Dave’s Hot Chicken
Impracticalinvitations
make friend distressed
Dear Miss Manners: I’m an adult with physical and emotional disabilities, and Ilive with my caregiver.Ihave an older friend who is avery sweet person with good intentions, but Ifeel like she doesn’treallyunderstand my needs.
Among other things, Ihave acatheter and use awheelchair.She often says she wants to “take me out on the town” to “get crazy.” So far,she’sneverfollowed through with any of these invitations, but every time she brings it up, Ifeel very uncomfortable.
three of us, my wheelchair andmyservice dog, Chief. Then let’scall theclub and makesurethey have wheelchair access, bothinfront and from the parking lot.
roomsorsmall apartments
By The Associated Press
Today is Saturday, June 21, the 172nd day of 2025. There are 193 days left in the year
Judith Martin MISS MANNERS
“Oh, first, let’s make sure they have aparkinglot, since Iwon’t be ableto wheel very far from thevan. Of course, we’ll havetogoon anight when it’s nottoo crowded so that the dance floor has clearance for me and Chieftowheel around— and awide berth for all my accessories.
Someleave their doors open to the hallway,and I wonder if it’sappropriate to greet them when passing by their rooms as Ivisit my father
They might appreciate acheery “hello” or awave from thehallway,but would that be intruding on their privacy? If Iwalk by with my eyes averted,amIsending amessage that their presence is not important? What would Miss Manners recommend?
Iabsolutely do not want to go anywhere with her! Tonight, when we were out to dinner with my family, she asked me to go somewhere another time. Ididn’tknow what to do, so Ijust smiled and said it sounded like fun Is there apoliteway to decline her invitations so she’ll stop asking me?
Gentle reader: “Of course,I would love to go out on the town with you. Let’sget crazy!
“So here’swhat needs to happen: We have to call Maria, my caregiver,and make sure that she is available. Hopefully she can get avan big enough for the
St. Joseph’sholds Eucharistic Procession
St. Joseph Cathedral, 401 MainSt., Baton Rouge, will celebrate the Solemnityof the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) with Masses at 4p.m. June 21, and 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. June 22.
“We’ll also want to check that it’sOKfor me to bring in my own food and drink …”
Miss Manners feels certain thatyou will not have to getmuch further than the second sentence before your friend realizes what she is asking, starts to panic and retreats. If she does not, you can always say “I was joking, Meredith. Obviously it’salittlehard for me to be spontaneous, but Ienjoy spending time with you. Perhaps we can do that without ‘getting crazy.”’
Dear Miss Manners: My father has movedintoanassisted living facility,where residentseach havetheir own
RELIGION BRIEFS FROM STAFFREPORTS
Gentlereader: Is there an option between gawking at these tenants as you pass by and fervently looking away as though they were inmates who committed a crime?
Miss Manners suggests you tryspontaneityand not overthink the situation. If you happen to makeeye contact, ashy,endearing smile is fine. Butifthey do not return your gaze, keep it moving.
Send questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners. com; to her email dearmissmanners@gmail com; or through postal mailtoMiss Manners, Universal Uclick,1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
The10:30 a.m. Masswill feature asolemn Eucharistic Procession led by Rev.J Cary Bani, CathedralRector.The procession,which circles CathedralSquare, willconclude with Benediction and the Divine Praises inside the Cathedral. All are invited to participate in this specialcelebration of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.The 10:30 a.m. Mass will also be broadcastlive on Catholiclife TV,Cox Channel 15, Facebook,Roku, FireTV and YouTube. For moreinformation contact Cathedral Pastoral Services at (225) 387-5928 or office@cathedralbr.org.
SMOOTHIE
Continued from page5C
drink and aclassic acai bowl.
He rated the smoothie an 8.7/10 and said that it was the “most different” business he’d been recommended in the area, saying it was needed among the “monotony”of fried food he’d beeneating
DAVES
Continued from page5C
vegetarian options. Nashvillestyle hot chicken is not just about being spicy or the spiciest, Frausto said, it’sabout making something enjoyable.
“Wewanna makesurethat we have alevel forevery single person,” he said.
Dave’sHot Chicken, 640 Arlington Creek Centre, Baton Rouge, will be open
11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.The grand opening is set for Friday June 20, with regular hours.
in the city In his video, Lee said he foundthe store through the recommendationof local food contentcreator Maameefua Koomson, andashe left,he tipped $3,000 plus paid it forward $1,000 for customers who would come after him that day
“Since then, we’vehired an amazing team, put real systems in place, and poured our hearts into learning,
growing andcreating jobs for ourcommunity —all while still serving thebest smoothies and açaí bowls around,”the post from Dr Feel Good stated.
Dr.Feel Good staff did not respond to immediate requests for comment via phone.
Email Serena Puang at serena.puang@ theadvocate.com.
Todayinhistory: On June 21, 1788, the United States Constitution went into effect as New Hampshire became therequired ninth state to ratify it
Also on this date:
In 1834, Cyrus Hall McCormick received apatent for his mechanical reaper In 1893, thefirst Ferris wheel opened to the public as part of the Chicago World’sFair
In 1942, an Imperial Japanese submarine fired shells at Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, but caused little damage.
In 1954, scientists of the American Cancer Society presented astudy to a meetingofthe American Medical Association in San Francisco which found that men whoregularly smoked cigarettes died, particularly from lung cancer,at aconsiderably higher rate than nonsmokers.
In 1964, civil rights activists James Chaney,Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Neshoba County,Mississippi; their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weekslater.(Fortyone years later,onthis date in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, wasfound guilty of manslaughter in their deaths; he wassentenced to 60 years in prison, where he diedinJanuary 2018.)
In 1982, ajury in Washington,D.C., foundJohnHinckleyJr. not guiltybyreason of insanityinthe shootings of President RonaldReagan, Press Secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty andSecret Serviceagent
TimMcCarthy
In 1989, asharply divided SupremeCourt ruled, in Texas v. Johnson, that burning the American flag as aform of political protest wasprotected by the First Amendment.
In 1997, the WNBA made its debut as the New York Liberty defeated the host
Los Angeles Sparks 67-57. In 2004, the aircraft SpaceShipOne madethe first privately funded human spaceflight. In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to charges of plotting afailed car bombing in NewYork’s Times Square. (Shahzad was later sentenced to life in prison.)
Today’sbirthdays: Composer Lalo Schifrin is 93. Musician Ray Davies (The Kinks) is 81. Actor Meredith Baxter is 78. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi is 78. Actor Michael Gross is 78. Author Ian McEwan is 77. Musician Nils Lofgren is 74. Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is 68. Country musician Kathy Mattea is 66. Filmmaker Lana Wachowski is 60. Rapper-DJ-producer Pete Rock is 55.
Realitiesofmovecatchingup
Dear Harriette: Acouple of months ago, Imoved from Spain to theUnited States withmyhusband and our daughter We settled in Los Angeles after we had done what we thought was careful planning. We saved up what felt like a substantial amount of money and assumed it would give us agood cushion while we adjusted and got settled. Reality has hit us much harder than we expected. The cost of living here is far moreexpensive than we imagined. Rent, groceries, child care, even just basic daily expenses —it’sall adding up so quickly.Our savings are running low much faster than we anticipated, and our salaries aren’tnearly enough to keep up with the
lifestyle we’re trying to maintain, even though it’s amodest one. We’re doing our best to stay positive and makeitwork, but I’malready finding myself questioning whether this movewas the right decision. Imiss the stability and affordability of lifeback in Spain, and I’mstarting to wonder if moving back is the more responsible choice. How do you know when to keep pushing forward and when to admit that something just isn’tworking? —Over Our Heads Dear Over Our Heads: Assess the situation as calmly as you can. What madeyou come to the United States in the first place? Family? Sentiment? Whatever it was,isthat draw moreim-
portant than your reality today?
Can you restore your life in Spain if you go back?
Can you resumeyour jobs or get comparable ones? Can you reestablish your lives there? Do you want to do that, all things considered?
Weigh your choices and decide what makes sense fornow.Ifyou decide to moveback to Spain, you may have enough extra money to visit the United States again later if you want to do that. Youcan also save morerobustly to plan foramove sometime in the future.
Send questions to askharriette@ harriettecole.com or c/oAndrewsMcMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St.,Kansas City,MO 64106.
Call before donating yearbooks
Dear Heloise: Iamwriting on the topic of donating yearbooks as aformer board member of alocal historical society. Pleaseadvise your readers to contact thehistorical society (or library) first to see if they are seeking yearbooks. Many historical societies or libraries may already have acopy in good condition. Some may need a particular year,while others may be flooded with books and won’taccept them. Yearbooks should be in good condition, not falling apart. At our organization, when we accept them, it’s only when there
BUGS
is no writing on the inside because there could be informationabout the originalowner or the personwho signedthe book
Why am Isharing this? Because there is nothing as heartbreaking as when someone showsup unannounced with yearbooks only to be told that they are unneeded. —Stu Haley,in Shaker Heights, Ohio
Bluetoothtrackers
Dear Heloise: Iamconstantly unable to find things my car in alarge parking lot, key fobs, my wallet, my checkbook, etc. So, I bought eight Bluetooth
year fortermites,” Ashbrook said.
trackers and put them with these items. With my cellphone, Ihave located three itemsduring the past two months with the help of these trackers. If Icannot find my cellphone, though, I’mintrouble! —Steve T.,via email
Cleaning acoffeepot
Dear Heloise: GailN.said she added ateaspoon of hot water to take stains out of acoffeepot. Abartender Iknow would put atablespoon of baking soda in the pot, which wasfull of water.The pot would be clean in the morning. —Gene, from Dayton,Ohio Send ahinttoheloise@ heloise.com.
Continuedfrom page5C
other insect populations in check.
Ashbrook said he’salso encountereda substantial amount of deer andhorse flies this year.Thesebloodsucking insectsmostly target humans, horses and cattle.
Fruit flies, asmaller, winged pest, have been particularlyactivethismonth, too.
Fruit flies feed and reproduce on trash and rotting food, so it’sextra important to empty your garbageand take additional preventative measures to avoidinfestations.
Termites androaches
But moreofLouisiana’s most harrowing pests are still on their way
“I imagine thatwemight see swarmsa little bit later than we typically would this
Even though there have already been several swarms, Ashbrook said theseason waspushedback aweek due to the harsh winter
Residents should also look out for cockroaches, since their activity has been relatively high recently,according to Ashbrook. Since roaches typically live in manholes andsewers, they are often flushed outafter floodsand begin searching fora drierspot to hang.
Tips forcontrollingbugs
Termites: Moist conditions are ideal fortermites, so fix any leaks, keep vents open and avoid leaving wood piles near your home.
If youfind mud tubes, warping or water stains in your home, callpest control immediately Roachesand fruit flies: Empty your trash. This also goes forall pests, because food sources
like rotting potatoes, sticky counters or even toaster crumbs can attract an army of bugs.
“Whatmight seem like a small amount to ahuman, would be afeast fordays forthese flies,” Ashbrook said.
Mosquitoes: UseEPA-approved insect repellent, check forstanding water inside andoutside andinstall window screens if you haven’talready Deer andhorse flies: Test out insect repellent andconsider wearing loose-fitting, long sleeves, if you’re able to.
Fire ants: Consider spraying your yard with EPAregistered insecticide or set ant bait near mounds. Fleas and ticks: Avoid feral animals and regularly treat your pets with fleaand tick prevention medicine. Check yourself forticks after being outdoors.
Consider tightening door frame seals and fill structural cracks and crevices to prevent infestations.
Harriette Cole SENSE AND SENSITIVITy
Hints from Heloise
STAFF FILEPHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Co-owner Heather Smith poses for aportrait at Dr.Feel Good
PHOTO By APRILBUFFINGTON
Dave’s 2tenders withfries and aFrozen Hi-COrange Lavaburst at Dave’s Hot Chicken
cAncER (June 21-July 22) Taking charge and lettinggoofunnecessary items and pastimes to makeroom for what makes you feel alive will set the stage for abright future.Yourlife,yourdecisions.
LEo(July 23-Aug. 22) Rethink your day andtakecareofresponsibilities first. Make last-minute adjustments and learnasyou go.Take pride in what you do, and don't apologize for being different.
VIRGo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Gather information and use yourexperience to push your way into the spotlight. Attendevents that allow you to shine and attract interest. High energy and enthusiasm will attract attention.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-oct. 23) Unusual conceptsand people will draw you. Trust your instincts,verifyinformation and follow the most comfortable path. Pay attention to your surroundings.
ScoRPIo (oct. 24-nov. 22) Don't skip a beat. Your mind, body and soul are eager to reach whatever goal you set. Love is on the rise, andself-improvement will attract attention.
SAGIttARIuS (nov. 23-Dec. 21) Pay attention to your surroundings and be ready to counter any negativitythat comes your way. Take care of domestic problems and spacesrequiring adjustments to make life easier.
cAPRIcoRn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Opportunities are apparent if you socialize or sign up for something interesting. Budget for the extras you wanttoimplement
into your routine before you start. Ask questions and get what you want in writing.
AQuARIuS (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) Focus on what youhaveand the maintenancenecessary to stabilize your life. Refuse to let others dominate you. Achange at home will turnout better than anticipated.
PIScES (Feb. 20-March 20) Consider how to make your environment userfriendly. Check what's happening in your community or attend an event that promises to inspire you and push you in an exciting direction. It'stime to get moving.
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Gimmicks and offers that are too good to be true will tempt you. Do your homework beforeventuring down apath forthe wrong reason. Put your energy where it brings the most satisfactionand rewards.
tAuRuS (April 20-May20) Distance yourself from people who disturb what you aretrying to accomplish. Visitinga place thatenrichesyour mind and offers insight into using your time wisely will lead to success.
GEMInI (May 21-June 20) Let creativity lead the way and inspire you to follow your heart and soothe your soul. Set abudget and figureout how to reach your goal withnoregrets.
CelebrityCiphercryptograms are created fromquotations by famous people, past and present. Each letter in the cipher stands foranother.
cLuE: JEQuALS V
toDAy'S
CeLebrItY CIpher
beetLe bAILeY
Mother GooSe And GrIMM
bIG
Sudoku
InstructIons: Sudoku is anumber-placing puzzle based on a9x9 grid with several given numbers. The object is to place the numbers 1to9inthe empty squares so that each row, each column and each 3x3 box contains the same number only once. The difficulty level of the Sudoku increases from Monday to Sunday.
Yesterday’s Puzzle Answer
nea CroSSwordS
THewiZard oF id
BLondie
BaBY BLueS
Hi and LoiS
Yesterday’s Puzzle Answer
Bridge
By PHILLIP ALDER
We have been lookingatStayman, but exactly how it operates is influenced by your other no-trump responses. In today’s deal, look at the South hand. Your partner opens one no-trump, showing 15-17 points. AfterEast passes, what would you respond?
The first questionis: Does your partnership use transfers into the minors? If you do, you should go viathatroute,perhaps responding twospades. (And then two clubs followed by threeclubs would show afour-card major, long clubs and at least enough points for game.)
If, however, you do not transfer into theminors, traditionally responderbids two clubs, initially treated as Stayman, then rebids three clubs, which is adropdead sequence. The responder has along club suit in aweak hand, and opener is expected to pass. More logical is to play an immediate jump to threeofaminor as asign-off. Thentwo clubs followed by three clubs shows alongminor (with or without afour-cardmajor), at least enoughpointsforgameandeitherworry thatthreeno-trumpmightfailandfiveof aminor make, or interest in aslam.
In this deal, let’s assume you jump to three clubs as asign-off. West leadsthe spade 10. What would youdo?
Note that one no-trumpbyNorth should be defeated by aheart lead.
wuzzles
Here, you want to restrict your losers to onespade,one heartand two clubs. You should plantotaketwo diamond finesses and to start the club suitfrom thedummy (lead up to honors).Ifyour first trump play is from hand,you will have to lead theking to squashEast’s jack —but why guess?
EachWuzzle is awordriddle which creates adisguised word, phrase, name, place, saying, etc. For example: NOON GOOD =GOOD AFTERNOON
Previous answers:
word game
InStRuctIonS: 1. Words must be of four or more letters. 2. Words that acquire four lettersbythe addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed. 3. Additional words made by adding a“d” or an “s” may not be used. 4. Proper nouns, slang words, or vulgar or sexually explicit wordsare not allowed.
toDAy’SWoRD cHAMPAGnE: sham-PANE: Sparkling wine made in Champagne,France, or similar wine made elsewhere.
Averagemark 30 words
Timelimit 60 minutes
Canyou find46ormorewords in CHAMPAGNE?
yEStERDAy’SWoRD —ocARInAS
today’s thought “Honor the Lord with your substance, and with the first fruits of all your increase: So shall your barns be filledwithplenty, and your presses shall burst out withnew wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10
