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PARTLY SUNNY 57 • 46 | TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2020 | theworldlink.com
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Famed Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager dies Associated Press Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles “Chuck” Yeager, the World War II fighter pilot ace and quintessential test pilot who showed he had the “right stuff” when in 1947 he became the first person to fly faster than sound, has died. He was 97. Yeager died Monday, his wife, Victoria Yeager, said on his Twitter account. “It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.” Yeager’s death is “a tremendous loss to our nation,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
U.S. fully restores DACA
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday that it fully restored the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shields hundreds of thousands of young people from deportation, complying with a federal judge’s order. The Department of Homeland Security posted on its website that it is accepting new applications, petitions for twoyear renewals and requests for permission to temporarily leave the U.S. The department said it “may seek relief from the order,” signaling that its concession to the court order may be short-lived if its legal efforts succeed. The announcement is still a major victory for young people who have been unable to apply since Trump ended DACA in September 2017. His administration has long argued that DACA is unconstitutional. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Trump violated federal law in how he ended the program, Chad Wolf, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said the administration would study its options and, until then, wouldn’t accept new applications and would grant renewals for one year instead two. DACA shields about 650,000 people from deportation and makes them eligible for work permits. Monday’s announcement came hours before a deadline set by District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in the Eastern District of New York for the administration to post public notice that it would accept applications under terms before Trump ended DACA in 2017. The judge ruled Friday that Wolf was unlawfully serving in his position. DACA was started in 2012 during the Obama administration. It allows certain immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children to work and be exempt from deportation, though it does not confer legal status on recipients. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to reinstate DACA when he takes office in January but permanent legal status and a path to citizenship would require congressional approval. DACA recipients and their supporters greeted the news with a mix of elation and awareness that their futures are precarious, even with Biden’s support. Maria Garcia, 18, an aerospace engineering student at Arizona State University, said she will apply for the program as soon as she can. She and her parents and two brothers arrived in Phoenix in 2006 Mexico. Her older brother, now 23, is already a DACA recipient and has a job. Her Please see DACA, Page 2
said in a statement. “Gen. Yeager’s pioneering and innovative spirit advanced America’s abilities in the sky and set our nation’s dreams soaring into the jet age and the space age. He said, ‘You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done,’” Bridenstine said. “In an age of media-made heroes, he is the real deal,” Edwards Air Force Base historian Jim Young said in August 2006 at the unveiling of a bronze statue of Yeager. He was “the most righteous of all those with the right stuff,” said Maj. Gen. Curtis Bedke, commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards. Yeager, from a small town in
the hills of West Virginia, flew for more than 60 years, including piloting an X-15 to near 1,000 mph (1,609 kph) at Edwards in October 2002 at age 79. “Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself. The trick is to enjoy the years remaining,” he said in “Yeager: An Autobiography.” “I haven’t yet done everything, but by the time I’m finished, I won’t have missed much,” he wrote. “If I auger in (crash) tomorrow, it won’t be with a frown on my face. I’ve had a ball.” On Oct. 14, 1947, Yeager, then a 24-year-old captain, pushed an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane past 660 mph to break the sound barrier, at the time a daunting aviation milestone.
“Sure, I was apprehensive,” he said in 1968. “When you’re fooling around with something you don’t know much about, there has to be apprehension. But you don’t let that affect your job.” The modest Yeager said in 1947 he could have gone even faster had the plane carried more fuel. He said the ride “was nice, just like riding fast in a car.” Yeager nicknamed the rocket plane, and all his other aircraft, “Glamorous Glennis” for his wife, who died in 1990. Yeager’s feat was kept top secret for about a year when the world thought the British had broken the sound barrier first. “It wasn’t a matter of not having airplanes that would fly at speeds like this. It was a matter of keeping them from falling
apart,” Yeager said. Sixty-five years later to the minute, on Oct. 14, 2012, Yeager commemorated the feat, flying in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) above California’s Mojave Desert. His exploits were told in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff,” and the 1983 film it inspired. Yeager was born Feb. 23, 1923, in Myra, a tiny community on the Mud River deep in an Appalachian hollow about 40 miles southwest of Charleston. The family later moved to Hamlin, the county seat. His father was an oil and gas driller and a farmer. Please see Yeager, Page 2
John Gunther, The World
Bandon’s Isaac Cutler leads the field up the hill near the start of the 2019 district meet at Lane Community College. Practice for the cross country season and other fall sports for the 2020-21 school year is now slated to begin in late February.
OSAA again delays start of 2020-21 sports year The World The Oregon School Activities Association has pushed its 202021 sports calendar back again, and switched around the seasons one more time, in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The plan announced Monday by the OSAA Executive Board now calls for fall sports practices to begin in February and the winter sports season, which had been scheduled to begin with practice on Dec. 28, to be the final season of the sports year, running from mid-May to near the end of June. In addition, the three seasons were each shortened and now will be six weeks in length with the sixth week an “OSAA culmination week.” In August, the executive board approved a plan with winter sports practices for basketball, wrestling and swimming starting at the end of December and the fall sports season of football, vol-
leyball, cross country and soccer following that season. But the state is seeing an increase in virus cases, with 25 of Oregon’s 36 counties currently in the “extreme-risk” category. Coos and Curry counties are not in that list, but Coos County is trending that direction. All but 42 of OSAA’s member schools are in the counties currently classified as “extreme risk.” Board members made it clear Monday the OSAA and its member schools are bound by rules, regulations and guidance set forth by the governor’s office and Oregon Health Authority. A press release from OSAA said the organization remains in contact with the governor’s office, OHA and the Oregon Department of Education to advocate for a safe return to in-person learning and high school activities. The board extended the current Season 1 period through
Feb. 21. Marshfield and North Bend High Schools have conducted a series of sports during the current season, with Myrtle Point, Reedsport, Brookings-Harbor and Bandon joining in some of the sports. OSAA Executive Director Peter Weber said in a story for OSAAtoday that altering the calendar is a “moving target.” “We needed to make a decision,” Weber said. “I think the board made the right decision.” Under the new plan, practice for the fall sports would begin Feb. 22 for cross country, soccer and volleyball and Feb. 8 for football, with contests starting March 1 for all those sports. Full-contact football is not currently allowed by the state of Oregon and indoor volleyball is not currently allowed in extreme-risk counties. Cross country and soccer are allowed in all counties. The executive board hopes
that delaying the start of the season will allow COVID-19 case counts to decrease in counties so they can move out of the extreme-risk category. “All of our conversations with the Oregon Health Authority, and following the news, it appears that the models are showing that things are going to get worse before they get better,” Weber said in the OSAAtoday story. “As we’re looking to provide as much time as possible to lower case counts — and get counties out of the extreme-risk level, if possible — we thought that this timeline made sense.” With the new plan, the traditional spring sports of baseball, softball, golf, tennis and track and field would have practice begin on April 5, with the six-week competition season starting April 12. All of the spring sports currently are allowed in all counties. Please see OSAA, Page 2
Source: Biden picks Lloyd Austin as defense secretary WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden will nominate retired four-star Army general Lloyd J. Austin to be secretary of defense, according to four people familiar with the decision. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black leader of the Pentagon. Biden selected Austin over the longtime front-runner candidate, Michele Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official and Biden supporter who would have been the first woman to serve as defense secretary. Biden also had considered Jeh Johnson, a former Pentagon general counsel and former secretary of homeland defense.
The impending nomination of Austin was confirmed by four people with knowledge of the pick who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the selection hadn’t been formally announced. Biden offered and Austin accepted the post on Sunday, according to a person familiar with the process. As a career military officer, the 67-year-old Austin is likely to face opposition from some in Congress and in the defense establishment who believe in drawing a clear line between civilian and military leadership of the Pentagon. Although many
previous defense secretaries have served briefly in the military, only two — George C. Marshall and James Mattis — have been career officers. Marshall also served as secretary of state. Like Mattis, Austin would need to obtain a congressional waiver to serve as defense secretary. Congress intended civilian control of the military when it created the position of secretary of defense in 1947 and prohibited a recently retired military officer from holding the position. One of the people who confirmed the pick said Austin’s selection was about choosing the best possible person but
acknowledged that pressure had built to name a candidate of color and that Austin’s stock had risen in recent days. Austin is a 1975 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served 41 years in uniform. Biden has known Austin at least since the general’s years leading U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq while Biden was vice president. Austin was commander in Baghdad of the Multinational Corps-Iraq in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president, and he returned to lead U.S. troops from 2010 through 2011.