TUESDAY
inside: DEMS ARE READY FOR ‘COLLISION COURSE’ WITH TRUMP’S TAX PLAN, 7A Established
1875 DeCeMBer 27, 2016 | 2 seCTions, 20 pages | VoluMe 140, no. 362
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Texarkana, Texas/arkansas
Late millionaire’s ‘will’ draws questions, charges FBI investigates allegations Arkansas woman faked document; deceased man’s family files civil lawsuit By Lynn LaRowe Texarkana Gazette
Federal court documents unsealed this month in Texarkana and El Dorado, Ark., and a civil lawsuit pending in Ouachita County, Ark., shed light on a case involving the survivor of an oil rig explosion and an allegedly fraudulent will.
Matthew Seth Jacobs was injured during the explosion of a Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, according to court documents used to create the following account. In April 2012, Jacobs received a multi-million dollar settlement related to injuries he suffered in the disaster. In May 2012, Jacobs used a Century
21 real estate agency in Camden, Ark., to help him purchase a home and several investment properties. It was through the real estate agency that Jacobs became acquainted with Donna Peterson Herring, a real estate agent who assisted in Jacobs’ purchase of a home just a few blocks from her own. See WILL on Page 2A
Associated Press file photo
n Police confront protesters blocking Interstate 277 on Sept. 22 during demonstrations following the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, in Charlotte, N.C.
NATION | NEW YEAR
Americans hopeful for a better 2017 By Emily Swanson and Verena Dobnik The Associated Press
NEW YORK—Emotionally wrenching politics, foreign conflicts and shootings at home took a toll on Americans in 2016, but they are entering 2017 on an optimistic note, according to a new poll that found that a majority believes things are going to get better for the country next year. A look at the key findings of the Associated Press-Times Square Alliance poll:
So how was 2016?
Americans weren’t thrilled with the year. Only 18 percent said things for the country got better, 33 percent said things got worse, and 47 percent said it was unchanged from 2015.
On a personal level, they were optimistic about 2017. Fifty-five percent said they believe things will be better for them in the coming year than in the year that just concluded. That’s a 12-point improvement from last year’s poll. Americans interviewed about the poll’s results expressed some of that optimism. “Next year will be better than this year, because people will have more jobs and they’ll have more money to spend,” said Bourema Tamboura, a Harlem resident behind the wheel of a New York car service. “I’m hoping 2017 will be better,” added Elizabeth Flynn, 62, an elementary schoolteacher from Peabody, Massachusetts. “You’ve got to be optimistic,
See HOPE on Page 2A
Staff photo by Joshua Boucher
n Cathy Smith guides Delvin Miller through decorating a cake Friday at Be the Blessing Bakery. Miller recently started working at the bakery.
In Demand
Shelter’s bakery eyes future, storefront as orders pour in
By Ashley Gardner Texarkana Gazette
Bills for abortion rules pre-filed for ’17 session The Associated Press AUSTIN—In the 2017 session, Texas lawmakers plan to bring to the floor several bills that would restrict abortions despite this year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found two provisions of state law unconstitutional. “States like Texas are going to try to continue to push the envelope,” Southern Methodist University political science professor Matthew Wilson told the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t think legislatures are going to be dissuaded from passing abortion decisions based on existing decisions.”
R
andy Sams’ Outreach Shelter’s Be the Blessing Bakery has grown a lot in the past year. The bakery program started in February 2016 as a work-training program for shelter residents. Organizers didn’t foresee how fast the idea would take off. “It’s grown so much bigger than what we ever imagined we’d see in this amount of time,” said Jennifer Laurent, shelter executive director. “It’s been very organic and very customer-driven and, more important, driven by the needs of those in training. This has been a program we’ve been very excited about, and we’re really excited about where we see it going now.” Cathy Smith, bakery director, is also surprised at how fast the program has grown. “When we started … we thought longterm, down the road, we might could turn it into a business and job-training program,” Smith said. So far, 18 residents of the shelter have cycled through the bakery training program.
TEXAS | POLITICS
“Some have gone on to find jobs. Some have called home and have gone home. Some have moved out, and some have just moved on. We love them up
and train them all the same. They’re welcome here if it’s for a day, a week, however long they want to stay,” Smith See BAKE on Page 2A
NATION | DREXEL UNIVERSITY
Professor under fire for ‘white genocide’ tweet The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA—Drexel University officials had a quiet holiday weekend loudly interrupted Sunday night, after to a professor took to Twitter to let loose some extreme views. “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide,” associate professor of politics and global studies George CiccarielloMaher posted Christmas Eve. He then wrote Sunday: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.”
WORLD | DRUGMAKER
OxyContin’s global drive: ‘WE’RE ONLY JUST GETTING STARTED’ Los Angeles Times
OxyContin is a dying business in America. With the nation in the grip of an opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the U.S. medical establishment is turning away from painkillers. Top health officials are discouraging primary-care doctors from prescribing them for chronic pain, saying there is no proof that they work long-term and substantial evidence that they put patients at risk. Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost rev-
See TEXAS on Page 2A
Staff photo by Joshua Boucher
n Rodger Kennedy pours strawberry cake batter into pans on Friday. Be the Blessing Bakery has grown from just making cupcakes to making all kinds of baked desserts.
By Jonathan Tannenwald
By Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion and Scott Glover
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked the state’s rules mandating burial or cremation of fetal remains from abortions or miscarriages until at least January. A lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and other national advocacy groups argues that the rules serve no medical purpose and are meant to shame women who seek abortions and make it harder for doctors to provide them. Republican state lawmakers have pre-filed bills ahead of the session, which convenes Jan.
enue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. So the company’s owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the painkiller that set off the U.S. opioid crisis into medicine cabinets around the world. A network of international companies owned by the family is moving rapidly into Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other regions, and pushing for broad use of painkillers in places ill-prepared to deal with opioid abuse and addiction. In the global drive, the companies, known as Mundipharma, are using some of the controversial marketing See OXY on Page 5A
CopYrigHT 2016
www.ebook3000.com
Not long thereafter, Ciccariello-Maher’s tweets were picked up by conservative websites. His tweets are not public, or at least weren’t as of Monday morning. It is public, though, that he has more than 10,000 Twitter followers and has posted more than 16,000 times. Sunday, Ciccariello-Maher said he had “sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, ‘white genocide.’ “‘For those who haven’t bothered to do their research, ‘white
See TWEET on Page 2A
INDEX aDViCe ............................10a CoMiCs.............................4B CrossworD.....................4B DeaTHs.............................6a MeTro/sTaTe...............3-4a naTion.....5a, 7a,6B-9-10B opinion..........................9a sporTs.....................1-3B,5B
2A FROM PAGE ONE Established in 1875, publishing daily and Sunday issues at 101 E. Broad St., Texarkana, Ark., 71854, by Texarkana Newspapers Inc. Periodical Postage paid at Texarkana, Texas USPS 540-080 Postmaster: Send address changes to: P.O. Box 621, Texarkana, Texas 75504
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
Hope Continued from Page 1A and I’m going to try.” Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say 2016 was worse for the country than 2015. And Republicans are especially likely to feel that 2017 will be even better for them personally. University of Miami professor Benjamin Alsup said he needed only three words to explain why 2016 felt worse for him: “Trump, Trump, Trump!” Robert Greenstone, a New York commercial real estate broker, said the political discourse leading up to Republican Donald Trump’s election as president played havoc with people’s emotions. “The amount of disinformation made people suspect of everything and everyone, even their neighbors,” he said.
U.S. election leads top news events
The U.S. elections top Americans’ list of 10 top news events in 2016. Threequarters called the presidential election and Trump’s victory very or extremely important.
Sixty-three percent ranked mass shootings and bombings in Orlando, Fla., and in Belgium, Turkey, Pakistan and France as personally important news stories of the year. Fifty-one percent said they found news stories about the deaths of people at the hands of police officers, or news about ambush attacks on police in three states, to be among the year’s most important news events. Fourth on the list are 43 percent who described the spread of the Zika virus as important. The three events described by the largest percentages of Americans as not too important included the death of Muhammad Ali (50 percent), approval of recreational marijuana use in four states (43 percent), and the death of Fidel Castro (40 percent).
Top moments in pop culture, sports
A majority of Americans, including 7 in 10 Midwesterners, called November’s World Series win for the Chicago Cubs to end their 108-year drought memorable. Of nine other pop-culture items tested, two were called memorable by about
half of Americans: the death of Prince, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen; and the Olympic victories of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. The two least-notable events for Americans, of the 10 possible choices in the poll, were the Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt divorce filing and the “Pokemon Go” app game phenomenon, each described by most as forgettable.
Ringing in the New Year
About half of Americans plan to celebrate the New Year at home. About 2 in 10 plan to go out to a friend or family member’s home, and 1 in 10 to a bar or restaurant. About a quarter don’t plan to celebrate at all. About 6 in 10 plan to watch the Times Square ball drop, nearly all of whom will watch on TV. The AP-Times Square Alliance Poll of 1,007 adults was conducted online Dec. 9-11, using a sample drawn from GfK’s probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Bake Continued from Page 1A said. The positive effects from the training program are evident in the participants almost immediately. They start out learning some baking skills, commercial kitchen skills and getting their food-handling permits. “The very first thing I see is the building of self-confidence … and the self-confidence and self-worth is what I’m most proud of,” Smith said. The bakery started out with an order for 200 cupcakes for a local church. Demand grew, and so did the menu. “The next day, the phone started ringing wanting to know if we could make more cupcakes. After that, we added cheesecakes, regular cakes, bread pudding, cookies and pies. I can’t even tell you how many wedding cakes we’ve done. There’s not a professional cake decorator among us, but we can make a beautiful cake and a delicious cake,” Smith said. Be the Blessing had to stop taking holiday orders in mid-December. “Since the Mistletoe Fair, we’re working a minimum of 12-hour days most days. … We’ve been incredibly busy, working long hours and putting out desserts,” Smith said. The success of the bakery so far has to do with several factors. “It’s taken off because it has heart
Staff photo by Joshua Boucher
n A pecan pie made by Be the Blessing Bakery is shown Friday. Much of the bakery’s business is conducted through Facebook. … and the community has just been gracious. Our product is good. It’s a job-training program first and foremost, but we put out a spectacular product, if I say so myself,” Smith said. She teaches those in the bakery program to “autograph their work with excellence.” “As corny as that sounds, it’s what I try to instill in our bakers. It has to be good, it has to be beautiful, and it has to
be something you’re proud of when you send it out,” Smith said. The bakery, which operates inside HandsOn Texarkana, has plans for a new place in 2017. “We’re looking at acquiring a space for the bakery and administrative offices, and we hope to see that go forward in the new year,” Laurent said. “We’ll continue to let the process be driven by the needs of those getting the training.”
Tweet Continued from Page 1A genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.” Many readers and social media followers didn’t get the humor, though—and his employer didn’t either. Drexel condemned the Twitter post. “While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the university. Ciccariello-Maher teaches in Drexel’s Department of History and Politics. His biography on Drexel’s website says he is “an expert and frequent media commentator on social movements, particularly in Latin America.”
Texas Continued from Page 1A 10, that would put similar fetal remains rules into state law, ban a type of late-term abortion that is already illegal under federal law and implement stronger requirements for electronic reporting of abortions by clinics. John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, said the anti-abortion group will focus on advocating for bills that save lives, such as a ban on a second-trimester abortion method called dilation and extraction that abortion opponents call “dismemberment abortions.” Rep. Stephanie Klick, a Republican from Fort Worth, says the second-trimester bill is meant to “protect women.” Texas health officials told Planned Parenthood last week that they will boot the organization from the state’s Medicaid program come January, fulfilling a promise Gov. Greg Abbott made last year after an anti-abortion group released secretly recorded videos that it claimed showed Planned Parenthood officials profiting from sales of fetal tissue for medical research. Investigations by 13 states concluded without charges of wrongdoing, although a congressional panel is still investigating. No public funding in Texas is used for abortion. Medicaid reimbursements cover services that include well-women exams, screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and birth control. Planned Parenthood has said it plans to ask a federal court to block the $4 million defunding effort.
Will Continued from Page 1A Herring allegedly became more involved in Jacobs’ life by bringing him into her husband’s pest control business, having her then-teenage daughter work at his home as a housekeeper and also having Jacobs’ former fiance take photos of the daughter for a 2013 local beauty pageant. After Jacobs’ engagement ended in 2013, Herring allegedly encouraged a romantic relationship between her daughter, Alex Peterson, and Jacobs—despite her daughter being a minor and 16 years younger than Jacobs. Peterson and Jacobs allegedly became engaged sometime in 2014 but never married. According to the civil suit, Jacobs was dating someone else when he died in a car accident Jan. 19, 2015, at age 34. At the time, Peterson was allegedly living in rental property that Jacobs owned in Arkadelphia, Ark., while she attended Henderson University and still had access to Jacobs’ home in Camden. “On the night of the fatal auto wreck, the police report indicated that Matthew was driving on a ‘dry,’ ‘clear,’ and ‘straight,’ road that was only a few minutes from his home,” states the complaint in the civil suit filed in Ouachita County by Little Rock lawyer Bruce Tidwell on behalf of the estate. The police report indicates that Jacobs veered to the left and crossed oncoming traffic before crashing into a tree. “The police report also indicated that Matthew’s vehicle, ‘showed no signs of braking prior to impact,’” the civil complaint states. Following his death, Matthew Jacobs’ then 17-year-old son, Jordan Jacobs, and Matthew Jacobs’ brother, Lance Reed, allegedly searched his home and gun safe for a last will and testament, but were unable to find one. Matthew Jacobs’ estate was allegedly worth nearly $2 million at the time of his death and his son would have been the sole heir had he died without a will. Donna Herring allegedly claimed to know of a sealed envelope bearing the initials MJ that her husband, Doug Herring, and neighbor, Dennis Davis, reportedly discovered in Matthew Jacobs’ gun safe at his Camden home days after it had been searched by Matthew Jacobs’ son and brother. Herring met with Matthew Jacobs’ brother at her office Jan. 25, 2015, six days after the fatal crash, and told him about the sealed envelope. Herring con-
vinced Reed that the envelope had to be opened in a lawyer’s presence. During the meeting, “Donna Herring offered to involve Reed in a scheme to forge a life insurance policy in the name of the decedent, to which Reed declined,” a search warrant affidavit filed in the Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas states. The envelope contained a last will and testament that gave the bulk of the estate to Peterson and $50,000 to Matthew Jacobs’ son. The allegedly fraudulent will, which bore the signatures of Donna Herring’s sister, Diane Kinley, and brother-in-law, John Wayne Kinley, as witnesses, named Peterson as executor of the estate even though she was a minor and legally ineligible to serve in such a capacity at the time it was purportedly created. The Kinleys’ signatures and Matthew Jacobs’ allegedly forged signature were all dated May 13, 2014. The allegedly phony will identified Peterson as “fiance” and directed that Matthew Jacobs be cremated and the ashes given to Peterson. But Matthew Jacobs had already been buried when the allegedly fake will surfaced. Because Peterson was ineligible to serve as executor, Matthew Jacobs’ brother served as executor of the large estate. In November 2015, Peterson was awarded nearly $1 million in funds as well as real estate and other property, such as boats and ATVs, while Matthew Jacobs’ son received $50,000 for his education and a $250,000 disbursement from a life insurance policy. “On or about March 7, 2016, (Donna) Herring used funds fraudulently derived from the estate to purchase a 2012 Lexus RX350 for her own personal use,” according to a criminal indictment charging Herring with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering unsealed Dec. 1 in the El Dorado Division of the Western District of Arkansas.
In April 2016, a lawyer representing Jordan Jacobs contacted the FBI. The lawyer told investigators that the will had actually been created Jan. 24, 2015, five days after Matthew Jacobs’ death, by Donna Herring using forms purchased with the Kinley’s bank account on FormSwift.com, according to the Texarkana search warrant for Matthew Jacobs’ iCloud account. Herring allegedly created the will on a computer at her Century 21 office. A copy of the fake will faxed Jan. 27, 2015, from Peterson’s lawyer’s office to Jordan Jacobs allegedly differs from the copy eventually filed with the court in Ouachita County in the following ways: The faxed copy had handwritten page numbers while the court copy had none; the witness signatures were changed to include dates; and, “the signature of the decedent was not the same,” according to the search warrant. Donna Herring, Alex Peterson, Doug Herring, Diane Kinley, John Kinley, Davis and Donna Herring’s lawyer were interviewed July 13 by the FBI. During her interview, Donna Herring allegedly admitted to creating the faxed copy and the court copy of the phony will and placing it in the gun safe. “Furthermore, while the truthfulness of Donna Herring’s statements to law enforcement remain in question, Donna Herring claimed to have found and subsequently destroyed descendant’s actual last will and testament after his death,” the search warrant states. John Kinley allegedly admitted during his interview that Donna Herring brought the fake will to him and his wife to sign after Matthew Jacobs died. “Diane Kinley was interviewed by law enforcement and provided statements that are not believed to be truthful,” the search warrant states. Peterson allegedly admitted that she knew her mother had created the phony will and placed it in the gun safe.
Peterson was also asked about Matthew Jacobs’ iPhone, which went missing after his death. “Peterson stated that she ‘wiped’ the SIM card of decedent’s iPhone after his death and no longer had the phone,” the search warrant states. Investigators were still searching for a copy of Matthew Jacobs’ actual will when they acquired the search warrant for his iCloud account in September. The search warrant notes that Jacobs’ life insurance policy indicated that the proceeds of any claim should go to his estate and referenced an actual will. The civil suit names Donna Herring, Peterson, Doug Herring, John Kinley, Diane Kinley and Davis as defendants. The complaint seeks to freeze the estate assets in Peterson’s and other’s possession or any funds or property purchased with funds from the estate. The complaint also seeks an award of attorney fees, court costs and punitive damages meant to punish the defendants for allegedly conspiring to fraudulently deprive Matthew Jacobs’ rightful heirs of his estate. All the defendants have filed answers to the civil complaint denying wrongdoing. While most of the defendants used lawyers, Davis answered on his own behalf. Davis claims Donna
Herring called him and asked him to come to Matthew Jacobs’ house to be an “outside” witness to the safe’s opening and to take photos of the safe closed and opened. Davis claims Donna Herring told him her lawyer advised her to have a disinterested party present. Davis’ response states that Peterson and Donna Herring were at the house when he arrived and that Doug Herring arrived a short time later. Davis said he did as he was asked because Donna Herring is a lifelong family friend who has done many favors for him and his wife. Davis said he took the sealed envelope to his car and delivered it to Donna Herring’s lawyer without any knowledge of what was inside and without any compensation of any kind from anyone for his actions. Davis is asking to be dropped from the suit. As of Dec. 23, Donna Herring is the only defendant named in the civil suit to appear in court on criminal charges. She appeared for arraignment Dec. 1 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Bryant in El Dorado and entered not guilty pleas to all charges. Bryant released Donna Herring on a $5,000 unsecured bond. Her case is set for trial in February. llarowe@texarkanagazette.com
New Years Holiday Deadlines The advertising Department of the Texarkana Gazette will be closed in observance of the New Years Holiday, Monday, Jan. 2nd. The following early deadlines will apply for the week only. We will open again at 8:00 on Tuesday morning. Retail, Classified and Legal Display Advertising
Publication Date: Thursday, Dec. 29 Friday, Dec. 30 Saturday, Dec. 31 Sunday, Jan. 1 Monday, Jan. 2 Tuesday, Jan. 3 Wednesday, Jan. 4
Deadlines: Tuesday, Dec. 27 Tuesday, Dec. 27 Wednesday, Dec. 28 Wednesday, Dec. 28 Thursday, Dec. 29 Thursday, Dec. 29 Friday, Dec. 30
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
TC CLASSES
Texarkana College is offering the following classes through the Community and Business Education Center, formerly known as the Continuing Education Department:
Water Workout—Total Body
The four-week class meets from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jan. 3-26. The cost is $35.
Bargain Hunters
Ladies Aquatic Move and Groove
The six-week class meets from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jan. 10-Feb. 16. The cost is $40.
n Shoppers take advantage of after-Christmas sales on holiday decorations Monday at Hobby Lobby. The sale on remaining decorations continues until items are sold out.
Texarkana College Swim School
The five-week class meets from 4 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. and 4:45 to 5:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, Jan. 4-31. The cost is $65.
Staff photo by Joshua Boucher
Yoga Mornings
The seven-week class meets from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jan. 10-Feb. 23. The cost is $120.
Yoga Evenings
The seven-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, Jan. 9-Feb. 22. The cost is $110.
Beginning Tennis
The four-week class meets from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, Jan. 9-Feb. 1. The cost is $80.
Acro Gymnastics (Ages 6+)
The six-week class meets from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 26-March 2. The cost is $60.
Tiny Tumblers Gymnastics (Ages 3-5)
The six-week class meets from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 26-March 2. The cost is $60.
Mommy & Me Gymnastics (Ages 12-35 Months)
The six-week class meets from 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 23- Feb. 27. The cost is $60.
Ultimate Kickboxing
The six-week class meets from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, Jan. 30-March 8. The cost is $80.
Country and Western Dance
The four-week class meets from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 30-Feb. The cost is $40.
Cheerleading
The six-week class meets from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 9-Feb. 13. The cost is $50.
Basic Cake Decorating
The five-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Jan. 10-Feb. 7. The cost is $50.
Barbells & Butterflies—New Year, New You! Nutrition Class:
The three-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 12-26. The cost is $75.
QuickBooks
The six-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, March 21-April 25. The cost is $140.
Microsoft Excel 2016
The four-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 12-Feb. 2. The cost is $100.
Introduction to Sign Language:
The 11-week class meets from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jan. 12-March 21. The cost is $70.
Conversational Spanish
The six-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 12-Feb. 16. The cost is $70.
Introduction to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
The four-week class meets from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Jan. 18-Feb. 8. The cost is $125.
Googlize Me for Educators
The two-week class meets from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 23 and Jan. 30. The cost is $45.
Screen Writing Media Production 101
The seven-week class meets from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 23-March 6. The cost is $150.
Photography Workshop
The one-day class will meet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 28. The cost is $75.
SAGE
Ages 46 and older. Class listing and registration is available at ce. texarkanacollege.edu or call Dr. Beverly Rowe at 903-748-1237. For more information, call the Community and Business Education Center at 903-823-3270.
Boozman, Westerman and Cotton against shelter for immigrants Lawmakers: Plan to house children near Hot Springs is ‘irresponsible’ ROYAL, Ark.—Three members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation are opposing a proposal to convert an abandoned facility near Hot Springs as a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services visited the forBOOZMAN mer Ouachita Job R-Ark. Corps Center in Royal earlier this month to assess whether it can be used as a secure facility to temporarily house unaccompanied minors age 17 or younger. The Dec. 19 tour prompted opposiWESTERMAN tion from Arkansas U.S. Rep. Bruce R-Ark. Westerman, whose district includes Garland County, and U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton, who issued a joint statement calling the proposal “irresponsible and against the wishes COTTON of Arkansans.” R-Ark. The agency “is unable to provide basic information about who may reside at this facility, where these immigrants come from, or how long this shelter will last, and the potential risk to public safety is enormous,” the statement said. “That is why we are calling on HHS to immediately halt any plans to use this facility as an immigration shelter.” Garland County Judge Rick Davis also said he expects strong opposition to the plan, and he questioned whether the immigrants’ ages will be verified. “It’s not that we’re not a caring community,” Davis said. “I think if you’re talking about kids, it’s one thing. When you’re talking about teenagers that are probably in their 20s, there’s an uncertainty about security for our community. … It’s just a concern of where they’re coming from.” Agency spokesman Toby Merkt told the Arkansas DemocratGazette that the government is still determining whether the site is “suitable” to serve as a shelter for children in the future. Merkt did not provide a timeline for the decision. Terry Trevino-Richard, state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said most of the unaccompanied children are fleeing violence in Central America. Federal data shows that about 95 percent of unaccompanied migrant children in 2016 came from Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras. “They pose virtually no threat to anyone in the United States,” he said. “They’re seeking safe haven like any refugee would.” —The Associated Press
Waco man wins name game for BlueCats baseball team website than his email inbox buzzed with a reply from Mark Schuster, the president of the Southwest League of Professional Baseball, the league in which the BlueCats will play. “Mark emailed me two minutes after I submitted it and said, ‘Tell me more about this name,’ ” Fischer said. “Right when he did that, I said, birth of his fifth child was during ‘I bet he’s not sending that to every the World Series, Fischer said, and Neder didn’t want to miss that spe- contestant.’ I figured I was on to something then. But it was nice to cial day, even for the Fall Classic. So the team compromised and know through the voting process gave him season tickets for their that it was the majority (vote-getter) inaugural 1962 campaign instead. of the favorites.” The Colt .45s name lasted only Stan Hough loves the name. A three seasons. For the 1965 season, Waco native, Hough helped broker with a move to the Astrodome, the the deal to bring professional baseworld’s first domed sports stadium, the team was rechristened the ball back to the Waco area for the first time since the Waco Pirates Astros. “I reached out to my uncle and folded in 1956. Hough will serve as I said, ‘Why did they make that the field manager for the BlueCats. change?’ and he said, ‘Well, at the “When I first heard Blue Cats, time Houston was called the Space I thought of cats, because I used City. Everything was headed that to manage the Fort Worth Cats,” way, with NASA and Astroworld and Hough said. “Once I found out that the Astrodome, obviously,’” Fischer it was a catfish, I thought it was just said. “It wasn’t anything politia really neat mascot. Even though I cal, like with the Washington hadn’t heard it before, I loved Bullets changing (to the it… . Then to see the renWizards), but they derings by the graphic were going a different direction.” artist, I was totally Fischer conimpressed.” “There’s nothing nected with Seeing the like the ambience, baseball as a BlueCats go from and watching baseyoung boy. He idea to reality, ball, smelling the played Little complete with a grass, eating a hot League until logo and renderdog and having a he was in the cold beer.” ings of uniforms, sixth grade. One of his all-time proved a little surrefavorite movies is al for Fischer, too. He “Field of Dreams.” said he was also “real“I still love the game ly excited” to learn that today,” he said. he’d won season tickets for life. Fischer was intrigued when he learned the news of professional Initially, he thought the prize was baseball’s return to Waco earlier just for the team’s inaugural season, this year. He wasn’t aware of the like his grandfather’s winnings, so name-the-team contest until a fel- he was delighted to learn otherwise. low Extraco employee tipped him He said he thinks baseball is the off to it, and still another co-worker “perfect platform for Waco,” and unwittingly helped him come up can’t wait to attend a game. Fischer with the winning name. wouldn’t normally plan his life out “I didn’t know what a blue cat was,” Fischer admitted. “Another 18 months in advance, but he knows work colleague of mine mentioned where he’ll be when the BlueCats that he was out fishing and caught play their first home game in April some blue cats. I said, ‘What is that?’ of 2018. He said, ‘Oh, it’s a catfish.’ I said, “There’s nothing like the ambi‘That’s good to know.’ ence, and watching baseball, smell“The next day was when I became ing the grass, eating a hot dog and aware of the contest. Minor league having a cold beer,” Fischer said. baseball teams are known for having different, nontraditional, trendy “That’s what I’m most excited about, names. That immediately struck me the environment of the ballpark out there in Bellmead. That’s what I’m as a name.” No sooner had Fischer submitted really looking forward to; just being his entry via the Waco franchise’s there.”
By Brice Cherry n Waco Tribune-Herald
W
ACO, Texas—Steve Fischer doesn’t recall the exact age at which he first learned of his grandfather’s big victory, but he remembers the circumstances. “As soon as I had shown interest in baseball,” Fischer said.
The Waco Tribune-Herald reports back in 1961, Fischer’s maternal grandfather, Bill Neder, won a namethe-team contest for the new Major League Baseball franchise coming to Houston the following year. Neder submitted the winning entry, the Colt .45s, after the famed single-action revolver. Someday, Fischer’s future grandchildren will learn that naming baseball teams must run in the family. You see, Fischer in December won his own name-the-team contest, as his submission of the Waco BlueCats was voted the favorite for the new professional baseball franchise scheduled to begin play in Bellmead in April 2018. Fischer, an Extraco Banks employee and longtime Waco resident, won season tickets for life from the BlueCats for submitting the winning entry. The tale of his grandfather’s win also developed into a family heirloom, something to be passed down through the generations, and certainly a source of pride. Now that Fischer has continued that heritage, it almost feels like naming baseball teams is becoming the family business. “With the Neder family, it was something you can’t take away from us,” Fischer said. “Just the sheer fact that now it’s happened twice in the family, I don’t know what the odds are of that. It must run in my blood. I joked with my dad the other day, ‘You don’t have what it takes to name a baseball team. That’s why it skips a generation.’” Neder died in the late 1990s, so he wasn’t able to see Fischer replicate his naming-rights magic. But Fischer thinks of his grandfather often. He was the ultimate people person, Fischer said. “He was very much the life of the party,” he said. “His office was the golf course five days a week, selling insurance, and he was doing it on the golf course. Which you kind of have to be if you’re in that role. Anytime I think of an insurance salesman, I think of my grandfather.” Like Fischer, Neder didn’t come away empty-handed. The Colt .45s organization presented him with tickets for the 1961 World Series. Amazingly, Neder turned down the tickets. The due date for the
Mississippi man shot in standoff with Arkansas police
Masonic Officers Named
Submitted photo
n Officers for Texarkana Masonic Lodge No. 341 were recently installed. They are, left to right, Rodney Phillips, senior warden; Mike Siefert, worshipful master and Paul Swirchack, junior warden. www.ebook3000.com
The Associated Press BATESVILLE, Ark.—Authorities have identified the man who was fatally shot during a standoff with Arkansas police on Christmas Day. An Arkansas State Police spokeswoman says that 33-year-old Joseph Garcia of Collinsville, Mississippi, died in the shooting Sunday near Batesville, about 75 miles northeast of Little Rock. According to state police, an Independence County Sheriff’s Office deputy encountered Garcia at about 7:25 a.m. Sunday and Garcia reportedly said he was armed and he refused to comply with the deputy’s orders. More local and state law enforcement agencies responded, and state police say Garcia was fatally shot after he fired a gun at officers. No officers were injured. The shooting remains under investigation.
4A NEWS
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel sparks a hot debate The Associated Press NEW YORK—If President-elect Donald Trump wanted to show he planned to obliterate President Barack Obama’s approach to Israel, he might have found his man to deliver that message in David Friedman, his pick for U.S. ambassador. The bankruptcy lawyer and son of an Orthodox rabbi is everything Obama is not: a fervent supporter of Israeli settlements, opponent of Palestinian statehood and unrelenting defender of Israel’s government. So far to the right is Friedman that many Israel supporters worry he could push Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be more extreme, scuttling prospects for peace with Palestinians in the process. The heated debate over Friedman’s selection is playing out just as fresh tensions erupt between the U.S. and Israel. In a stunning decision Friday, the Obama administration moved to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal. The move to abstain, rather
than veto, defied years of U.S. tradition of shielding Israel from such resolutions, and elicited condemnation from Israel, lawmakers of both parties, and especially Trump. “Things will be different after Jan. 20th,” when he’s sworn in, Trump vowed Friday on Twitter. On Monday, he added: “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!” Presidents of both parties have long called for a two-state solution that envisions eventual Palestinian statehood, and Netanyahu says he agrees. Friedman, who still must be confirmed by the Senate, does not. He’s called the two-state solution a mere “narrative” that must end. Under Obama, the U.S. has worked closely with J Street, an Israel advocacy group sharply critical of Netanyahu. Friedman accuses Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism” and calls J Street “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who helped the Nazis imprison fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
Election system susceptible to rigging despite red flags By Michael Rubinkam and Frank Bajak The Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa.—Jill Stein’s bid to recount votes in Pennsylvania was in trouble even before a federal judge shot it down Dec. 12. That’s because the Green Party candidate’s effort stood almost no chance of detecting potential fraud or error in the vote—there was basically nothing to recount. Pennsylvania is one of 11 states where the majority of voters use antiquated machines that store votes electronically, without printed ballots or other paper-based backups that could be used to double-check the balloting. There’s almost no way to know if they’ve accurately recorded individual votes—or if anyone tampered with the count. More than 80 percent of Pennsylvanians who voted Nov. 8 cast their ballots on such machines, according to VotePA, a nonprofit seeking their replacement. A recount would, in the words of VotePA’s Marybeth Kuznik, a veteran election judge, essentially amount to this: “You go to the computer and you say, ‘OK, computer, you counted this a week-and-a-half ago. Were you right the first time?’” These paperless digital voting machines, used by roughly 1 in 5 U.S. voters last month, present one of the most glaring dangers to the security of the rickety, underfunded U.S. election system. Like many electronic voting machines, they are vulnerable to hacking. But other machines typically leave a paper trail that could be manually checked. The paperless digital machines open the door to potential election rigging that might not ever be detected. What’s more, their prevalence magnifies other risks in the election system, such as the possibility that hackers might compromise the computers that tally votes, by making failures or attacks harder to catch. And like other voting machines adopted since the 2000 election, the paperless systems are nearing the end of their useful life—yet there is no comprehensive plan to replace them. “If I were going to hack this election, I would go for the paperless machines because they are so hard to check,” said Barbara Simons, a former IBM researcher and co-author of “Broken Ballots,” a history of the unlearned lessons of flawed U.S. voting technology.
FRAUD AND THE U.S. VOTING SYSTEM
Associated Press
n Joy Spanabel Emery, professor emerita and curator of the University of Rhode Island’s commercial pattern archive, displays a donated sewing pattern in her office on campus in South Kingstown, R.I.
Love of sewing patterns leads to world-class collection
By Jennifer McDermott The Associated Press
SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I.—If a costume designer wanted to recreate a World War I era wraparound dress, a 1940s zoot suit or even a bodice from 1875, the sewing patterns are in Rhode Island. The University of Rhode Island has the largest known collection of sewing patterns in the world, according to the collection’s curator, Joy Spanabel Emery, and the United States Institute for Theatre Technology. About 50,000 are on paper and 62,000 are in an electronic database. They’re at the university because of Emery’s love of patterns. Emery donated her personal collection of patterns and periodicals to the university years ago and has painstakingly sorted through the donations sent there as word spread about the growing repository. Three more boxes full just arrived to be added to the overflowing filing cabinets. “This is much more than a hobby. It really is a passion,” said Emery, a professor emerita of theater at URI. “I’m learning things every day about pattern companies and the different styles and I enjoy creating something that’s a legacy.” As a costume designer, Emery began saving paper patterns in the 1980s because everyday clothes often aren’t preserved over time. Notable pieces like military uniforms and wedding dresses tend to be saved. And, she worried electronic versions of the patterns could be lost as technology changed. The association for performing arts and entertainment professionals, USITT, honored Emery this year for documenting the clothing of American history. The 80-year-old Emery received a distinguished achievement
award in costume design and technology, the only one given this year in that category. Costume designers can replicate period clothing and the public can understand how middle-class Americans dressed over time because of Emery, said executive director David Grindle. “The archive is unique to her,” he said. “No one else has done this kind of work.” Emery finds the patterns from the 1930s the most interesting because they’re elegant and inventive despite the fact they were designed during the Depression. She’s also intrigued by the WWI dress, the “Hoover apron.” Women wore it when Herbert Hoover promoted food conservation by encouraging Americans to grow vegetable gardens. The oldest patterns in the collection are from 1847, including a peignoir and a baby cap. The database can be used to trace the evolution of clothing and reoccurrence of trends. Emery was inspired to collect patterns by her friend, Betty Williams, a theatrical costume maker in New York and pioneer in dressmaker pattern research. When Williams died 20 years ago, her 12,000 patterns, periodicals and research papers were donated to URI. The Butterick pattern company’s archives are also at the university. Rhode Island has a strong history with the textile industry, fashion and theater. Emery wrote a history of the paper pattern industry that was published in 2014. She gets inquiries from all over the world from people doing clothing research. “It’s very rewarding,” she said. “I just love to see the collection growing to a point where we have enough for it to really be worthwhile for significant research.”
Although Stein premised her recount effort on the need to ensure that the 2016 election wasn’t tainted by hacking or fraud, there’s no evidence of either so far—a fact federal judge Paul Diamond cited prominently in his decision halting the Pennsylvania recount. “Suspicion of a ‘hacked’ Pennsylvania election borders on the irrational,” the judge wrote in his opinion. Stein also pursued recounts in Wisconsin and Michigan, to little avail. Those states use more reliable paper-based voting technologies. (The Electoral College certified Republican Donald Trump’s presidential victory last week.) But a cadre of computer scientists from major universities backed Stein’s recounts to underscore the vulnerability of U.S. elections. These researchers have been successfully hacking e-voting machines for more than a decade in tests commissioned by New York, California, Ohio and other states. Stein and her witnesses said their fraud concerns were justified given U.S. charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential campaign. Emails of top Democrats were hacked and leaked in what U.S. intelligence officials called Russian subterfuge against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Over the summer, hackers also tried to breach the voter registration databases of Arizona and Illinois using Russian-based servers, U.S. officials said. Election networks in at least 20 states were probed for vulnerabilities. “It’s a target-rich environment,” said Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach. Researchers would like to see the U.S. move entirely to computer-scannable paper ballots, since paper can’t be hacked. Many advanced democracies require paper ballots, including Germany, Britain, Japan and Singapore. Green Party lawyers seeking the Pennsylvania recount called the state’s election system “a national disgrace” in a federal lawsuit, noting that many states outlaw paperless voting. They asked a judge to order a forensic examination of a sampling of the electronic machines, saying that’s the only way to know for sure that votes weren’t altered. That would involve examination of all of the systems involved in the election—voting-machine computer chips and memory cards that store operating software and ballots, the computers that program the ballots, and even the machine vendors’ source code—to detect any “bugs, holes or back doors” a hacker could have exploited, said Daniel Lopresti, chairman of the Lehigh University computer-science department.
Associated Press
n Brian Varner, a principal researcher at Symantec, inserts an identifying chip card into an electronic voting machine Sept. 28 as he demonstrates how to hack an electronic voting machine at a Symantec office in New York. But forensic analyses aren’t foolproof, especially if hackers were good at covering their tracks. “What you’re hoping for is some evidence that was left, some degree of clumsiness or carelessness, a belief by the individual that we won’t dig quite that deep,” Lopresti said.
PENNSYLVANIA: A PERFECT TARGET
The U.S. voting system—a loosely regulated, locally managed patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states— employs more than two dozen types of machinery from 15 manufacturers. Elections officials across the nation say they take great care to secure their machines from tampering. They are locked away when not in use and sealed to prevent tampering. All that makes national elections very difficult to steal without getting caught. “It would take a ‘large conspiracy’ to hack the results of a presidential election,” said Kay Stimson, speaking for the National Association of Secretaries of State. But difficult is not impossible. Wallach and his colleagues believe a crafty team of pros could strike surgically, focusing on select counties in a few battleground states where “a small nudge might be decisive,” he said. As a battleground state with paperless voting machines, Pennsylvania is a perfect candidate. In affidavits for the recount, computer scientist J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan laid out how attackers could conduct a successful hack: n Probe election offices well in advance to determine how to break into computers. n After identifying battleground states, infect voting machines in targeted counties with malware that would shift a small percentage of the vote to a desired candidate. n After silently altering electronic tallies, erase digital tracks to leave no trace. Just because the machines aren’t on the internet doesn’t mean they can’t be hacked. Election workers could be duped or bribed into installing malware that sat dormant until Election Day. Locks could be picked to gain access to the machines, seals compromised with razor blades and acetone. Studies by Halderman, Wallach and others proved years ago that it’s possible to infect voting machines in an entire precinct via the compact flash cards used to load electronic ballots. An infected machine “could do anything you can imagine,” said Wallach. “It could flip votes from one candidate to another. It could delete votes. It could cast write-in votes for Mickey Mouse for president.”
HACKING THE COUNT
Vote-tallying systems, typically at the county level, are also tempting targets. They tend to be little more than PCs running a database. Tabulation databases at the county level, which collect results from individual precincts, are supposed to be “airgapped,” or disconnected from the internet at all times— though experts say they sometimes get connected anyway. They’re considered insecure for other reasons; many have USB ports where malware could be introduced. Vulnerabilities notwithstanding, there are no known cases of U.S. tallying systems being hacked. But it is not uncommon for candidates who have lost elections involving electronic voting to challenge results, claiming irregularities they blame on fraud, or human or mechanical errors. Shelby County, Tennessee, home to Memphis, has seen a flood of lawsuits related to alleged tabulation errors, the most recent stemming from a 2015 court clerk race. “Nearly every election cycle in the county in recent memory has been plagued by a myriad of errors and complaints of wrongdoing,” Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett wrote in a 2012 letter to the state comptroller recently obtained by The Associated Press.
OLD AND GETTING OLDER
Most voting machines in the U.S. are at or near the end of their expect-
ed lifespans. Forty-three states use machines more than a decade old. Most run on vintage operating systems such as Windows 2000 that pre-date the iPhone and are no longer updated with security patches. Old, stockpiled machines get cannibalized; when they can’t supply parts, officials scrounge on eBay. On Nov. 8, election officials across the U.S. handled numerous complaints of aging touchscreens losing calibration and casting votes for the wrong candidate. Such “vote flipping” tends to get exaggerated attention on social media and has become so familiar it’s been enshrined in a TV episode of “The Simpsons.” But while many experts agree the U.S. voting system needs an upgrade, no one wants to pay to fix it. From the private-sector perspective, it’s a tiny market. University of Iowa computer scientist Douglas Jones estimates that voting-equipment makers pull in total annual revenues of less than $200 million— roughly what Google generates in a day. The biggest player, ES&S, is private and has just 450 full-time employees. (Researchers worry that smaller companies like these are also much more vulnerable to hacking by sophisticated state actors.) The sector boomed after the 2000 Florida recount debacle, when punch-card technology was discredited by hanging chads and a poor “butterfly” ballot design. Congress appropriated $4 billion for election upgrades, and the states raced to replace punch cards and lever machines with digital technology. But when that money ran out, so did many states’ ability to address security concerns they’d overlooked in their initial rush. Four in 5 U.S. election officials polled by New York University’s Brennan Center last year said they are desperate to replace equipment but lack the cash.
DISPARATE IMPACT
Voters in poorer areas suffer disproportionately, the center found. The Stein campaign complained in a letter Friday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch that minority communities are also particularly vulnerable. Among irregularities it cited were 87 ballot-scanning machines that suffered malfunctions in Detroit on Election Day. Data collected by Brennan Center researchers suggests the poor are more apt to encounter failing machines. Six Minnesota counties buying new machines had household median incomes more than $20,000 higher than jurisdictions not making purchases, the center found. In Virginia, wealthier counties near Washington have upgraded to more trustworthy technology while lower-income counties in the state’s southwest have not been able to afford it, said Edgardo Cortes, the state elections commissioner. “The federal money is not there and in most instances state money is not being made available, either,” said Cortes. “So the entire cost is falling to local governments.” Just as Congress delivered a death blow to punch cards, it should also outlaw paperless touchscreen voting machines and pay for their replacement, said Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer scientist. But even counties that can afford better voting tech face problems. The clerk of Travis County, Texas, Dana DeBeauvoir, has been trying for a decade to build a bulletproof electronic voting system , because even the scanners that count paper ballots can be hacked. (Of course, such hacking could be detected and remedied by recounting paper ballots manually.) The Travis County system would have a paper trail and use encryption systems to let voters confirm online that their vote counted and wasn’t subject to tampering. For transparency, DeBeauvoir wants to use open source software that anyone can examine, not the proprietary code the industry uses. None of the major vendors has shown interest, she says. “I don’t think it fits their profit model.”
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Oxy Continued from Page 1A practices that made OxyContin a pharmaceutical blockbuster in the U.S. In Brazil, China and elsewhere, the companies are running training seminars at which doctors are urged to overcome “opiophobia” and prescribe painkillers. They are sponsoring public campaigns that encourage people to seek medical treatment for chronic pain. They are even offering patient discounts to make prescription opioids more affordable. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said he would advise his peers abroad “to be very careful” with opioid medications and to learn from American “missteps.” “I would urge them to be very cautious about the marketing of these medications,” he said in an interview. “Now, in retrospect, we realize that for many the benefits did not outweigh the risks.” Former U.S. Food and Drug Commissioner David A. Kessler has called the failure to recognize the dangers of painkillers one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. Speaking of Mundipharma’s push into foreign markets, he said: “It’s right out of the playbook of Big Tobacco. As the United States takes steps to limit sales here, the company goes abroad.” Some Mundipharma representatives and promotional material have downplayed the risk that patients will become addicted to their opioid medications. Those claims recall the initial marketing of OxyContin in the U.S. in the late 1990s when Purdue deceived doctors about the drug’s addictiveness. Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges of misbranding drugs and were ordered to pay $635 million. The Drug Enforcement Administration said in 2003 that the company’s “aggressive, excessive and inappropriate” marketing “very much exacerbated” abuse and criminal trafficking of OxyContin. Purdue was a small New York City pharmaceutical firm when brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, both psychiatrists, bought it in 1952. The spectacular success of OxyContin has generated nearly $35 million in revenue over the past two decades and made the Sacklers one of the nation’s wealthiest families. Three generations of the family now help oversee Purdue and the Mundipharma foreign corporations. Family members declined to be interviewed for this story, as did executives who run their international companies. In a statement, Mundipharma International, which is based in Cambridge, England and responsible for European operations, said it was “mindful of the risk of abuse and misuse of opioids” and was “drawing on the experiences and insights of the US in tackling this issue.” Mundipharma said those efforts include seeking regulatory approval in Europe for a formulation of OxyContin already sold in the U.S. that deters certain forms of abuse, and introducing another opioid painkiller, Targin, with similar abuse-deterrent properties. Promotional videos for Mundipharma, which feature smiling people of many ethnicities, suggest that the companies regard OxyContin’s U.S. success as merely a beginning. “We’re only just getting started,” the videos declare. Joseph Pergolizzi Jr. is a Florida doctor with an array of business ventures. He runs a pain management clinic and co-founded a drug research company. He invented a non-prescription pain-relieving cream he sells on cable television and he works for a mail-order nutritional supplements company. He also talks up opioids to foreign doctors for Mundipharma. In April, Pergolizzi was in Rio de Janeiro at a cancer pain seminar sponsored by the company. For an hour, Pergolizzi lectured the gathered physicians in English about the use of opioids in cancer patients and those with what he called “the death sentence of chronic pain.” Brazil had stepped up its use of painkillers in recent years, he said, but “you are still low” compared with the U.S., Canada and Europe. “I think unfortunately you may not have all the tools you need to properly address pain,” he said, according to a video of the seminar posted online by Mundipharma. Consultants like Pergolizzi are key to helping Mundipharma overcome one of its greatest obstacles to selling painkillers abroad: Doctors’ aversion to prescribing narcotics. For generations, physicians have been taught that opioid painkillers are highly addictive and should be used sparingly and primarily in patients near death. Mundipharma executives and consultants call this “opiophobia” and top company officials have said publicly that success in
new markets depends on defeating this mindset. Speeches like Pergolizzi’s portray painkillers as a modern approach endorsed by leading experts in the U.S. Mundipharma presented Pergolizzi to the Brazilian group as a professor at the Johns Hopkins and Temple University medical schools. Medical journal articles published in 2015 and 2016 with funding from Mundipharma or in collaboration with its scientists have identified him variously as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, Temple and Georgetown University medical schools. In fact, he is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins and he has not been affiliated with Georgetown since 2010 or Temple since 2014, according to school officials. Asked to explain, Pergolizzi said by email that he was having “paperwork issues” at Temple “which I am rectifying with their full cooperation” and was “in discussions” with Georgetown about an adjunct position. “I have never intentionally misrepresented … my university affiliations,” he wrote in another email. A Temple spokesman said the university had “no reason to believe he will have any future relationship” with the school, and a Georgetown spokeswoman said, “We are not in discussions with that gentleman.” Government records indicate that Purdue and other U.S. pharmaceutical firms have paid Pergolizzi more than $1 million since 2013 for consulting work, speaking engagements and other services as well as travel reimbursements. The records do not include any payments he may have received from foreign pharmaceutical firms such as Mundipharma. In his Rio presentation, he clicked quickly past a slide listing 16 drug companies for which he had done work. After Purdue launched OxyContin in the U.S. in 1996, the company ran similar training seminars for specialists—known in pharmaceutical marketing as “key opinion leaders”—in the pain field. Doctors were invited to all-expenses paid weekends in resort locations like Boca Raton, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz. The company found that doctors who attended seminars in 1996 wrote more than twice as many prescriptions as those who didn’t, according to a company analysis. Several thousand of these specialists signed on to the Purdue “speakers bureau,” which paid them to make speeches about opioids at medical conferences and at hospitals. Dr. Barry Cole, a Reno psychiatrist and pain management specialist, started giving speeches about OxyContin for Purdue the year the drug hit the market. In recent years, he moved to the company’s international operation in a consulting role he described in an online resume as a “pain ambassador,” teaching the use of opioids to doctors in Colombia, Brazil, South Korea, the Philippines, China and Singapore. “Any side effect is reversible when treatment is discontinued, and there is no permanent damage to the body,” Cole told a 2014 conference of pain specialists in Veracruz, Mexico, according to account of the presentation published on Mexican health websites. In an interview, Cole said he made the foreign presentations despite having developed deep misgivings about the use of OxyContin and similar drugs in the U.S. Seeing the opioid epidemic unfold and the effect of opioids on his patients, and reading scientific literature about the drugs, he said, led him to conclude by about 2010 that painkillers were too dangerous for most chronic pain patients. “We thought we could just get away with putting everybody on opioids, and it would
be hunky-dory,” Cole said. “And it didn’t work and it had darker consequences than any of us were predicting.” He defended his work promoting opioids to foreign doctors, saying terminally ill patients were dying in pain in many places he visited. He said he never shied away from questions about abuse and had no way of knowing whether his talks led doctors to prescribe more opioids. “You show up, do a presentation and then you get back on the plane and are gone,” he said. He said he stopped making appearances for Mundipharma last year. One “key opinion leader” who attended Cole’s seminars was Ricardo Plancarte Sanchez, a Mexico City pain doctor who holds a position at Mexico’s national cancer institute. Plancarte now speaks at Mundipharma seminars in Mexico. In an interview, he said his aim was to help “demystify the use of opioids in chronic pain” and that he was not paid for his appearances. “We need to work more to educate so that people use analgesics more,” Plancarte said. He said he was not concerned that Mexico would have largescale abuse and addiction. “If we educate our doctors as well as our patients, there will be better use of the drugs than in the United States,” he said. Untreated pain is a global scourge. Each year millions with terminal cancer and end-stage AIDS die in needless agony, according to the United Nations. The problem is most acute in the poorest countries. Stefano Berterame, an officer of the U.N.-affiliated International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna, works to increase access to opioids in countries with shortages. He said most of the global problem could be solved with “very cheap morphine” but that selling it held little allure for multinational drug companies “It’s not very profitable,” he said. “Companies prefer to market expensive preparations.” Purdue charges hundreds of dollars a bottle for a month’s supply of OxyContin in the U.S. Generic morphine, which provides similar pain relief, can cost as little as 15 cents a day. Other companies are also seeking new markets for opioids in other countries. In the past year, Teva and Grunenthal, each bought drug companies in Mexico. Chronic pain patients, who fill prescriptions month after month and often year upon year, have been the driver of billion-dollar sales for Purdue in the U.S. University of North Carolina researchers analyzed the medical records of patients taking OxyContin at strengths of 30 milligrams or more—common doses for the drug—and found that more than 85 percent were diagnosed with chronic pain of one type or another. Around the world, Mundipharma companies cite statistics suggesting there is a great unmet need for their products. Opening an office in Mexico in 2014, Mundipharma officials said 28 million citizens had chronic pain. In Brazil, the company cited a figure of 80 million. In Colombia last year, a company news release said 47 percent of the population— about 22 million people—were afflicted by “this silent epidemic.” A 2011 survey in the Philippines designed and paid for by the company concluded that the “government should recognize chronic pain as a specific health problem” and should improve access to pain medications. Health authorities in the U.S. say opioids are not the solution to chronic pain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this year there is “insufficient evidence” that the drugs relieve pain in patients who
take them for more than three months. Up to 24 percent of people on the drugs long-term become addicted, the CDC said. Some Mundipharma representatives abroad have suggested publicly that painkiller risk is overblown. As public health officials in the U.S. were issuing their latest warning about painkiller abuse last year, a Mundipharma executive was quoted in a Seoul newspaper saying that Korean doctors “worry too much” about addiction. “But many studies have shown that it’s almost impossible for those with chronic or severe pain to become addicted to narcotics, as long as the drug is used for pain relief,” Lee Jong-ho told the Korea Herald. Lee could not be reached for comment. After introducing OxyContin in the U.S., Purdue’s Canadian affiliate and Mundipharma’s Australian company began promoting the painkiller in those countries. In the past decade and a half, both have had U.S.style problems, including criminal trafficking, addiction and death. Mundipharma turned its focus to the developing world in 2011, as U.S. sales began their drop. Rapidly modernizing countries are expected to spend more than $20 billion on pain medicines by 2020, according to QuintilesIMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. Mundipharma expanded first in Asia, then Latin America and then the Middle East and Africa, and now sell in 122 developing markets. The high cost of brandname medications remains a barrier in many developing countries, but Mundipharma has sought ways to adjust. In Brazil, the company started a program this year that offers patients discounts.. Purdue used coupons in the U.S. that offered patients a free initial prescription for OxyContin. About 34,000 coupons were redeemed before the company terminated the program as concerns about abuse grew, according to a congressional report. Revenues for Mundipharma Emerging Markets, the Singapore-based company that oversees developing-world operations, have risen 800 percent over the last five years to about $600 million annually. A Mundipharma spokeswoman said that growth included revenue from deals the companies have made with other manufacturers to sell nonopioid products. Raman Singh, head of Mundipharma Emerging Markets, has said publicly that pain treatment in Asia is 1/50th of what it should be. Half the company’s world-
wide sales in the developing world, which include products other than painkillers, already come from China, according to Mundipharma, and China is central to the Mundipharma’s global strategy. The Chinese government has pledged that all 1.4 billion citizens will have health insurance by the close of the decade, and the company is working quickly to establish itself as the market leader in pain medications. Since 2011, Mundipharma has hired more than a thousand employees, most of them sales representatives. Thousands of Chinese doctors have attended training seminars about Mundipharma’s drugs, and it claims a 60 percent share of the cancer pain market. Mundipharma has sponsored clinical trials of OxyContin and Targin at hospitals across the country. There remains, however, a deep-seated fear of opioids stemming from Chinese defeats in the 19th century Opium Wars that left millions addicted. Under strict government regulations, patients can purchase OxyContin only from hospital or other medical institutions, and can receive no more than a 15-day supply. Relatively few Chinese use Mundipharma’s painkillers for chronic pain because of their high price. In China, where there are nearly 3 million registered drug abusers, the government has forced addicts into boot-camp style treatment that human rights advocates have described as prisons. Treatment is rudimentary or unavailable in many parts of the developing world. University of North Carolina researcher Nabarun Dasgupta, who has advised federal health authorities and the World Health Organization on prescription opioid abuse, said the wide use of painkillers in those countries “sounds like a recipe for disaster” because “a certain percent (of users) will go on to need addiction treatment.” Public health officials in Europe worry far less about painkiller addiction than their American counterparts. Government health systems in many countries track prescriptions, making it more difficult than in the U.S. to obtain large amounts of opioid medication for abuse or criminal trafficking. But when a team of international researchers recently conducted the first large-scale survey of drug abuse in Europe, they found what the lead investigator described as a significant problem with prescription opioid abuse. Painkiller abuse rates are similar to the U.S. in the early 2000s “before the epidemic real-
ly got going,” Scott Novak, a scientist at the nonprofit RTI International in North Carolina, said in an interview. In Spain, 18 percent of those surveyed acknowledged abusing painkillers in the course of their life, according to the study published in August. Across Europe, people with prescriptions were eight times as likely to abuse the drugs. “They are potentially at the precipice of a major public health problem if prescribing increases,” Novak said. Mundipharma International took issue with that conclusion. The company said in a statement that painkiller abuse is less of a problem in Europe than in the U.S., in part because of stricter pharmacy regulation and government health systems. Mundipharma said that it was conducting a study of abuse in Britain and Germany and that initial results “suggest that in these countries abuse of prescription opioids is less than 1 percent.” In one European country— Cyprus—OxyContin abuse is an acknowledged problem. Mundipharma began marketing the painkiller in 2008 on the Mediterranean island of 1 million. Government health coverage made the medication cheaper than heroin and addicts began crushing and snorting the pills. Officers responding to overdoses knew little of the U.S. experience with painkillers. Stelios Sergides, a superintendent with the Cyprus National Police, said that the first time he heard the word OxyContin, he had to look it up online. Since 2013, authorities have linked six deaths to the drug. “It’s a big deal, a big deal,” Sergides said. Mundipharma said it was “deeply disturbed” by the deaths in Cyprus and suggested the blame rested with a rehab center which used OxyContin to treat heroin addiction, a practice the company does not recommend. Police in Cyprus are investigating doctors suspected of overprescribing and working with public health officials to get addicts into rehab. Last year, 59 people requested treatment. “We are worried, of course, because of the numbers, especially the treatment demand,” Sergides said. In the Mundipharma’s Cyprus office, managing director, Menicos M. Petrou, called OxyContin “an excellent product” and said he had been honored to meet members of the Sackler family during visits to a factory on the island. “If people misuse drugs, most of the time there is little a pharmaceutical company can do,” he said.
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6A RECORDS
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
5-DAY LOCAL WEATHER FORECAST
TODAY
WEDNESDAY
High-Lower 60s Low-Mid-40s
Sunrise today Sunset today
THURSDAY
High-Lower 60s Low-Mid-40s
High-Mid-50s Low-Mid-30s
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
High-Mid-50s Low-Mid-30s
High-Lower 60s Low-Mid-30s
56. Thursday night will be mostly clear with a low around 34. Friday will be mostly sunny with a high near 54. Friday night will have a 30 percent chance of showers, mostly cloudy with a low around 34. New Year’s Eve will have a 40 percent chance of showers. Cloudy, with a high near 63. Saturday night should have a 30 percent chance of showers, mostly cloudy with a low around 34. New Year’s Day will have a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mostly cloudy with a high near 63 and a low of 34.
7:19 a.m. 5:16 p.m.
n TEXARKANA: Today will be mostly cloudy with a high of 61 and a low around 46. Northeast wind around 5 mph becoming southeast after midnight. Tonight will have a 20 percent chance of rain. Wednesday will have a 30 percent chance of showers, mostly cloudy with a high near 63 and a low of about 46. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph in the afternoon. Thursday is expected to be mostly sunny with a high near
Forecast for Tuesday, December 27, 2016 Bands separate high temperature zones for the day. 30s 0
40 40s 30s 0 10 1 0 0s
30s 30 0
50s 0
30s 30 30s 0
40s
50s 0s 60s 60
50s 0s
50s 0s
H 70s
70 70s 0 60s
0s 0s
-0 -0s 0
30 30s 0
20 20s 0
H 60 6 60s 0
40 40 40s
10s
20 2 20s 0
80 80s
<-10 <-10
10 1 0s 0
70 70 70s
20s 30 30s
30 30s
80 80s 0
70s 80 80s 0 Fronts
80 80s 0
Warm
Cold
Stationary
Pressure
H
High
L
Low
Showers
Rain
T-storms
Flurries
Snow
Ice
NATIONAL SUMMARY: Flurries and lake-effect snow showers will linger behind a front leaving the Northeast today. A stationary front over the Southeast will produce showers. The air will be warm south of the front but seasonably chilly to the north. The Southwest will be tranquil, but snow will fly over the Northwest with rain near the coast. ©2016 AccuWeather, Inc.
TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, Dec. 27, the 362nd day of 2016. There are four days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Dec. 27, 1904, James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opened at the Duke of York’s Theater in London. On this date: n In 1831, naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a round-theworld voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. n In 1927, the musical play “Show Boat,” with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York. n In 1932, New York City’s Radio City Music Hall first opened. n In 1945, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were formally established. n In 1947, the original version of the puppet character Howdy Doody made his TV debut on NBC’s “Puppet Playhouse.” n In 1949, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act recognizing Indonesia’s sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule. n In 1968, Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific. n In 1970, the musical play “Hello, Dolly!” closed on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances. n In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal. n In 1985, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; 19 victims were killed, plus four attackers who were slain by police and security personnel. American naturalist Dian Fossey, 53, who had studied gorillas in the wild in Rwanda, was found hacked to death. n In 1995, Israeli jeeps sped out of the West Bank town of Ramallah, capping a seven-week pullout giving Yasser Arafat control over 90 percent of the West Bank’s one million Palestinian residents and one-third of its land. n In 2007, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated during a suicide bomb attack in Pakistan following a campaign rally. Ten years ago: Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to embrace “brotherly coexistence” and not to hate U.S.-led foreign troops in a goodbye letter posted on a website a day after Iraq’s highest court upheld his death sentence. Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards
DEATHS SAM RAGSDALE
SANDRA PURDY
ATLANTA, Texas—Hardy “Sam” Ragsdale, 61, of Linden, Texas, died Sunday, Dec. 25, 2016, in a local hospital. Mr. Ragsdale was born April 9, 1955, in Dallas, Texas. He was employed by Watson Wood Co., and a member of Gleaner Baptist Church. Survivors include his wife, Judy Ragsdale of Linden; one son, Daniel Ragsdale of Linden; two daughters, Hillary Neeley Wayne of Linden and Danna Lee of Talco, Texas; one brother, Carl Ragsdale of Arizona; three sisters, Mary Goode of Linden, Rose Hock of Gilmer, Texas, and Jessie Phillips of Georgia; four grandchildren; and a number of other relatives. Services will be 10 a.m. Wednesday at Gleaner Baptist Church. Burial will be in Bear Creek Cemetery, Linden, under direction of Hanner Funeral Service. Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. today at the funeral home. Memorials may be made to Gleaner Baptist Church, P.O. Box 682, Linden, TX 75563. Online registration is at hannerfuneralservice.com.
Sandra Gail Purdy, 72, of Texarkana, Texas, died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016, at her home. Mrs. Purdy was born Oct. 11, 1944, in Miller County, Ark. She was a homemaker and a member of Sonlight Ministries and Walnut Church of Christ. She was preceded in death by one stepson, Ricky Purdy. Survivors include her husband, Art Purdy |of Texarkana, Texas; two sons and daughters-in-law, Edward Jr. and Donna Hasley of New Town, N.D., and Chris and Linda Hasley of Owasso, Okla.; two sisters, Doris Wilburn of Texarkana, Ark., and Ailene Williamson of Texarkana, Texas; two brotherin-laws, Joe Purdy of Texarkana, Texss, and Earl Purdy of New Boston, Texas; one sister-inlaw, Joyce Chappius of Austin, Texas; five grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and a number of other relatives. Graveside services will be 3 p.m. today at Hillcrest Memorial Park with Jerry Monholland officiating. Burial will be under direction of Texarkana Funeral Home, EDGAR SLATON Arkansas. CLARKSVILLE, Texas—Edgar Online registration is at Allen “Eddie” Slaton, 82, of Bogata, texarkanafuneralhome.com. Texas, died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016. The Rev. Slaton was born July ROBERT AUTREY 1, 1934, in Minter ATLANTA, Texas—Robert Junior c o m m u n i t y , Autrey, 65, formerly of Maud, Texas. He was Texas, died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016. a preacher, a Mr. Autrey was born March 17, Baptist and a 1951, in Maud. Navy veteran. He was precedSurvivors ed in death by include his one son, Robert wife, Charline Edward Autrey. Humphrey Survivors Slaton of include his wife, Bogata; one son and daughter-inPeggy Autrey; law, Kelly Dean and Linda Slaton two daughters of Bogata; two daughters and one and sons-inson-in-law, Rue Anna and Ragan law, Janie and Bell of Bogata and Gayln Ziegler Mike Jolly and Sherry and Jayson of Houston, Texas; one sister and Duke; six grandchildren; four brother-in-law, Nancy and Babe great-grandchildren; and a numHiggins of Clarksville; nine grand- ber of other relatives. children; 15 great-grandchildren; Services will be 2 p.m. Thursday and one great-great-grandchild. at Faith Baptist Church. Burial Services will be noon Wednesday will be in Center Ridge Cemetery, at Clarksville Funeral Home with Maud, under direction of Brandon Bell and Lucas Fields offi- Comforter Funeral Home. ciating. Burial will be in Lone Star Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. Cemetery. Wednesday at the funeral home. Visitation will be 11 a.m. to noon Wednesday at the funeral home. DORA FEE Online registration is at HOPE, Ark.—Dora Mae Fee, clarksvillefuneralhome.com. 81, formerly of Emmet, Ark., died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016, in FRANCEAN HOWARD Prescott, Ark. Francean J. Howard, 77, of Ms. Fee was Texarkana, Texas, died Saturday, born June 24, Dec. 24, 2016, in a local nursing 1935, in Emmet. home. She was a forMrs. Howard mer teachwas born Oct. 7, er at Emmet 1939 in Fouke, Elementary Ark. She was School. preceded in Survivors death by her include one husband, Troy special cousin, Howard. Glenda Krum; and a number of S u r v i v o r s other relatives. include two No services are scheduled at daughters, Traci this time. Arrangements are Howard and Rebekah Howard; under direction of Herndon-Pharr one son, Jason Howard; one Funeral Home. granddaughter, Goldie Howard; Online registration is at and a number of other relatives. pharrfuneralhomes.com. Services will be 9 a.m. Friday at Texarkana Funeral Home, WILBUR POINDEXTER Texas, with the Rev. Wallace HOPE, Ark.—Wilbur Poindexter, Edgar officiating. Burial will be in 89, of Emmet, Ark., died Thursday, Independence Cemetery. Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. Dec. 22, 2016, in Prescott, Ark. Mr. Poindexter was born May Thursday at the funeral home. Relatives will be at the family 5, 1927. He was self-employed in the timber industry and attendhome after services. Online registration is at ed Little Bodcaw Baptist Church, Bodcaw, Ark. texarkanafuneralhome.com. Survivors include his wife, Bobby Jean Poindexter of Emmet; LEON BRADSHAW one son, Garry Poindexter of ATLANTA, Texas—Leon Bodcaw; and one brother, William Bradshaw, 79, of Lindale, Texas, Poindexter of Guernsey, Ark. died Monday, Dec. 26, 2016, in a Services will be 10 a.m. today Tyler, Texas, nursing home. at Bodcaw No. 1 Baptist Church Mr. Bradshaw with Lane Garner and David was born Feb. 7, Hampton officiating. Burial will be 1937, in Atlanta. in Bodcaw Cemetery under direcHe was retired tion of Herndon-Pharr Funeral from Allred Home. Construction Online registration is at and a Nazarene. pharrfuneralhomes.com. Survivors include his wife, NORMA HARDY Marie Bradshaw Norma Lee Hardy, 83, of of Lindale; three Texarkana, Texas, died Friday, daughters and one son-in-law, Terri Garvin of Pampa, Texas, Judy Dec. 23, 2016, at her home. Mrs. Hardy was born April 20, and Darrell Parker of Tyler, Texas, and Kathy Lewis of Perryton, 1933, in Prairie Grove, Ark. She was an operator with Pacific Bell Texas; two sons and daughters-inlaw, Charles and Lisa Bradshaw of Telephone. She was preceded in Lyles, Tenn., and Chris and Misty death by her husband, Leonard Bradshaw of Amarillo, Texas; one Hardy. Survivors include two sons and brother and sister-in-law, Larry and Sharon Bradshaw of Azle, one daughter-in-law, Larry Hardy Texas; eight grandchildren; eight of Texarkana and Terry Hardy and great-grandchildren; and a num- Boyd Panna of Doddridge, Ark. Memorial services will be held ber of other relatives. Services will be 2 p.m. at a later date in California. Cremation services are under Wednesday at Hanner Funeral Service. Interment will be in Laws direction of Texarkana Funeral Home, Texas. Chapel Cemetery. Online registration is at Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. texarkanafuneralhome.com. today at the funeral home. Online registration is at ORVILLE BARRETT hannerfuneralservice.com. ATLANTA, Texas—Orville Barrett, 77, of Atlanta died EDDIE MITCHELL Eddie B. Mitchell, 52, of Monday, Dec. 26, 2016, in a local Texarkana, Ark., died Friday, Dec. hospital. Arrangements are pending with 23, 2016. Arrangements are pending Hanner Funeral Service. with James Stuart Mortuary.
jumped into the presidential race a day earlier than he’d planned after his campaign accidentally went live with his election website a day before his scheduled announcement. Five years ago: Tens of thousands of defiant Syrian protesters thronged the streets of Homs, calling for the execution of President Bashar Assad shortly after his army pulled its tanks back and allowed Arab League monitors in for the first time to the city at the heart of the anti-government uprising. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a conservative Democrat, said he would retire from the Senate rather than seek a third term. Abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, 83, known for her bold, lyrical use of color, died in Darien, Connecticut. One year ago: British Prime Minister David Cameron sent hundreds more troops into northern England to help exhausted residents and emergency workers fight back rising river waters that had inundated towns and cities after weeks of heavy rain. Death claimed Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon at age 83; baseball player Dave Henderson at age 57; cinematographer Haskell Wexler at age 93; painter-sculptor Ellsworth Kelly at age 92. Today’s Birthdays: Actor John Amos is 77. ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts is 73. Rock musician Mick Jones (Foreigner) is 72. Singer Tracy Nelson is 72. Actor Gerard Depardieu is 68. Jazz singer-musician T.S. Monk is 67. Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff is 65. Actress Tovah Feldshuh is 64. Rock musician David Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 64. Journalistturned-politician Arthur Kent is 63. Actress Maryam D’Abo is 56. Country musician Jeff Bryant is 54. Actor Ian Gomez is 52. Actress Theresa Randle is 52. Actress Eva LaRue is 50. Wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg is 50. Actress Tracey Cherelle Jones is 47. Bluegrass singer-musician Darrin Vincent (Dailey & Vincent) is 47. Rock musician Guthrie Govan is 45. Musician Matt Slocum is 44. Actor Wilson Cruz is 43. Singer Olu is 43. Actor Masi Oka is 42. Actor Aaron Stanford is 40. Actress Emilie de Ravin is 35. Christian rock musician James Mead (Kutless) is 34. Rock singer Hayley Williams (Paramore) is 28. Country singer Shay Mooney (Dan & Shay) is 25. Thought for Today: “I’m not JAMES GILL young enough to know everyMAGNOLIA, Ark.—James Gill, 70, thing.”—Sir James Matthew of Magnolia died Sunday, Dec. 25, Barrie, Scottish dramatist-author 2016, at his home. (1860-1937). Arrangements are pending with —THE ASSOCIATED PRESS R.L. Reed Funeral Home.
MICHAEL WARD Michael Charles Ward, 58, of Texarkana, Ark., died Saturday, Dec. 24, 2016, at his home. Arrangements are pending with Texarkana Funeral Home, Arkansas.
Christmas blizzard stuns plains states The Associated Press CHICAGO—It’s been a white—but slick and messy— Christmas for the northern Plains and some Western states. Most of the Dakotas and southwest Minnesota had turned into a slippery mess due to freezing rain Sunday morning before snow arrived later in the day as temperatures fell. “Between the ice and snow, and winds howling like crazy, there will be nothing moving” until late afternoon Monday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Gust in Grand Forks, North Dakota. “Then it’s dig-out time.” Gust’s advice to holiday travelers: “Stay put.” A blizzard warning was in effect for most of North Dakota, western South Dakota and a small section of eastern Montana through Monday, with expected snow totals of 8 to 15 inches and winds up to 55 mph. The South Dakota Department of Transportation announced the closing Sunday night of Interstate 90 from the Wyoming border to Chamberlain—a stretch of about 260 miles. “The freezing rain from earlier today and dropping temps have created icy and slushy roadways; falling snow and increasing winds are creating zero visibility conditions in the west,” the department said in a statement.
FUNERALS
BEAN, Roy Jr. Magnolia, Ark. Died Dec. 19. Services 2 p.m. Southview Church of Christ. Burial with military honors Jan. 2 in Camellia Memorial Lawn, Sacramento, Calif. BROWN, Doris. Texarkana, Texas. Died Thursday. Services 10 a.m. Chapelwood Funeral Home. Burial in Chapelwood Memorial Gardens. CLINE, Pauline. Omaha, Texas. Died Friday. Services 9 a.m. Harrison Funeral Home, Naples, Texas. Burial in Omaha Cemetery. DAY, David. Omaha, Texas. Died Thursday. Services 2 p.m. Harrison Funeral Home, Naples, Texas. Burial in Springhill Cemetery. GUETERMAN, Charlie. Redwater, Texas. Died Thursday. Services 2 p.m. Chapelwood Funeral Home. Burial in Chapelwood Memorial Gardens Cemetery.
The North Dakota Transportation Department closed a 240-mile stretch of Interstate 94 Sunday night, from the Montana border to Jamestown. A 100-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 83 between Bismarck and Minot also was closed due to drifting snow and near-zero visibility. Up to a ½ inch of ice could accumulate in central Minnesota, and the weather service has said anyone who “must travel” should have an extra flashlight, food and water. Meteorologist Bill Abeling of the Bismarck NWS office told the Bismarck Tribune that ice accumulation was reportedly causing power outages near Jamestown and Verona. In southeast Nebraska, high winds were cited as the likely cause of about 800 Omaha Public Power District customers losing power Sunday, the Omaha World-Reported. The NWS office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, issued a flash flood warning for Brown County Sunday night due to the combination of rain and melting snow. As of shortly after 6 p.m., flooding was reported at several major intersections in Aberdeen. Rain and possible storms were due to move through parts of Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska on Sunday.
HARRISON, Gary. Texarkana, Texas. Died Thursday. Services 10 a.m. Texarkana Funeral Home, Texas. Burial in Chapelwood Memorial Gardens. PENNY, Precious. Fayetteville, Ark. Died Saturday. Services 10 a.m. First Baptist Church, Ashdown, Ark. Burial in Marvin Cemetery, Wallace, Ark. POINDEXTER, Wilbur. Emmet, Ark. Died Thursday. Services 10 a.m. Bodcaw No. 1 Baptist Church. Burial in Bodcaw Cemetery. PURDY, Sandra. Texarkana, Texas. Died Saturday. Graveside services 3 p.m. Hillcrest Memorial Park. TEDFORD, Peggy. Texarkana, Ark. Died Wednesday. Services 10 a.m. Northside Assembly of God Church. WALLACE, Destin. Fouke, Ark. Died Dec. 20. Services 11 a.m. River of Life Worship Center. Burial in Memorial Gardens Cemetery.
PRECIOUS PENNY Precious Penny, 48, of Fayetteville, AR, went home to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, on Dec. 24, 2016. She died of natural causes. Precious was born March 15, 1968 in Ashdown, AR. She was a graduate of Texas A & M University of Texarkana and worked as an accountant and teacher. She was a member of the First Baptist Church of Ashdown, AR. She loved her family dearly and attending Arkansas Razorback sporting events, especially baseball.
She was preceded in death by her grandparents, Isaac and Oletta Trammell of Ashdown, AR and James and May Penny of DeKalb, TX. Survivors include her father and mother Phillip and Connie Penny of Ashdown, AR, her brother and sister-in-law, Phil and Rebekah Penny, her nephews Maddox and Isaac, all of Rogers, AR, and numerous uncles, aunts, and cousins. Services will be at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016 at First Baptist Church of Ashdown with the Rev. Butch Riddle officiating. Burial will be in Marvin Cemetery, Wallace, AR. Memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society. Online registration at maddenfuneralservice.com.
BEN HACKLEMAN George Benson “Ben” Hackleman Jr., age 57, died Saturday, December 24, 2016 in the Little River Memorial Hospital, Ashdown, Arkansas M r . Hackleman was born February 8, 1959 in Texarkana, Texas. He graduated from Liberty-Eylau High School in 1977 where he was known by his nickname “Chest”. He later received a football scholarship to LA Tech and was red shirted his freshman year. Ben partnered with his father in the 70’s to start Hackleman Construction and pursued his passion to build. He was a strong, hard worker who could build anything from the ground up. He loved nothing more than running heavy equipment. He also enjoyed cooking for his family at cookouts, hunting, running trotlines and camping. He wanted everyone to have fun and was known for numerous sayings including: “If you can’t hack it- get your jacket” and” If you want to play, you got to pay.” He is preceded in death by his father, George Benson
“Bud” Hackleman Sr. He is survived by one son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Katelyn Hackleman of Greenwood, LA; one daughter and son-in-law, Stefanie and Kevin Raley of Azle, TX; mother and stepfather, Mary Nell and Elmer Whalen of Texarkana, TX; one sister, Teresa Nell Hackleman of Keller, TX; two brothers and sisters-in-law, Eddy and Anita Hackleman of Texarkana, TX, Joe and Traci Hackleman of Texarkana, TX; one grandchild, Allison Hackleman; nieces and nephews, Lori Castle, Brian Morris, George “Buddy” Hackleman, II, Holly Hackleman, Morgan Hackleman, Joe Hackleman Jr., Caleb Hackleman; great nieces and nephews, Chloe Castle, Anden Castle, Isla Castle, Bailey Morris, Avery Morris; mother of his children, Linda Hackleman and a special friend Missy Holden. Funeral services will be held at 2:00 P.M. Wednesday at the Chapelwood Funeral Home Chapel with the Rev. Gerald Vickers officiating. Burial will be in Chapelwood Cemetery. The family will receive friends at the funeral home Tuesday evening from 6:00 to 7:30 P.M. Register online at www.chapelwoodfuneralhome.com.
NATION 7A
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
Democrats are ready for ‘collision course’ with Trump’s tax plan By Sahil Kapur Tribune News Service
WA S H I N G T O N — Congressional Democrats say they'll try to thwart Republican plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code by portraying them as a boon for the rich that betrays President-elect Donald Trump's campaign promise to fight for working Americans. “There's going to be opposition if these tax cuts are directed to the people at the top again,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who represents his party's first line of defense as the ranking Democrat on the House's tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. “We're going to be pretty united.” Neal and others say they'll zero in on upper-income tax breaks pitched by Trump and Republican House leaders in an attempt to make it politically difficult for them to support large parts of the emerging plans. Their initial comments suggest that the 115th Congress, which convenes Jan. 3 with a Republican-led agenda of instituting a broad tax overhaul and repealing Obamacare, will be peppered with debate over income inequality. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin have endorsed across-the-board cuts in individual income tax rates. After Republicans took the White House and kept majorities in Congress in November's elections, both say they aim to achieve the most far-reaching overhaul of the U.S. tax system in a generation. Details remain to be filled in; for example, Ryan and others envision significan changes for corporate taxation that Trump's economic team has yet to embrace. Trump has sought to portray his plan as a pro-growth simplification of the tax code that would benefit the middle class. In a “Contract with the American Voter” published before the election, his campaign said of his proposal: “The largest tax reductions are for the middle class.” Democrats plan to challenge this claim. “His populist image and the reality of his policies are on a collision course,” said Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a candidate for Democratic National Committee chairman. “And they're going to crash.” Consider two major provisions on which Trump's and
Ryan's plans agree: First, they'd compress the existing seven individual tax brackets to three, cutting rates generally across the board. Yet the largest cut would be in the top rate, to 33 percent from 39.6 percent. That rate applies only to those with incomes well within the top 1 percent. Second, their plans would abolish the estate tax, which applies only to estates worth more than $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9 million for couples. Data from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau show that far less than 1 percent of the people who die each year pay any estate tax. An independent analysis of House Republicans' “blueprint” found that while households at all income levels would pay less tax, “the highest-income households would receive the largest cuts, both in dollars and as a percentage of income.” After-tax incomes of the very rich—the top 0.1 percent of U.S. earners, or those with incomes over $3.7 million—would rise by almost 17 percent. At the same time, the bottom three-fifths of households would gain on average 0.5 percent or less, according to the analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Three quarters of the total tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, that study found. Another study of the House Republicans' plan, by the more conservative Tax Foundation, came to a similar, if less pronounced, conclusion: On a “static” basis—that means, without accounting for the tax plan's effects on the larger economy—after-tax income of the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers would increase no more than 0.5 percent, while it would increase 5.3 percent for the the top 1 percent. After factoring in macroeconomic effects, the Tax Foundation ffound that for all taxpayers after-tax income would increase at least 8.4 percent—but the top 1 percent would get 13 percent more . Democratic leaders haven't proposed a tax plan to counter the House Republican proposal. Neal said Democrats intend to introduce alternatives soon but didn't provide details, saying only that any tax breaks should be targeted at the middle class.
Many shot in Chicago over holiday weekend By Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas man for the Chicago Police Department. Tribune News Service He also referred to the departCHICAGO—Five people were wounded in shootings in ment's “strategic subject list,” Chicago early Monday, bring- which is generated daily from ing to almost 50 the number a computerized algorithm and of people shot in the city since assigns a score from 1 to 500 Christmas weekend began based on such factors as a person's arrests and the activities Friday afternoon. Much of the violence hap- of his or her associates. Those pened in areas “with histori- people with a score in the upper cal gang conflicts on the south 200s or higher are considered and west side of Chicago,” said in danger of being shot or of Anthony Guglielmi, a spokes- shooting someone else.
Associated Press
n Debbie and Richard Higgins, whose well water has been contaminated by a suspected carcinogen from a Dartmouth dump site, look at a map on their kitchen table on Dec. 16 in Hanover, N.H., which shows where the contamination has spread.
Contamination from dead lab mice worries Ivy League neighborhood By Michael Casey The Associated Press HANOVER, N.H.—Neighbors
of Dartmouth College property where for years the Ivy League school disposed of mice and other small animals used in science experiments say they fear pollution from the site has contaminated their groundwater and they worry the school hasn't been completely up front with them. The site has contaminated the well water of at least one family, that of Richard and Debbie Higgins, who blame a variety of health problems on it, including rashes, hair and skin loss and dizziness. Even their dogs were not spared, they say, with one urinating blood and another vomiting. “We have been drinking the water for years and we had no idea, absolutely no idea,” Debbie Higgins said. Few nearby residents even knew the half-acre plot on the college's Rennie Farm was used from the 1960s until 1978 to dump carcasses from “tracer experiments,” in which scientists used radioactive compounds to see how things moved through life systems. A nearby site also
contained remains of human cadavers and stillborn fetuses used in medical classes. The obscurity of the fenced site changed in 2011, when Dartmouth chose to clean it up, removing 40 tons of carcasses and soil from scores of unlined pits that were legal at the time they were dug. That led to the discovery of hazardous waste and low-level radioactive materials and eventually evidence that at least one chemical used in the animal experiments, the suspected carcinogen 1,4-dioxane, had leaked into the groundwater. It was initially found at 50 times the state standard of 3 parts per billion on the site and more recently as high as 600 parts per billion in the ground. The chemical has been linked to eye, nose and throat irritation and, in longterm exposure, to liver and kidney damage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The 1,4-dioxane was eventually found to have migrated off the site and contaminated the Higginses' well across the street, about 800 feet from the site—at twice the state standard. They learned in September 2015 that their well was pol-
luted, and now depend on bottled water supplied by Dartmouth for cooking and drinking. The news has rattled the semi-rural neighborhood, sparking anger and fear among dozens of homeowners who worry the plume will reach their own wells and damage their property values. Many contend Dartmouth was too slow to respond once it found the contamination and has been reluctant to provide full details of what was on the site— something the college denies. “Right now, everyone is very confused and concerned,” said Ellen Waitzkin, a radiologist who lives across from the site. “They are trying to determine on what basis they should feel threatened or not.” The Higginses and other residents argue an alert about the spreading contamination should have gone out earlier. New Hampshire environmental and Dartmouth officials said initial test showed the levels of 1,4-dioxane were declining on the site and were projected to remain on the farm site—though state officials now concede there could have been more aggressive monitoring.
Japanese prime minister arrives in Hawaii for memorial visit The Associated Press PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Hawaii on Monday to recognize the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Abe landed at Joint Base Pearl HarborHickam for the historic visit. He will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit the memorial that honors sailors and Marines killed in the attack that spurred America to enter World War II. Japan's former leader Shigeru Yoshida went to Pearl Harbor six years after the country's World War II surrender, but that was before the USS Arizona Memorial was built. Yoshida arrived at Pearl Harbor in 1951, shortly after requesting a courtesy visit to the office of Adm. Arthur W.R. Radford, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet. The office overlooked Pearl Harbor, offering a direct view of the attack site. The memorial will be closed to the public Tuesday when Abe visits the historic site, joined by U.S. President Barack Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii with his family. The importance of the visit may be mostly symbolic for two countries that, in a remarkable transformation, have grown into close allies in the decades since they faced off in brutal conflict. At the same time, it's significant that it took more than 70 years for U.S.-Japanese relations to get to this point. Abe won't apologize for Japan's attack
Associated Press
n Yasushi Misawa, Japanese Consul General of Hawaii, left, and Sal Miwa, of the JapanAmerica Society of Hawaii, right, show Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the Ehime Maru Memorial at Kakaako Waterfront Park on Monday in Honolulu. when he visits, the government spokesman said earlier this month. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that "the purpose of the upcoming visit is to pay respects for the war dead and not to offer
an apology." The visit comes six months after Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima for victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of that city at the end of the same war.
Congress shakes up U.S. nuclear-defense doctrine with one change to legislation By David Willman Los Angeles Times
W
ASHINGTON—By removing a single word from legislation governing the military, Congress has laid the groundwork for both a major shift in U.S. nuclear-defense doctrine and a costly effort to field space-based weaponry. Experts say the changes, approved by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, could aggravate tensions with Russia and China, and prompt a renewed nuclear arms race. The bill awaits action by President Barack Obama. The White House has not said what he will do. For decades, America's defense against nuclear attack has rested on two objectives: The nation's homeland missile defense system is designed to thwart a small-scale, or “limited,” attack by the likes of North Korea or Iran. As for the threat of a large-scale strike by China or Russia, the prospect of U.S. retaliation is supposed to deter both from launching missiles. Central to this strategy was a oneword qualifier—“limited”—used to define the mission of the homeland defense system. The language was carefully crafted to avoid reigniting an
arms race among the superpowers. Now, with virtually no public debate, bipartisan majorities in Congress have voted to remove the word “limited” from the nation's missile defense policy. They did so in giving final approval to the year-end defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. A related provision of the law calls for the Pentagon to start “research, development, test and evaluation” of spacebased systems for missile defense. A space-based defense program would hinge on annual congressional appropriations and decisions by the incoming Trump administration. wefense scientists said the idea that a space-based system could provide security against nuclear attack is a fantasy. “It defies the laws of physics and is not based on science of any kind,” said L. David Montague, a retired president of missile systems for Lockheed, and co-chair of a National Academy of Sciences panel that studied missile defense technologies at the request of Congress. “Even if we darken the sky with hundreds or thousands of satellites and interceptors, there's no way to ensure against a dedicated attack,” Montague
said. “So it's an opportunity to waste a prodigious amount of money.” He called the provisions passed by Congress “insanity, pure and simple.” The National Academy study, released in 2012, concluded that even a bare-bones space-based missile defense system would cost about $200 billion to put in place, and hundreds of billions to operate in subsequent years. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who introduced and shepherded the amendments in the House, when asked whether the nation could afford it, replied: “What is national security worth? It's priceless.” Philip E. Coyle III, a former assistant defense secretary who headed the Pentagon office responsible for testing and evaluating weapon systems, described the notion of a space-based nuclear shield as “a sham.” “To do this would cost just gazillions and gazillions,” Coyle said. “The technology isn't at hand—nor is the money. It's unfortunate from my point of view that the Congress doesn't see that. “Both Russia and China will use it as an excuse to do something that they want to do.” The word “limited” has guided U.S. policy since the National Missile Defense Act of 1999. The qualifier
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reflects, in part, the reality that intercepting and destroying incoming warheads is supremely difficult, and that it would be impractical to field enough interceptors to counter a large-scale attack. Any such system, by its very nature, would be limited. The current homeland anti-missile system—the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD—relies on interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Fort Greely, Alaska. In flight tests, the system, which has cost more than $40 billion, has managed to destroy mock enemy warheads only about half the time. Military officials estimate that, in the event of an attack, the U.S. would have to fire four or five interceptors for every incoming warhead. As a result, the system's arsenal of 34 operational interceptors could be rapidly depleted. The 1999 law “threaded the needle between defending against a potential North Korean or Iranian threat and not rocking the boat too much with Russia and China,” said Laura Grego, a physicist who led a recent study of GMD for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “So just trashing that without a real substantive discussion is, I think, shameful,” Grego said.
Franks said in an interview that he drew inspiration from President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, which was intended to use lasers and other space-based weaponry to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Known as “Star Wars,” the initiative cost $30 billion, but no system was ever deployed. Franks said that by striking the word “limited” from the homeland defense system's mission, and at the same time pursuing a space-based system, the U.S. is on a path to better safeguard its security. He said the new approach would protect both U.S. territory and surveillance satellites. “I hope that the day will come when we could have solid-state lasers in space that can defeat any missile attack,” Franks said “That day is a long ways off. But fortunately, it's a little closer, and a little more certain, with the passage of these amendments.” The new policy he championed says America “should maintain and improve a robust layered missile defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States and its allies against the developing and increasingly complex ballistic missile threat.”
TECH Tuesday
TEXARKANA GAZETTE H DECEMBER 27, 2016
8A
DIGITAL LIFE | NINTENDO
Super Mario Run: Nintendo missteps with connectivity mandate, price tag By Barbara Ortutay The Associated Press
EW YORK—Super Mario might be running, but a hefty price tag for a mobile game just won’t fly with the masses. The world so far is underwhelmed by “Super Mario Run,” which Nintendo released for the iPhone last week. This is no “Pokemon Go,” which captivated millions of players in their quest to collect digital monsters at real-world locations. Nintendo’s stock price has fallen 7 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange since the game’s Dec. 15 launch, and the game is rated just 2.5 stars out of 5 on the iPhone app store. The problem, it seems, is not with the quality or design of “Super Mario Run.” Both are top notch, with enough elements of classic Mario to satisfy old-school Nintendo fans, alongside mobile-friendly features such as the ability to play with one hand. Rather, Nintendo’s overly optimistic $10 price tag, as well as an inexplicable requirement for players to be constantly connected to the internet while playing, could be enough to turn off all but the most hardcore fans.
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DIGITAL LIFE | SMALL BUSINESSES
3-D PRINTING TAKES SELFIES TO A NEW LEVEL
AUDACIOUS PRICE TAG Ten dollars is too much for a latte and too much for a mobile game, even if it comes with truffle shavings in the case of the latte and the world’s best known video game character in the case of “Super Mario Run.” Players can download the game for free and play three of the 24 available “worlds.” This takes only a few minutes and leaves one extremely unsatisfied. It’s like dining at a pricey restaurant knowing you can only afford the appetizer. THE FIX: Nintendo should slash the price in half and offer more content for free, says Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile, a mobile app development agency in New York. Oh, and once the price is cut, it would be a good idea to make the game available on Android, too. After all, most people in the world have Android phones. Android users tend to be less willing than iPhone users to pay for apps, so a price cut is essential.
STAYING CONNECTED The game requires a constant internet connection. It’s understandable with “Pokemon Go,” which uses your physical location as part of game play. There is no obvious reason need for it with “Mario,” and that just leads to frustrations. Why can’t one play on the subway? Or in airplane mode on the airplane as holiday travel season heats up? What if someone is away from Wi-Fi and has a limited cellular data plan? Sorry! In a statement, Nintendo said connectivity “allows us to offer a variety of features and services that enhance the play experience. ‘Super Mario Run’ is not a static experience, but rather one that players can continue to return to again and again to enjoy something new and unexpected.” The features Nintendo cites include the ability to play across multiple devices, limited-time rewards and access to player data and scores for challenges with other players. None of these sound essential to an enjoyable playing experience. THE FIX: Drop the connectivity requirement. “If you are trying to position it as a casual game (that can be played) with one hand, you want people to be able to play it wherever they are,” Edelson says.
WHAT NINTENDO GOT RIGHT If “Super Mario Run” gets over these two big hurdles, there is still a chance the game could be a success. After all, Nintendo fans have been waiting for a mobile Mario for nearly a decade, pretty much ever since mobile games have existed, so they are likely to give the Japanese gaming giant a second chance. With this much waiting, expectations have understandably been high. Critics, who judge the game based on what it’s like to play it, have given it an average of 79 out of 100 on the game reviews aggregator Metacritic. This counts as “generally favorable.” And they are right. Nintendo has done a good job translating Mario’s classic, side-scrolling world to a mobile screen. Mario runs without players needing to do anything, so they can focus on collecting coins and knocking out bigger enemies (usually by jumping on them). The music is music to the ears of any ’80s and ’90s Nintendo fan, and yes, you can play with one hand. Users, though, have rated it 5.6 out of 10 on Metacritic. Many are angry about the price and the inability to play while commuting. And since it’s users and not critics who will go out and buy the game—or not—Nintendo may have a problem on its hands.
DIGITAL LIFE | APPLE
Mobile game ‘Pokemon Go’ lands on Apple Watch NEW YORK—The popular mobile game “Pokemon Go” is now available on the Apple Watch, squashing rumors that the game’s maker was scrapping such plans. The game involves catching digital pocket monsters in an augmented-reality version of your surroundings. The Apple Watch version will let you discover nearby Pokemon and collect special items, such as potions, from nearby “PokeStops.” But once you encounter a Pokemon, you will need to use your iPhone to catch it. Still, the Apple Watch should make it easier for players to log their steps (needed to advance in the game and to hatch new Pokemon out of eggs), and to avoid walking around with their phones held out to search for nearby monsters. —The Associated Press
ABOVE: Julian Rinaldi, of People Prints 3D, center, is surrounded by 3D models of himself and him with his girlfriend, Adrienne Ockrymiek, on Nov. 29 at his business in Philadelphia. Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
By Diane Mastrull n The Philadelphia Inquirer
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HILADELPHIA—Julian Rinaldi knew he was onto something with serious entrepreneurial potential when his shop hadn’t even officially opened for business and someone wanted to make a purchase. The person wanted to buy Rinaldi’s father. Well, a 3-D model of him, anyway.
Dressed in a suit and striking a confident pose— albeit standing just 9 inches tall—was Philip Rinaldi, chief executive of Philadelphia Energy Solutions LLC, in the window of his son’s storefront. It was such a spot-on likeness that the person passing by recognized him immediately and asked whether the figurine was for sale. It wasn’t. Philip Rinaldi’s role was precisely what played out that day: to catch the eye of passersby and lure them into this odd new entrant on a street of startups, galleries, restaurants and shops. PeoplePrints 3D is believed to be the only business in Philadelphia exclusively devoted to 3-D selfies. They come in three forms: head, half-body and full-body. In this era of self-absorption and promotion enabled by Instagram, Snapchat and other sharing arenas of social commerce, three-dimensional selfies were only a matter of time. p since August, PeoplePrints 3D Open is already profitable, with monthsale reaching $20,000, ly sales e e exc exceeding Julian Rinaldi’s ex expectations. “I get multiple people PeoplePrints 3D is a business in in here every day saying Philadelphia exclusively it’s the coolest thing devoted to 3-D selfies. In this they’ve ever seen,” he era of self-absorption and prosaid on a recent mornmotion enabled by Instagram, ing, in a shop whose Snapchat and other sharing display cases hold arenas of social commerce, several sizes of himself three-dimensional selfies were and others. The native of Bridgewater, N.J., lives only a matter of time. in an apartment upstairs. W While he thought 3-D selfi would be a hit with selfies millen millennials, Rinaldi—who, at 33 is one of them—is thrilled that 33, the idea appears to hold even broader appeal. Fans have included grandparents, grieving pet owners, even a guy wanting to make his marriage proposal extra-memorable. He gave his beloved a three-quarter-inch miniature bust of himself on a ring with a white-gold band. The growth potential is essentially limitless, Rinaldi said: “The market is every person on the planet.” A graduate of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rinaldi majored in information technology and envisioned operating some sort of an online business. Instead, he dabbled in many ventures, including helping to open a restaurant, teaching winemaking, creating winemaking equipment and occasionally arranging charters for his family’s yacht. Then “I kind of saw how 3-D technology was taking off,” Rinaldi said. “I really liked the technology and was trying to figure out a way you could make money with it.” Though medicine, architecture and manufacturing were among the more common 3-D printing applications, “I just thought people would love to have models of themselves,” he said. His research uncovered competitors in California and New York and at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., but no one basing an entire business around it in the Philadelphia area. An area company called BluEdge has offered 3-D selfies at Philly Tech Week the last two years “as kind of a marketing thing … a way to attract a more consumer-based client” to a 118-year-old printing company that has largely served architects, inventors and law firms, said Simonas Indrele, a 3-D consultant there. The business recently changed its name from NRI, or National
Reprographics. One 3-D customer Indrele served was an insurance salesman who got busts made of himself and used them as business cards, his contact information and title printed on his back. Another sent his busts to business meetings he could not attend “so he could be on the table,” Indrele recalled. “Knowing the next generation of smartphones are going to have 3-D cameras built into them,” Indrele said, he expects 3-D selfies to proliferate. Also sensing those prospects, Julian Rinaldi “came up with a business plan and dove right into it” about nine months ago. He found the retail space (a former umbrella shop), bought a fullbody scanner consisting of 100 cameras, hired a couple of art-school students with 3-D printing experience, filled the front window with models and opened for business. Because of the prohibitive cost of an advanced color 3-D printer—about $80,000—Rinaldi is outsourcing the printing to a company in Long Island City, N.Y., for now. With plans to open another studio store in Philadelphia within six months and one in the suburbs within a year, he said he will likely buy a 3-D printer eventually to create the models in-house. His ultimate goal is to offer franchise opportunities. Prices, detailed at peopleprints3d.com, range from $35 for a three-quarter-inch bust to a four-person, 9-inch-tall, full-body group for $658. A single 9-inch model goes for $230. Prices include free shipping directly to customers’ homes. Models cannot be made from pictures. Subjects must be photographed (it takes only a few seconds) at PeoplePrints 3D, where artists touch up portraits before they are sent out for printing. “It’s amazing how accurate it is,” Michael Cahill, a K-9 officer with the Philadelphia Police Department, said of a 7-inch model of his late partner, Gero, a 10-year-old German shepherd whose replica he had PeoplePrints 3D make in the fall. It was one week before Cahill, 39, a 17-year veteran of the force, had to put down Gero because of cancer. The model, including the dog’s police badge, sits atop the box containing his ashes that Cahill keeps on the mantle of his home. “I have a ton of pictures of him,” Cahill said, “but this is, to a T, him.” That’s the way Evan Kushin, 34, thought of his bust. He incorporated it into one of six whimsical engagement rings he surprised Morgan Kato, 31, with over the course of a week last summer before presenting her with a real diamond. “I thought it was an interesting and unique idea,” said Kushin, a bartender who also works in events production. Evidently, Kato did, too. “She said, ‘Yes,’ I think seven or eight times.” A variety of requests have been honored, including those wanting to pose wearing only body paint or a bikini. There are limits on the work PeoplePrints 3D can do. “I get a lot of weight-reduction requests,” Rinaldi said. “If I could do that, I would be a lot thinner in my own models.” Calling his son’s latest venture “consumer interaction touching the kind of psyches of millennials,” father Philip Rinaldi said he has lent his support—and his likeness in a variety of heights—to the cause because “I thought it was a really, really terrific idea.” As an engineer, Philip Rinaldi envisions 3-D printing as “the wave of the future” in industry, and 3-D selfies as a “nice pathway of retail connectivity with young ones.” They’re also pretty effective self-awareness tools, he said: “When I saw how shabby my suit looked, I had to run out to my tailor.”
OPINION 9A
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
Dressing a window after Christmas P.O. Box 621, Texarkana, Texas 75504 Walter E. Hussman Jr. Publisher An independent Sunday and daily newspaper serving
Kirk Blair General Manager
the Texarkana area since 1875. Clyde E. Palmer (1876-1957) Walter E. Hussman (1906-1988)
Russell McDermott Editorial Page Editor
Les Minor Editor
In Our View
A Note of Thanks Christmas isn’t complete until a little courtesy is shown
H
ere we are, a couple of days after Christmas. The holiday feast has been consumed, the dishes cleared away and, hopefully, washed. Family members in from afar have either headed home or are preparing to go. The after-Christmas sales have started and the stores are crowded. But there is one task left to do. One that too many of us forget about these days. Thank you notes. It’s and old tradition and a thoughtful one. A handwritten note expressing gratitude for a holiday gift. Thank you notes have been around as long as man has had the ability to put words on paper. And for generations they were an important part of our lives. We wrote thank you notes for any gift, after being hosted at dinners or parties, or for just about any conceivable courtesy. But times have changed. With the advent of email and text messaging, it seems fewer and fewer people bother to write letters or notes anymore.
Indeed, many young people have never written a thank you note. Wouldn’t even know how to go about it. That’s too bad. We live in a world where courtesy and civility are fast being lost. Where devices interact more often than people. In our view, it’s time to bring back some of the old traditions, the old ways, the old courtesies. And let’s start with thank you notes this Christmas. It’s simple to do. A handwritten note, thanking those who thought enough of you to send a gift. Thought enough to invite you to a party or celebration. Then you put the note in an addressed envelope, affix a stamp and drop it in the mail. Not so hard, is it? Thank you notes were once a normal part of the Christmas holidays. Not everything from the past was good, but in this case a return to the old tradition would help ensure a kinder, more mannered future.
Driving these days is driving me nuts Driving a car is one of the basic activities of everyday life that is unquestionably getting more and more unpleasant. There is no argument about it. There’s no blaming Obama, Clinton, Trump or Kanye West. The fault is in ourselves. We have allowed our addiction to devices and little screens to turn us into incompetent and dangerous navigators of the physical world. A modern, high-tech version of Prohibition is what we need, though maybe more draconian. We featherless bipeds evolved over time, for example, to walk without colliding with a cactus. Humans could reliably remember how to travel from home shelter to water source to hunting ground and back. Humans long had the ability to do one thing at a time. For instance, a hunter could carve a spear over many hours without needing tom-tom music to prevent boredom. These abilities have atrophied at a catastrophic rate during the digital “revolution” (I prefer the word “apocalypse,” which some scolds find hyperbolic). State of the art neuroscience informs us that cognitive functions and the brain parts that control them can waste away when under used. My concern is that the suites of cognitive tools humans need to drive and ambulate safely are on the endangered list, like jousting or harpooning whales. There is no doubt driving is getting more dangerous. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports traffic fatalities increased 7.2 percent from 2014 to 2015, when 35,092 Americans died in car accidents. This comes despite improvements in car safety, airbags, seat belts and other fancy stuff. Sure, you say, but there are obviously more people on the road so more of them are going to go bye-bye. Wrong. Vehicle
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miles traveled (VMT for the junkies) went up 3.5 percent from 2014 to 2015, less than half the increase in the fatality rate. Pedestrian deaths by motor vehicle increased an estimated 10 percent in 2015. In the first six months of the year, 2,368 pedestrians were killed. Then there are bicyclists who increasingly pedal on country roads, suburban strips and city streets. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says 817 cyclists were killed in car crashes in 2015, a whopping 13 percent increase from 2014. About 54 percent of bicycle casualties were not wearing helmets. What can you say about that? There is a sophisticated debate about these dreadful statistics, conducted primarily by experts with vested interests. But every mildly observant and competent driver who is not—repeat, not—addicted to little screens and ear-invading modules knows exactly what is causing the growth of road kill. It’s the devices and their diabolical capacity to turn a physically competent specimen into an impervious, selfish menace. And it is the fast erosion of the ability to uni-task. How many times have you seen someone walk off a curb into traffic in full stride staring at his or her little iPhone screen? I live in Washington, D.C., have a short commute, and
see this at least five times a day. How many times have you pulled up to a red light to see the driver of the neighboring death-mobile manically texting? Or shouting into their handheld? How many times have you passed a speeding sociopath on the highway thumbing, caressing or staring at a little screen of Satan? I’ve caught people reading on their pads. It is said that Native Americans in the olden days navigated great distances by remembering landmarks, understanding how flora changed as it neared water or higher elevations, reading cloud patterns and so forth. When the white men came, they couldn’t do that. They had to make maps. And when Native Americans came to use these maps, their ability to navigate by nature disappeared. In the olden days when I took a road trip, I studied paper maps and memorized the route, distances and milestones. Now, I plug info into my GPS. I mostly get where I want, but I don’t feel independent. Young and old, now we drive around suckling on some device to get us to our destinations or just to amuse, mildly distracted from driving skillfully enough to avoid the texting hipster stepping off the curb deafened by ear buds. Tech companies should be required to make devices that cannot be used in moving cars. Pedestrians should not be allowed have powered up devices or ear equipment within 100 yards of a road. Bicyclists should not be allowed to have earphones and iPhone holders. Parents should not be allowed to let children use interactive devices smaller than toasters until they are 18. Short of that, we might need self-driving cars sooner rather than later. I suppose computer-controlled pedestrians are next.
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss.—On a fall trip to Paris a million years ago, I was strolling down the Rue du Bac, trying to look nonchalant, as if I were back home going for milk at the Piggly Wiggly. I was searching for one of my favorite places, Deyrolle, a taxidermy shop that’s been in business since 1831. At Deyrolle, bears lie down with lambs, and everything is for sale, antelopes to zebras. If you have plenty of change in your pocket, you can take home a resin elephant that would fool your guests. I almost walked right past— the building from the outside is not particularly distinguished, not in a city with so much iconic architecture that you can’t swing a Lonely Planet without hitting one—when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed an old school desk with a map and a stuffed badger and duckling on top, a whimsical window display for the fall season. Deyrolle. The French do the best window decorations in the world, at least the part of the world I’ve seen. They make it look easy, telling short stories in time with the season in shop windows. That’s an art. I’ve always thought that if I had another talent besides stringing together words, it might be dressing windows. My thoughts were baseless, but I fantasized about it. So maybe that’s why I recently spent my
Rheta Johnson KING FEATURES SYNDICATE
small family inheritance on an old building, presumably to rent out and supplement my Social Security. I don’t understand the stock market and don’t want to. But the more I looked at the two front display windows, the more I yearned to try to dress them. That led to acting out yet another fantasy: starting a small gallery, a place where people could see art—and maybe occasionally a foreign film. I think when times are hard, most of us need such an oasis. We don’t have the Memphis museums or the Atlanta theaters or the New Orleans music scene. Whenever two or more gather here, it’s usually for a football game. That does not mean we do not have artistic yearnings. So Faraway Places, gallery and shop, was born. I put brown paper in the two big
panes facing the street to keep my inaugural window-dressing efforts under wraps. I wasn’t sure just what might happen. Using things I already had, one window slowly became a painter’s atelier. I wanted it to look as if the artist had just left his studio, leaving an unsigned work on the easel, brushes and paints scattered about, blank canvases to the wall. Van Gogh gone out for a smoke. I suspended empty frames from the ceiling, which later would cause confusion. Some thought I’d opened a framing business. The second window was my pride, my first Christmas window ever, perhaps my last. The faraway place I love the most is France, and I wanted my inspiration front and center. The white Christmas tree probably was made in another faraway place—China—but I decorated it with Eiffel Towers and French flags. Next to it, a bright-green bistro table sat, ready for lovers to inhabit, a lit Eiffel Tower swinging perilously close to two wine glasses. I hung a red beret on one chair. Only trouble is, Christmas is over now, and the window needs dressing again. It’s like climbing a glass hill, window-dressing. Would that I had a stable of stuffed animals to work with, a humble badger or two to create interest.
Intel briefings lose to teasing Romney Nineteen things Presidentelect Donald Trump would rather do than attend the daily top-secret intelligence briefings: 1. Chat with Sean Hannity. Or Joe Scarborough, or Matt Lauer or even Wolf Blitzer. Anybody who’ll put me on the air. 2. Hang out with my good friend Kanye West at Trump Tower. Get a photo taken with him in our spectacular lobby. Tell him how honored I am that he dyed his hair blonde, just like mine. 3. Sneak into Barron’s room while he’s at school and watch “Saturday Night Live,” which I secretly Tivo every week, even the reruns. 4. Go on Twitter and rant about how much I can’t stand “Saturday Night Live,” how incredibly NOT funny it is, especially the sketches where Alec Baldwin is supposedly playing me. 5. Call up my good friend Vladimir Putin to innocently inquire if he is aware of any wayward emails belonging to one “A. Baldwin” of midtown Manhattan. Also extremely important: Remember to thank the Vladster for recommending Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil to be my secretary of state. 6. Take Mitt Romney to dinner at another fancy restaurant, just to watch him grovel. Promise him he’s still in the running for a key post in my Cabinet. 7. Just for fun, go on Twitter and say how much I respect and admire Romney, and would be proud to have him on my team. 8. Call up Schwarzenegger to tell him he’s doing an amazing job on the new “Celebrity Apprentice.” Ask him if any of the contestants want to be in my Cabinet. Tell them they’ve got a better shot than Romney.
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9. Jack up the rents in Trump Tower before the Secret Service signs its lease. Throw in a free gym membership for the agents assigned to protect me. Pence’s guys can use the Gold’s down the street. 10. Work on my official Enemies List. So far I’ve got Alec Baldwin, that loudmouth Carrier union guy from Indiana, some smartass college chick (no more than an 8!) who implied I didn’t respect women, and the 2.8 million people (most of them illegals, I bet!) who made me lose the popular vote to Hillary. 11. Continue my sincere outreach to worried minorities by asking Sofia Vergara or possibly Selena Gomez to drop by Trump Tower for a photo-op in our spectacular lobby. And if they want to do the blonde thing, like Kanye, that would be so amazing. 12. Attend my regular morning briefing about the occupancy rate at the new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. Investigate why it’s not already booked solid for the next four years. Also extremely important: Leave a standing order that if Megyn Kelly ever checks in, put her in the noisiest room, the one next to the freight elevator and the ice machines.
13. Call up random foreign leaders and tell them how terrific they are. Remind Ivanka to help me with the pronunciations. Also, a map of the world might be useful. 14. Go on Twitter to rant about Boeing spending too much money on the new Air Force One 747s, since the damn things won’t even be finished in time for me to fly in them. 15. Pay Steve Bannon the five bucks I owe him after Boeing’s stock dropped like a rock. Ask him to make a list of other companies I should trash on Twitter late at night, when I can’t get to sleep. 16. Conduct regular staff meetings about my final Cabinet appointments. Ask if there are any remaining jobs I can pretend to discuss with Mitt Romney, just to jerk him around some more. See if we can get him to dye his hair blonde. 17. Continue talks with Donald Jr. and Eric about independently running my far-flung business empire while I’m president, to make sure there won’t be any conflicts of interest. Ha! Who am I kidding? I’m fond of those boys, but they’re not going to buy a box of paper clips without consulting me first. 18. Research the measurements of the Oval Office, to see if my tanning bed will fit. 19. Finish the guest list for my “Drain-the-Swamp Inaugural Ball.” Rent an 18-wheeler to deliver all those invitations to Goldman Sachs. Also extremely important: Don’t seat those hicks from “Duck Dynasty” at the same table with Tom and Giselle Brady! Melania would cut me off for, like, ever.
Where to Write PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES n President Barack OBAMA (D) 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C., 20500 202-456-1414 VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES n Vice President Joe BIDEN (D) 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C., 20500 202-456-2326 U.S. SENATE n Sen. John BOOZMAN (R-Ark.)
Doonesbury Classic
www.ebook3000.com
1 Russell Courtyard Washington, D.C. 20510 202-224-4843 boozman.senate.gov n Sen. Tom COTTON (R-Ark.) B-33 RSOB, Washington, D.C. 20510 202-224-2353 cotton.senate.gov n Sen. John CORNYN (R-Texas) 517 HSOB, Washington, D.C. 20510 202-224-2934 cornyn.senate.gov n Sen. Ted CRUZ (R-Texas) B40B DSOB, Washington, D.C. 20510
202-224-5922 cruz.senate.gov U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES n Rep. John RATCLIFFE (R--4th District, Texas) 325 CHOB, Washington, D.C. 20515 202-225-6673 ratcliffe.house.gov n Rep. Bruce WESTERMAN (R-4th District Ark.) 130 CHOB, Washington, D.C. 20515 202-225-3772 westerman.house.gov
By GARRY TRUDEAU
10A ADVICE
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
Wife feeling betrayed after the theft of her prized possessions Dear Abby: I recently realized Jeanne Phillips that my mother-inlaw stole several of my prized possessions. It seems that my husband’s brothers, who helped us move when we lost our home, took the items (obviously at her request and with her approval) instead of placing them in
STORING ORNAMENTS Dear Heloise: Having been in the military for many years and moving around quite a bit, we have found that apple and orange boxes with the rounded divider layers are very functional and useful for storing Christmas ornaments. Besides being free at the produce section or store market, they protect the ornaments very well. We think they are better than the plastic boxes you have to pay for.—Eric, via email KEEP CLOSED Dear Heloise: I have a pair of French doors that I could not get to stay closed. Mainly, the dog or cat would press on one side or the other and cause both doors to open. Finally, I grabbed a large rubber band (like those found on broccoli) and wrapped it around both of the doorknobs. It worked! The animals would still press on the doors, but they could not open them wide enough to get through.—Angie Y., via email MATCH MAKEUP Dear Heloise: When I need to replace a lipstick or other makeup, I take the old one with me to the store. That way, I can match the color for the new replacement in case the color number has changed or no longer exists.—Jan in Oregon King Features Syndicate
texarkanagazette.com
SHOWERING ENOUGH Dear Not Showering: With apologies to William Shakespeare: To shower or not to shower, that is the question: From where I sit—far downwind—if you can pass the smell test, showering three times a week is all that’s necessary for proper hygiene. Do not allow your son to shake your self-confidence. Universal Press Syndicate
Next Week: A new museum in Washington Issue 52, 2016
Founded by Betty Debnam
Our new vice president
Meet Our New President
Donald Trump’s vice president-elect is Michael R. Pence, the current governor of Indiana. Pence was born in 1959 in Columbus, Indiana, one of six children. He studied history at Hanover College and earned a law degree from Indiana University. He practiced Vice presidentelect Mike Pence law and later hosted a radio talk show. Pence won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000 and was re-elected five times. He decided to run for governor of Indiana and was elected in 2012.
Mini Fact: More than 128 million people voted in the 2016 U.S. election.
photo by Gage Skidmore
Today, The Trump Organization owns and operates hotels, casinos, golf courses, beauty pageants and buildings around the world. Donald Trump also became the producer and star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice” for 14 seasons.
photo courtesy ABC/ Ida Mae Astute
On Nov. 8, the United States elected a new president, Donald J. Trump. He will be the 45th president since our country’s founding 240 years ago. In the same election, new senators and representatives were elected to Congress. Some local offices also had elections. Did you watch the returns, or results, on election night? This week, The Mini Page learns more about our new president and vice president. They will be inaugurated, or sworn into office, on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in a big celebration in Washington, D.C.
Donald Trump Donald Trump was born June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. He has two sisters and a brother. His older brother, Fred Jr., died in 1981. Starting in eighth grade, Donald attended the New York Military Academy north of New York City, where he graduated in 1964. Trump’s father owned rental homes in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Donald Trump in Donald began working 1964. with him before he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Later, in 1971, Donald’s father gave him control of his company, and Donald renamed it The Trump Organization. He moved the company to Manhattan in New York City.
Karen Pence
Four of Donald Trump’s children, left to right: Don Jr., Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany.
Pence’s family
Trump’s family
Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, have three children (left to right): Michael, Charlotte and Audrey.
Karen Pence is a former elementary schoolteacher. Mike and Karen also have a beagle named Maverick and two cats, Oreo and Pickle.
Trump has been married three times and has five children. His oldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, work with him in his business. His daughter Tiffany graduated from college this year, and his son Barron is 10 years old. Trump’s wife, Melania, was born in 1970 in what is now Slovenia. As a model, she immigrated to the United States in 1996 and became a citizen in 2006, a year after marrying Donald Trump. Melania Trump speaks five Melania languages. Trump
Resources On the Web: • bit.ly/2bCYSxy
At the library: • “Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts” by Syl Sobel, J.D.
The Mini Page® © 2016 Universal Uclick
Try ’n’ Find
Mini Jokes
Words that remind us of the new president are hidden in this puzzle. Some words are hidden backward or diagonally, and some letters are used twice. See if you can find: APPRENTICE, BUSINESS, CHILDREN, DONALD, ELECTION, GOVERNOR, HOUSE, INAUGURATE, KAREN, MELANIA, MIKE, PENCE, RADIO, REPRESENTATIVE, SCHOOL, TRUMP, VOTE.
V O T E O E D J E C
C E R B N T O U C Y
X K E W E A N U I R
R I P S R R A A T H
O M R S D U L I N O
N L E E L G D N E U
R O S N I U F A R S
E O E I H A I L P E
V H N S C N F E P X
O C T U W I N M A B
G S A B U C M A X S
Q Q T N E R A K K U
N O I T C E L E G F
B E V R N T R U M P
Donna: Why are elephants considered to be intelligent? Don: Because they have so much gray matter!
O N E J R A D I O S
Eco Note We use billions of feet of paper towels every year. That’s a lot of trees! Keep a cloth towel by the sink. When you rinse your hands or wipe up a spill, grab it instead of a paper towel. Put old, worn-out clothes in a rag bag and use them for messy chores or art projects.
Cook’s Corner Puddin’-and-Fruit Dessert You’ll need: • 1-ounce package sugar-free, fat-free instant vanilla pudding • 2 cups reduced-fat milk • 2 medium bananas • 1 cup sliced strawberries
• 30 vanilla wafer cookies • 1 cup whipped dairy topping
What to do: 1. Prepare vanilla pudding with 2 cups of milk according to package directions. Chill in refrigerator for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, slice bananas and strawberries. 2. Break 15 cookies into pieces and place in bottom of an 8-by-8-inch pan. 3. Spread fruit slices on top of broken cookies. Crumble remaining 15 cookies on top. 4. Stir 1 cup whipped topping into chilled pudding. Spread pudding mixture on top of cookies and fruit. Chill for one hour.
Puzzling Unscramble the words below that remind us of the president.
aurnjay mfyail eonieclt rypta
adapted with permission from “The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth” by The Earthworks Group, Andrews McMeel Publishing (andrewsmcmeel.com)
For later: The Mini Page® © 2016 Universal Uclick
SHELF LIFE Dear Heloise: Does baking soda have a shelf life, and if so, how long is it?—Jeff W., Lincoln, Neb. If you are using the baking soda for baking, there definitely is a shelf life. Follow the expiration date on the box, which typically is around three years. As a food product, be sure to store it where it cannot absorb odors, and keep it away from moisture. However, if you are cleaning with it, it can last indefinitely. Baking soda is one of my favorite money-saving cleaners. To order my Heloise’s Baking Soda Hints and Recipes pamphlet, go online to www.Heloise. com, or send $5 and a long, self-addressed, stamped (68 cents) envelope to: Heloise/Baking Soda, P.O. Box 795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-5001. Don’t just throw away the old box of baking soda that was used to absorb refrigerator odors. Keep it to use for cleaning the kitchen sink and faucets.—Heloise
there after each swim. Seldom do I use the shower in my apartment. My son has reprimanded me strongly for not showering daily. He asserted that by not showering every day and by using a public facility when I do, I am practicing “very poor hygiene.” I believe that my hygiene routine is acceptable and in line with common practice, but I’m concerned that in Dear Abby: I am a senior-aged order to visit with him in the future, man who swims three times a week I will first need to take a shower. at a nearby fitness center. I shower Am I wrong here, or is he?—NOT
photo courtesy Marc Nozell
Dear Heloise: I work for a cleaning company that cleans a car dealership at nights after hours. I normally don’t have any interactions with the Heloise customers of Advice the dealership. However, one night while I was working, a customer wouldn’t leave me alone about his glasses that he LEFT IN A VEHICLE that he test-drove before the dealership closed. My hint is for anyone who test-drives or is a sales representative for a car dealership: Look for any personal belongings that may still be in the vehicle, or remind the customer about any personal belongings.—After-Hours Cleaner, via email Whether test-driving a car or taking a cab, bus or subway, it is a good hint to check your surroundings for personal belongings before you exit any vehicle.— Heloise
things it hurts. How should I deal with this? I feel raped.—FURIOUS IN TENNESSEE Dear Furious: If the items are replaceable, let your husband do as he promised. If they are heirlooms, you will either have to wait until she dies to reclaim them or go over there and demand that she give them back.
* You’ll need an adult’s help with this recipe.
It’s personal, so be sure to remember it!
the storage unit as instructed. I am furious at her and my husband’s brothers. How should I deal with this? I want to confront her and let her know that I am aware of her betrayal, but my husband is a great man, and I hate to hurt him in this process. When I told him I was aware that his mother had stolen from us, he said he would make it up to me and that his mother is old (she’s 81) and I should let it go. However, every time I visit her home and see my
Answers: January, family, election, party.
Dear Abby
Watch your newspaper for articles about the president-elect and vice president-elect.
Teachers: For standards-based activities to accompany this feature, visit: bbs.amuniversal.com/teaching_guides.html
SPORTS
1B
TEXARKANA GAZETTE H TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
COLLEGE FOOTBALL CACTUS BOWL PREVIEW
Baylor faces Boise State Bears’ hard season comes to end today in Cactus Bowl By John Marshall The Associated Press
PHOENIX—Baylor went through a difficult season. Key injuries. A long losing streak. The lingering shadow of scandal. The Bears battled their way through it, earning a spot in the Cactus Bowl. Beating Boise State on Tuesday night won’t erase all that’s happened, but it could be something to build on. “We’ve certainly had some challenges this year, but we’ve got a wonderful group of young men that I’ve been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with,” Baylor interim coach Jim Grobe said. Baylor entered the season reeling from the sexual assault scandal that led to the firing of coach Art Briles in May. Grobe, a veteran of four decades in college football, took over this season. The Bears got off to a strong start, winning their first six games behind prolific quar-
See BAYLOR on Page 5B Associated Press
Villanova received 56 first-place votes to maintain its big lead over UCLA, which received three No. 1 votes. Associated Press
COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOP 25 RANKING
n COWBOYS 42, LIONS 21. Dallas Cowboys’ Ezekiel Elliott breaks through the line for a long run and a touchdown against the Detroit Lions on Monday in Arlington, Texas.
NFL | DALLAS COWBOYS
COWBOYS COAST
Dallas makes big pre-playoff statement with victory over Lions By Schuyler Dixon The Associated Press
Nova on top for 4th week in row No. 4 Baylor again receives six of the first-place votes
A
RLINGTON, Texas— Dez Bryant threw his first career touchdown pass between a pair of scoring catches, Ezekiel Elliott ran for two TDs and the Dallas Cowboys kept Detroit from clinching a playoff spot with a 42-21 win over the Lions on Monday night. With home-field advantage
already wrapped up, the Cowboys (13-2) didn’t let up in their seventh straight home win while matching their franchise record in victories, reached two other times. The biggest sign they were serious about this one came late in the third quarter, when Bryant took a reverse pitch from Dak Prescott and tucked the ball as if planning to run before pulling up and tossing a lefty lob to Jason Witten for an easy 10-yard score and a
35-21 lead. Witten, the normally stoic 14th-year tight end, flashed Bryant’s celebratory “X’’ when the often-exuberant receiver made the signal in his direction after the touchdown. Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford lost in a visit to his hometown team again, after a wild-card defeat two years ago. While the Lions (9-6) missed a chance to clinch a playoff berth
with their second straight loss following five consecutive wins, they still control their postseason fate. Detroit plays Green Bay (9-6) for the NFC North title in the finale Sunday. Elliott, the NFL rushing leader, had a 55-yard touchdown run in the first half and finished with 80 yards on 12 carries. He has 15 touchdowns rushing, two behind
See COWBOYS on Page 3B
By Jim O’Connell The Associated Press
Villanova starts its fourth week as the No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25 and the ranked teams stay the same from the last poll except for Florida, which replaces fellow Southeastern Conference member South Carolina. The Wildcats (12-0) received 56 firstplace votes from the 65-member national media panel to maintain its big lead over UCLA (13-0), which received three No. 1 votes. Kansas (11-1) was third, followed by Baylor (12-0), which got the other six first-place votes. Duke remained fifth while Louisville jumped from 10th to sixth following its 73-70 victory over Kentucky last week. Gonzaga is seventh followed by Kentucky, North Carolina and Creighton.
See TOP 25 on Page 5B
COLLEGE FOOTBALL QUICK LANE BOWL
BC holds on for win over Terps
Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald eludes Miami (Ohio) defensive back Tony Reid on a 44-yard touchdown run Monday during the second half of the St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg, Fla.
By Larry Lage The Associated Press
Instead, both the Bulldogs (6-7) and the RedHawks (6-7), who won six straight games to become bowl eligible , finished with losing marks. “You know what, it’s been an interesting year. We’ve battled. Throughout the year we’ve lost some tough games on the final play of the game,” Mullen said. “I told the guys in the locker room afterward, we’re here because we didn’t give up. We found a way to go make that final play.
DETROIT—Boston College blew a fourth-quarter lead in a loss to Georgia Tech in its season opener in Ireland. In the Eagles’ finale, they showed they had learned how to hold on for a victory. Patrick Towles threw two touchdown passes and caught a pass for a score in the first half, helping Boston College beat Maryland 36-30 in the Quick Lane Bowl on Monday. The Eagles (7-6) led by 16 at halftime, 23 points early in the third quarter and then had to force Maryland to turn the ball over on downs late in the game to seal their first bowl victory since beating Michigan State at the 2007 Champs Sports Bowl. “We started to really develop a resolve that you see in the players’ eyes,” Boston College coach Steve Addazio said. “The most critical thing in building your program is having that. And, I really believe we have finally set that platform forward and that’s the most exciting thing to me of all.” Maryland (6-7) had the ball at its 35 with 1:48 left with a
See BOWL on Page 5B
See GAME on Page 5B
Associated Press
TOP 10 RANKING 1. Villanova (56) 2. UCLA (3) 3. Kansas 4. Baylor (6) 5. Duke 6. Louisville 7. Gonzaga 8. Kentucky 9. North Carolina 10. Creighton
RECORD 12-0 13-0 11-1 12-0 12-1 11-1 12-0 10-2 11-2 12-0
POINTS 1614 1518 1461 1458 1375 1260 1222 1171 1113 1049
PRV 1 2 3 4 5 10 7 6 8 9
Full AP ranking on Page 2B
COLLEGE FOOTBALL | ST. PETERSBURG BOWL
Blocked kick lifts Mississippi State By Fred Goodall The Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.— Mississippi State’s sideline erupted in celebration, relieved to escape with a victory to end a challenging season. Nick Fitzgerald rushed for 142 yards and two touchdowns in another strong performance by the dual-threat quarterback; however, the heavily favored Bulldogs had to block a field goal in the closing seconds to hold off Miami (Ohio) 17-16 in the St. Petersburg Bowl on Monday.
MSU QB Fitzgerald rushes for 142 yards and two touchdowns “Great game. Not exactly how we drew it up,” coach Dan Mullen said after defensive tackle Nelson Adams got a hand on Nick Dowd’s potential game-winning kick that would have helped Miami finish a stunning turnaround from a 0-6 start to the season to a winning record.
TOM SAVAGE
NFL HOUSTON TEXANS
Texans QB Savage will remain starter By Kristie Rieken The Associated Press
HOUSTON—The Houston Texans are sticking with Tom Savage at quarterback on Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. Savage made his first career start in place of Brock Osweiler on Saturday night in a 12-10 win over the Bengals that allowed the Texans to clinch the AFC South.
See TEXANS on Page 5B
LOOKING BACK AT 2016 | NOTABLE MOMENTS
Looking back at some notable sports moments in 2016 By Houston Mitchell Los Angeles Times
A look back at some of the most notable sports moments from 2016:
The Rams return to L.A.
After an absence of 22 years, the Rams returned to Los Angeles to the relief of many fans who still rooted for the team while they played in St. Louis. It was a long, winding path to L.A. as NFL team owners debated two competing proposals: a stadi-
um in Carson, Calif., which would allow the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers to move here, or one in Inglewood, Calif., allowing the St. Louis Rams to move. Ultimately, team owners voted in January to allow the Rams to move after they came up with a proposal that the NFL couldn’t refuse. The Rams even had the first pick in the NFL draft and selected quarterback Jared Goff. Then the season started, and Rams fans began to realize the team that
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moved to L.A. wasn’t very good.
Good time turns ugly for Blake Griffin and Clippers assistant What was supposed to be a dinner among friends in Toronto’s entertainment district took a horrific turn in January when Clippers star Blake Griffin repeatedly punched assistant equipment manager Matias Testi, leaving his longtime buddy with a severely swollen face and Griffin with a
broken right hand. Griffin publicly apologized to Testi, bringing to end a bizarre affair.
Peyton caps career with a Super Bowl victory The 2016 Super Bowl was far from a tour de force for legendary quarterback Peyton Manning, who threw for only 141 yards, with no touchdowns. But Denver’s 24-10 win gave Manning an NFL
See MOMENTS on Page 2B
2B SPORTS
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
SPORTSTATS
From Staff and Wire Reports (All Times Central)
LOTTERY ARKANSAS cash 3 midday cash 3 evening cash 4 midday cash 4 evening
6-5-0 0-0-7 2-2-0-0 3-9-8-6 TEXAS
pick 3 morning pick 3 day pick 3 evening pick 3 night daily 4 morning daily 4 day daily 4 evening daily 4 night cash 5
2-9-4 6-5-2 8-5-6 3-8-1 1-3-6-7 9-7-9-7 2-7-2-1 3-9-3-5 1-7-11-16-22
SPORTS ON TV 11 a.m. (ESPN) NCAA Football Army vs. North Texas. Heart of Dallas Bowl (NBCSN) EPL Soccer Stoke City at Liverpool. 2 p.m. (ESPN2) NCAA Basketball Northwestern vs. Penn State. 2:30 (ESPN) NCAA Football Temple vs. Wake Forest. Military Bowl 4 p.m. (ESPN2) NCAA Basketball Illinois at Maryland. 6 p.m. (ESPN) NCAA Football Minnesota vs. Washington State. Holiday Bowl (ESPN2) NCAA Basketball Rutgers at Wisconsin. 7:30 (FSSW) NBA Basketball Houston Rockets at Dallas Mavericks. 8 p.m. (ESPN2) NCAA Basketball Michigan State vs. Minnesota. 9:15 (ESPN) NCAA Football Boise State vs. Baylor. Cactus Bowl 2 a.m. (NBCSN) BBL Cricket Brisbane Heat vs. Sydney Thunder.
TRANSACTIONS
Associated Press
n Detroit Lions’ Nevin Lawson, left, defends as Dallas Cowboys’ Dez Bryant catches a pass for a touchdown Monday during the second half in Arlington, Texas.
Cowboys Continued from Page 1B league-leading LeGarrette Blount of New England. The first-year sensation known as “Zeke,” who is 177 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s 33-year-old rookie rushing record of 1,808 yards, was almost upstaged by Detroit’s “double-Z”—Zach Zenner. The little-known undrafted back in his second year out of South Dakota State, filling in with Theo Riddick sidelined for a third straight game with a wrist injury, had a career-high 64 yards and two touchdowns at halftime. But Zenner faded in the second half, finishing with 67 yards. Stafford had a 1-yard scoring plunge , but was sacked four times. He was 26 of 46 for 260 yards, including an interception that set up Elliott’s 1-yard touchdown early in the third quarter to break a 21-all halftime tie. Prescott tied Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger (2004) for the most wins by a rookie quarterback in the Super Bowl era with 13. He was 15 of 20 for 212 yards with three touchdowns, including Bryant’s juggling 25-yard grab in the end zone when he fought off pass interference by Johnson Bademosi.
on the rookie season rushing list, behind Dickerson and New Orleans’ George Rogers (1,674 in 1981). He passed teammate Alfred Morris, who held third at 1,613 yards with Washington in 2012.
BASKETBALL
HIGHLAND PARK REUNION
Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, who graduated from Highland Park High School in Dallas with Stafford in 2006, attended the game. Nine days earlier, Highland Park celebrated on the same field after its first state title since Stafford led the way in 2005.
GREGORY’S RETURN
Dallas defensive end Randy Gregory made his season debut after serving a 14-game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy. The second-year player almost sacked Stafford in the fourth quarter and had two tackles. Dallas’ already-depleted defensive line sustained two more injuries in the first half, to Terrell McClain (ankle) and Ryan Davis (knee). Starting end Tyrone Crawford missed his first game of the season with shoulder and hamstring injuries. ... Dallas cornerback Anthony Brown left in the first half with a possible concussion.
Bryant broke a tie for second with Hall of UP NEXT Lions: Home against Green Bay. Famer Michael Irvin on Dallas’ career TD Cowboys: At Philadelphia in a game that receptions list with his 66th in the first half. The club record of 71 belongs to another Hall likely will feature plenty of backups for the of Famer, Bob Hayes. ... Elliott is up to third Cowboys.
Moments
LeBron James brings a championship to Cleveland
College Top 25 The top 25 teams in The Associated Press’ college basketball poll, with firstplace votes in parentheses, records through Dec. 25, total points based on 25 points for a first-place vote through one point for a 25th-place vote and last week’s ranking: 1. Villanova (56) 2. UCLA (3) 3. Kansas
RECORD 12-0 13-0 11-1
PTS PRV 1614 1 1518 2 1461 3
NBA Standings EASTERN CONFERENCE ATLANTIC DIVISION W L Pct Toronto 21 8 .724 Boston 18 13 .581 New York 16 14 .533 Brooklyn 8 22 .267 Philadelphia 7 22 .241 SOUTHEAST DIVISION W L Pct Charlotte 17 14 .548 Atlanta 15 16 .484 Washington 14 16 .467 Orlando 15 18 .455 Miami 10 21 .323 CENTRAL DIVISION W L Pct Cleveland 23 7 .767 Chicago 15 16 .484 Milwaukee 14 15 .483 Indiana 15 17 .469 Detroit 15 18 .455 WESTERN CONFERENCE SOUTHWEST DIVISION W L Pct San Antonio 25 6 .806 Houston 23 9 .719 Memphis 20 13 .606 New Orleans 12 21 .364 Dallas 9 22 .290 NORTHWEST DIVISION W L Pct Oklahoma City 19 12 .613 Utah 18 13 .581 Portland 13 19 .406 Denver 12 18 .400 Minnesota 10 21 .323 PACIFIC DIVISION W L Pct Golden State 27 5 .844 L.A. Clippers 22 10 .688 Sacramento 13 17 .433 L.A. Lakers 12 22 .353 Phoenix 9 22 .290 Sunday’s Games Boston 119, New York 114 Cleveland 109, Golden State 108 San Antonio 119, Chicago 100 Oklahoma City 112, Minnesota 100 L.A. Lakers 111, L.A. Clippers 102 Monday’s Games Orlando 112, Memphis 102 Washington 107, Milwaukee 102 Brooklyn 120, Charlotte 118 Detroit 106, Cleveland 90 Chicago 90, Indiana 85 Houston 131, Phoenix 115 Minnesota 104, Atlanta 90 New Orleans 111, Dallas 104 Toronto at Portland (n) Denver at L.A. Clippers (n) Philadelphia at Sacramento (n) Today’s Games Memphis at Boston, 6:30 p.m. Oklahoma City at Miami, 6:30 p.m. Houston at Dallas, 7:30 p.m. Utah at L.A. Lakers, 9:30 p.m. Wednesday’s Games Charlotte at Orlando, 6 p.m. Indiana at Washington, 6 p.m. Milwaukee at Detroit, 6:30 p.m. New York at Atlanta, 6:30 p.m. Brooklyn at Chicago, 7 p.m. L.A. Clippers at New Orleans, 7 p.m. Phoenix at San Antonio, 7:30 p.m. Minnesota at Denver, 8 p.m. Sacramento at Portland, 9 p.m. Toronto at Golden State, 9:30 p.m. Thursday’s Games Miami at Charlotte, 6 p.m. Boston at Cleveland, 7 p.m.
GB — 4 5½ 13½ 14 GB — 2 2½ 3 7 GB — 8½ 8½ 9 9½
GB — 2½ 6 14 16 GB — 1 6½ 6½ 9 GB — 5 13 16 17½
Oklahoma City at Memphis, 7 p.m. Philadelphia at Utah, 8 p.m. Toronto at Phoenix, 8 p.m. Dallas at L.A. Lakers, 9:30 p.m.
FOOTBALL NFL Standings AMERICAN CONFERENCE W y-New England 13 x-Miami 10 Buffalo 7 N.Y. Jets 4
y-Houston Tennessee Indianapolis Jacksonville
W 9 8 7 3
y-Pittsburgh Baltimore Cincinnati Cleveland
W 10 8 5 1
W x-Oakland 12 x-Kansas City 11 Denver 8 San Diego 5
EAST L 2 5 8 11 SOUTH L 6 7 8 12 NORTH L 5 7 9 14 WEST L 3 4 7 10
T 0 0 0 0
Pct .867 .667 .467 .267
PF 406 349 389 245
PA 236 345 348 399
T 0 0 0 0
Pct .600 .533 .467 .200
PF 262 357 387 298
PA 304 361 372 376
T 0 0 1 0
Pct .667 .533 .367 .067
PF 372 333 298 240
PA 303 294 305 425
T 0 0 0 0
Pct .800 .733 .533 .333
PF 410 352 309 383
PA 361 284 291 386
NATIONAL CONFERENCE EAST L 2 5 6 9 SOUTH W L y-Atlanta 10 5 Tampa Bay 8 7 New Orleans 7 8 Carolina 6 9 NORTH W L Detroit 9 5 Green Bay 9 6 Minnesota 7 8 Chicago 3 12 WEST W L y-Seattle 9 5 Arizona 6 8 Los Angeles 4 11 San Francisco 2 13 x-clinched playoff spot y-clinched division y-Dallas x-N.Y. Giants Washington Philadelphia
W 12 10 8 6
T 0 0 1 0
Pct .857 .667 .567 .400
PF 366 291 386 340
PA 258 274 364 318
T 0 0 0 0
Pct .667 .533 .467 .400
PF 502 337 437 353
PA 374 353 416 385
T 0 0 0 0
Pct .643 .600 .467 .200
PF 301 401 289 269
PA 285 364 297 361
T 1 1 0 0
Pct .633 .433 .267 .133
PF 329 374 218 286
PA 269 356 350 455
RESULTS Thursday’s Games Philadelphia 24, N.Y. Giants 19 Saturday’s Games New England 41, N.Y. Jets 3 Jacksonville 38, Tennessee 17 Washington 41, Chicago 21 Green Bay 38, Minnesota 25 Cleveland 20, San Diego 17 Atlanta 33, Carolina 16 Miami 34, Buffalo 31, OT Oakland 33, Indianapolis 25 New Orleans 31, Tampa Bay 24 San Francisco 22, Los Angeles 21 Arizona 34, Seattle 31 Houston 12, Cincinnati 10 Sunday’s Games Pittsburgh 31, Baltimore 27 Kansas City 33, Denver 10 Monday’s Games Detroit at Dallas (n) WEEK 16 SCHEDULE Sunday, Jan. 1 New England at Miami, 12 p.m. Cleveland at Pittsburgh, 12 p.m. Carolina at Tampa Bay, 12 p.m. Dallas at Philadelphia, 12 p.m. Houston at Tennessee, 12 p.m. Buffalo at N.Y. Jets, 12 p.m. Chicago at Minnesota, 12 p.m. Baltimore at Cincinnati, 12 p.m. Jacksonville at Indianapolis, 12 p.m. Seattle at San Francisco, 3:25 p.m. New Orleans at Atlanta, 3:25 p.m. Kansas City at San Diego, 3:25 p.m. Arizona at Los Angeles, 3:25 p.m. Oakland at Denver, 3:25 p.m. N.Y. Giants at Washington, 3:25 p.m. Green Bay at Detroit, 7:30 p.m.
NFL | JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS
INJURIES
MILESTONES
BASKETBALL National Basketball Association MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES—Assigned F Troy Williams to Iowa (NBADL). FOOTBALL National Football League CHICAGO BEARS—Waived OL Cornelius Edison. CINCINNATI BENGALS—Placed TE Tyler Eifert and G Clint Boling on injured reserve. DALLAS COWBOYS—Waived DE Zach Moore. Activated DE Randy Gregory from the exempt/commissioner permission list. HOCKEY National Hockey League PITTSBURGH PENGUINS—Signed coach Mike Sullivan to a three-year contract extension. TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING—Reassigned Fs Cory Conacher, Erik Condra and Tanner Richards to Syracuse (AHL). ECHL ECHL—Suspended Colorado D Michael Sdao three games and Florida RW John McCarron,Atlanta D Drew Baker and Quad City D Andrew Panzarella two games. COLLEGE CARSON-NEWMAN—Named Simon Duffy women’s soccer coach. CLAYTON STATE—Named Jimmy Baxter assistant cross-country and track and field coach. MARYLAND—Ruled LB Shane Cockerille ineligible to play in the Quick Lane Bowl. UCONN—Fired football coach Bob Diaco.
4. Baylor (6) 12-0 1458 4 5. Duke 12-1 1375 5 6. Louisville 11-1 1260 10 7. Gonzaga 12-0 1222 7 8. Kentucky 10-2 1171 6 9. North Carolina 11-2 1113 8 10. Creighton 12-0 1049 9 11. West Virginia 11-1 933 11 12. Virginia 10-1 892 12 13. Butler 11-1 837 13 14. Wisconsin 11-2 772 14 15. Purdue 11-2 745 15 16. Indiana 10-2 709 16 17. Xavier 10-2 548 17 18. Arizona 11-2 512 18 19. Saint Mary’s (Cal) 10-1 407 19 20. Florida St. 12-1 326 21 21. Oregon 11-2 321 20 22. Southern Cal 13-0 248 23 23. Cincinnati 10-2 207 24 24. Notre Dame 10-2 204 25 25. Florida 9-3 76 — OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES: Maryland 40, Virginia Tech 37, Seton Hall 18, Clemson 12, Minnesota 8, Miami 8, Oklahoma St. 7, Northwestern 5, South Carolina 4, UNC Wilmington 3, Arkansas 3, Iowa St. 2.
Jaguars place Yeldon on IR, claim Richardson off waivers The Associated Press JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—The Jacksonville Jaguars have placed running back T.J. Yeldon on injured reserve before their season finale. Yeldon injured his left ankle in Saturday’s victory against Tennessee and would not have been ready to play at
embarrassed by Hope Solo
It was bad enough when the U.S. soccer team, expected to cruise to No major sports team in Cleveland the gold-medal match at the Summer had won a title since the Cleveland Continued from Page 1B Games, lost in the quarterfinals to Browns had won the NFL champirecord 200th career victory, his secSweden. Then goalkeeper Hope Solo onship in 1964. When LeBron James ond Super Bowl title and guaranteed had to speak and prove she never returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers him a place among the all-time greats. as a free agent, he vowed to make learned about good sportsmanship. His mom said it best after the Feb. 7 the city a title town again. But it “We played a bunch of cowards,” game: “I would like for him to retire. looked like 2016 was going to be a lost she said. “The best team did not win I would. Physically, I just don’t think opportunity after the Cavaliers fell today. I strongly, firmly believe that. it’s worth going on. He won a Super behind, 3-1, in the NBA Finals in June. They didn’t want to pass the ball Bowl—it’s the best way to go out.” James didn’t give up though, and led around. They didn’t want to play good And retire he did, officially a remarkable comeback as Cleveland soccer. It was very cowardly. But they announcing it a few weeks later. won three in a row. won. They’re moving on. And we’re going home.” Fairy tale ending for Kobe Phelps ends career with For her actions, Solo was suspended In April, Kobe Bryant played the for six months and her contract with 23 Olympic gold medals final game of his 20-year Lakers U.S. Soccer was terminated. In August, in his final race at the career, ending an era with five cham2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, pionships, 18 All-Star game appearMichael Phelps, the most decorated Ryan Lochte robbed in ances and way too many outsiders’ Olympian in history, led the U.S. to Rio! Wait, no he wasn’t opinions, pro or con, to ever tally. victory in the 400-meter medley relay, It was the story that dominated the His 1,556th and last box score ending his Olympic career with 28 last week of the Olympics and made showed a stunning 60 points on medals, 23 of them gold. No other atheveryone who read it feel like they 22-for-50 shooting in a 101-96 Lakers lete in any sport has more than nine needed to take a shower. victory over the Utah Jazz. But the gold medals. At first, the story Olympic swimmer raucous crowd couldn’t care less Ryan Lochte told was frightening. A about the final score, cheering with Simone Biles becomes late-night robbery in Rio, with a pistol piercing volume every time Bryant a household name pressed to his head while he bravely scored during his 42 minutes. U.S. women’s gymnast Simone Biles said “Whatever.” Turns out the truth was a little difLakers hire Walton as coach departed the Olympic Games with five medals, four of them gold. The ferent. Lochte and three other U.S. A pass-first role player who won teenager from Spring, Texas, joined swimmers had done a little drinking championships as a player with the and did some minor damage to a gas Lakers in 2009 and 2010, Luke Walton three other women in winning four gymnastics golds at an Olympics, station restroom. Armed security was hired in April to turn around the last accomplished 32 years ago by guards confronted them, demanding fortunes of a team that had become payment. one of the worst in basketball. Walton Ekaterina Szabo of Romania. will try to turn around the fortunes Lochte invented the robbery story, of a franchise that missed the playoffs United States women upset which fed into the deepest fears that the last three seasons. in soccer to Sweden, then the Olympics in Rio were not safe. In
Indianapolis on Sunday. To replace him on the 53-man roster, Jacksonville (3-12) claimed running back Daryl Richardson off waivers from Pittsburgh. Yeldon carried twice for 5 yards against the Titans, giving him 745 yards and two touchdowns this season. A second-round draft pick from
the aftermath, Lochte apologized and U.S. Swimming suspended him from competition for 10 months.
Farewell to Vin Scully
2016 brought to an end the legendary career of announcer Vin Scully, who began calling Dodgers games in 1950. In September, the final Dodger Stadium game of his career also provided a chance for the Dodgers to clinch the division title. Tributes to Scully played in each half-inning, but the Dodgers trailed most of the game until rookie Corey Seager hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth, sending the game into extra innings. Then Charlie Culberson stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 10th. “Would you believe a home run?” Scully marveled as Culberson hit a ball that landed in the Dodgers bullpen for his first homer of the season. The finish provided a storybook ending to Vin Scully’s last broadcast at Dodger Stadium, allowing him to coat a walk-off, division-clinching victory in his unmistakable gloss. Scully’s career came to an official end one week later in San Francisco, but for many Dodgers fans, Culberson’s homer marked the best true ending.
Dodgers bring back memories of 1988
The Dodgers were leading in the decisive Game 5 of the NLDS against the Washington Nationals, but their closer was struggling and the win looked in doubt.
Alabama last year, Yeldon topped 100 yards twice in his second season. Chris Ivory is expected to handle most of the work against the Colts. But Ivory re-injured a strained right hamstring against the Titans. It’s the same injury that caused him to miss two games earlier this month.
Enter Clayton Kershaw, who offered to pitch on one day of rest and eventually walked in from the left-field bullpen at Nationals Park to the same incredulous gasps that accompanied Orel Hershiser when he pitched on consecutive days in October 1988. He retired the final two batters—and this wasn’t supposed to happen. Kershaw had not pitched as a closer in 10 years, since doing so for the Dodgers’ rookie league team in the Gulf Coast League, on a day when his catcher was—get this—a young Kenley Jansen. The Dodgers won that Oct. 13 game against the Nationals, 4-3. They ended up losing in the NLCS to the Chicago Cubs, but for a short time in Washington, a World Series win seemed like a definite possibility.
Cubs win! Cubs win! Cubs win! It only took 108 years for the Cubs to win another World Series title, as Bill Murray’s favorite team rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to defeat the Cleveland Indians in November. It was a 108-year stretch that transformed black cats and billy goats into symbols of futility. To end the streak, the Cubs absorbed a series of knockout blows from the Indians, survived a collapse by their flame-throwing closer and weathered a storm sweeping off Lake Erie in an 8-7 victory in 10 innings. “It was just an epic battle,” said World Series MVP Ben Zobrist. “I can’t believe, after 108 years, we’re finally able to hoist the trophy.”
SPORTS 3B
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
COLLEGE FOOTBALL | PLAYOFFS PREVIEW
Bama, Washington arrive in Atlanta for semifinal matchup By John Zenor The Associated Press
ATLANTA, Ga.—No. 1 Alabama and coach Nick Saban are the closest the College Football Playoff has to seasoned veterans. No. 4 Washington Huskies are new on the scene. Both teams have arrived in Atlanta to resume preparation for Saturday’s Peach Bowl semifinal game at the Georgia Dome. The Crimson Tide (13-0) is 3 for 3 in making the playoffs so far, winning it all last season and falling to eventual champion Ohio State two years ago. “What I’ve learned about this game is the mind-set of: Is this
a bowl game or is this a playoff game, which I think every player has to decide for himself, every coach has to decide for himself,” Saban said Monday. “Because we are trying to create a balance for everyone in our organization because it is a playoff game.” Despite Saban’s past lamentations that the playoff format has diminished the importance of bowl games for some, there’s no denying the different level of stakes for this one. The pecking order for the game is clear, too. Alabama had a quick flight from the next state over. The Huskies (12-1) flew some 2,500 miles to arrive Sunday night
as two-touchdown underdogs, the biggest spread of any of this week’s bowl games. Washington coach Chris Petersen is no stranger to being the underdog, or to pulling off upsets going back to his days at Boise State. Unlike Alabama, Petersen’s Huskies are in an unfamiliar spot. But he doesn’t think this team has been affected by biggame hype so far this season. “There’d be a certain game that we played that, ‘This is going to be a big game, the biggest one of the season,’” Petersen said. “We would just kind of chuckle and say, ‘It doesn’t matter who we play. That next game is always the
most important game.’ “I think that’s been one of the beauties of this team. They’ve been very focused all season long.” The Pac-12 champions bring a high-powered offense led by quarterback Jake Browning against the nation’s top defense, which helped power the Tide to an SEC championship at the same stadium four weeks before the semifinal matchup. Saban said there was a “significant difference” in how well the team prepared last season compared to two years ago. A wealth of big-game experience has taught him, and presumably the team’s veterans, not to adopt the mentality
either that they have to play over their heads or get too relaxed with the attitude that, “I’m not going to let the situation affect me.” Saban wants this players and coaches to just be themselves. “The field is going to be 53 yards wide and 100 yards deep,” Saban said. “I don’t think they’re changing any of that. They’re not changing the markings on the field. “What you have to do to execute well, whether it’s block properly, tackle properly, catch the ball, throw the ball. Those things really aren’t going to change. I know from a fan’s perspective, the significance of these types of games create
tremendous emotions and anxiety. But as competitors and players we’re hopeful that that doesn’t happen.” Petersen wants his players to enjoy the visit to Atlanta during their down time, like any other road trip. “Even when we travel just in a normal away game, we always want them to enjoy and appreciate the moment,” he said. “We want them to appreciate the different venues and different hostile environments we go into. “That’s part of this whole thing, this college football, the pageantry. There’s nothing like it. Pro football’s not like it. It’s just different.”
COLLEGE FOOTBALL | HEART OF TEXAS BOWL
Army, North Texas in rare bowl rematch By Stephen Hawkins The Associated Press
Associated Press
n Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, center, celebrates his touchdown against the Denver Broncos with offensive lineman Mitch Morse, left, and offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif on Sunday during the first half in Kansas City, Mo.
NFL | KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
Staying on path Kansas City sets sights on AFC West title, easier playoff path By Dave Skretta The Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—There was no shortage of smiles inside the Kansas City locker room after the Chiefs unceremoniously dumped the Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos from the AFC playoff picture Sunday night. Nor was there a sense of accomplishment. The Chiefs knew even before kickoff they had locked up a wild-card spot, thanks to Pittsburgh rallying past Baltimore earlier in the day. But their 33-10 rout of the Broncos kept alive their hopes of winning the AFC West, and with that comes a first-round bye and at least one home playoff game. “Everyone just has to stay on task. We have so much ahead of us,” Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “We can still win the division, you know? Our hopes are farther than the playoffs. We want to win the division and clinch the bye. Our mind is on the next game. We are on to San Diego.” The Chiefs (11-4) are a game back of Oakland (12-3) in the division race, but they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker by virtue of two wins over the Raiders earlier this season. So, if the Chiefs win their regular-season finale at San Diego and the Broncos beat Oakland—which will be without quarterback Derek Carr, who broke his leg on Saturday—in a game that will be happening simultaneously, coach Andy Reid’s crew will win its first division title since 2010.
Earn all the trappings that come with it, too. And that sure beats opening the postseason on the road without getting a week off. “We always want to play at home,” said Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, whose team is playoff-bound in back-to-back seasons for the first time since making it every year from 1990-95. “You hear opposing coaches, opposing players, talk about what a difficult place this is to play,” he said. “We want to be able to bring that playoff game to Arrowhead. We want our fans to experience it.” As it stands, the Chiefs are the No. 5 seed and would head to Houston for the first round. It would be a rematch of last year’s playoff opener that Kansas City won in a rout. But the ramifications of that playoff seed quickly became evident the following week, when the Chiefs were forced to hit the road. They played competitively in New England, but were done in by injuries and a few miscues that cost them dearly against a team virtually impossible to beat at home. The Chiefs would avoid a similar trip to Foxborough until at least the AFC title game if they can win the AFC West. That would allow them to ascend to the No. 2 seed in the conference. “We want to get that 2 seed,” Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill said, “and get that bye.” Ah, yes, the bye. The Chiefs certainly could use the extra week off in
early January considering the growing number of guys dealing with nagging late-season injuries. Top pass rusher Justin Houston was held out of Sunday’s game with swelling in his surgically repaired left knee, though Reid dismissed it as “part of how this thing goes.” Cornerback Phillip Gaines was also inactive with knee trouble, and running back Spencer Ware bruised his ribs during the game. The week off would also be helpful for linebacker Justin March-Lillard, who returned last week from injured reserve. March-Lillard had surgery to repair a broken bone in his hand and still needs time to get up to speed, but his return would fortify a defense sorely missing linebacker Derrick Johnson. The veteran ruptured his Achilles tendon a couple of weeks ago and is done for the season. All of which is why Reid delivered a simple message to the Chiefs after their impressive victory over the Broncos, one that resonated with everyone in that smiling locker room. “Keep working. We have a lot to do,” Chiefs defensive tackle Dontari Poe recalled his coach saying. “We are in the dance now, and we have some stuff to do when we get there. So keep working.” Notes: Ware was due to have an MRI on his ribs, but coach Andy Reid said Monday the results were not yet available. Reid also said that Houston would be evaluated again before Wednesday to decide whether he will practice this week.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL | WOMEN’S TOP 25
UConn still unanimous No. 1 in women’s hoops poll By Doug Feinberg The Associated Press
It’s been a wonderful few months for Cal coach Lindsay Gottlieb. She’s pregnant with her first child due next spring, her team is unbeaten through non-conference play and now the Bears are back in the Top 25. The Bears entered The Associated Press women’s basketball poll at No. 21 on Monday. UConn remained the top choice, as the unanimous No. 1. “Definitely for me I think it’s nice, but I understand how these things go. A lot of it is perception,” Gottlieb said. “For these young women who handled losing last year and finished strong. They did noth-
ing but bring this program back to where we can be. Hopefully it’s a motivating factor to keep doing what we are doing.” The Bears are 12-0 and off to the best start in school history. They open up Pac-12 play in Arizona on Thursday before facing No. 18 Arizona State on Sunday. “You look at every weekend and there isn’t an easy one,” Gottlieb said of the conference which has seven teams ranked and three more just outside the Top 25. “For us going to start at Arizona is a repeat of what we did last year that didn’t go so well. Our players are motivated and ready for conference play.” Cal was 15-17 last season, the first los-
ing one under Gottlieb. With most of the team back, including star sophomore forward Kristine Anigwe , the Bears have been stellar so far. While Cal has won its first 12 games to start the season, UConn continues to roll. The Huskies received all 33 first place votes again after beating then-No. 12 Ohio State and Nebraska to stretch their winning streak to 86 consecutive games. UConn faces No. 4 Maryland on Thursday. A victory would be the team’s 30th straight on the road tying the NCAA record. It would also leave them three victories short of matching the 90-game overall winning streak the school set from 2008-11.
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DALLAS—Army had already accepted an invitation to play in the Heart of Dallas Bowl before its biggest victory. Now after beating archrival Navy for the first time in 15 years, the Black Knights (7-5) have a chance to avenge a turnover-plagued loss from two months ago. Army plays North Texas on Tuesday in the only bowl game that is a regular-season rematch. “We didn’t play near as well as we wanted to the first time we came out. I think we did some good things, but we just shot ourselves in the foot so many times and we left (with) a sour taste in our mouth,” Army linebacker Jeremy Timpf said. “You don’t get very many second chances and we definitely got one now.” The Black Knights are in their first bowl since 2010. The last bowl for North Texas (5-7) was a win over UNLV in the Heart of Dallas Bowl three years ago, the Mean Green’s only other bowl appearance since 2004. North Texas has lost four of its five games since winning 35-18 at West Point on Oct. 22, when Army had seven turnovers (three lost fumbles, four interceptions). Even after giving up an average of 43 points in those losses, the Mean Green got to play in another game based on their high NCAA Academic Progress Rate score because there weren’t enough bowl-eligible teams to fill all the spots. “This bowl game was key to us,” first-year North Texas coach Seth Littrell said. “Not only to let our seniors go out the right way ... but for the simple fact that we get extra practices to get better and build momentum to go into spring ball.” Some other things to know about the game played in the Cotton Bowl Stadium, about 45 miles from the North Texas campus:
READY TO RUN
North Texas RB Jeffrey Wilson, whose 160 yards rush-
ing in October were the most against Army this season, had only one carry the last three games while nursing a knee injury. But the extended break since the regular season has helped. “I don’t know if he’s 100 percent, but he’s been running the ball well and he’s back at full go,” Littrell said.
COACHING CADETS
Army coach Jeff Monken described his players this way: “They are very unselfish and play as a team. We don’t have any guys on our team that are all-star, just knock-your-socksoff, great players. We’ve just got a bunch of good, tough, hard-nosed guys that try real hard and play well together.”
PAST TIDE
Alec Morris threw only one pass while at Alabama for two national titles in four years. The graduate transfer, who was a Texas prep standout, ends his collegiate career starting at QB for North Texas in a bowl. Freshman starter Mason Fine missed the last two games with a shoulder injury. “Alec has probably had his two best weeks of practice that he has had since he’s been here,” Littrell said. “Mason’s healthy. He’s fine. He’s missed a lot of reps.”
ACADEMY TRIO
Army’s appearance in the Armed Forces Bowl gives the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex a rare trifecta. All three service academies will have played in the area this season. Navy won its regular-season finale at SMU in Dallas last month and then lost to Louisiana Tech in the Armed Forces Bowl on Friday in Fort Worth. Air Force lost to New Mexico in Cotton Bowl Stadium in mid-October.
RETURN OF THE BLACK KNIGHTS
With at least six wins in 2017, Army is guaranteed another bowl in North Texas. They have a conditional agreement already to play in the next Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth. Army played in that game in 2010, its only other bowl since 1996.
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME by David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek
NTKAH ©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved.
DEGNU
MAREYC
Check out the new, free JUST JUMBLE app
Unscramble these four Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form four ordinary words.
DASILM Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon.
Print your answer here: Yesterday’s
DILBERT
JACQUELINE BIGAR’S
STARS
The Stars Show the Kind of Day You’ll Have: 5-Dynamic; 4-Positive; 3-Average; 2-So-so; 1-Difficult
HAGAR
THE
HORRIBLE
BLONDIE
ARIES (March 21-April 19) HHHH Reach out to someone at a distance for advice, to catch up on news or simply to swap a holiday story or two. You tend to do the unexpected, which is a result of your spontaneous and adventurous spirit. Use caution with a relative at a distance. Tonight: Read between the lines. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) HHHHH One-on-one relating will result in some unexpected insights. You know which way to proceed. Your perspective grows the more you learn, which eventually could cause a complete reversal in your position or point of view. Tonight: Time for a readjustment of the budget. GEMINI (May 21-June 20) HHHHH Keep in mind what you expect from someone you care about. If this person senses your dissatisfaction, he or she could close down. Opportunities are likely to emerge if you
THE LOCKHORNS
ZITS
GARFIELD
DUSTIN
FUNKY WINKERBEAN
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
SHOE
PEANUTS
BEETLE BAILEY
(Answers tomorrow) Jumbles: HYENA MOGUL BUNDLE CAMERA Answer: When it came to making money selling grapes, the grower — MADE A BUNCH
choose to make one of your creative ideas a reality. What’s stopping you? Tonight: Go with the moment. CANCER (June 21-July 22) HHHH Whatever you have to do, you are likely to take it seriously and complete it with ease. You might find that a loved one is changing right in front of your eyes. Determine how you want to respond, but try not to overthink this matter. Tonight: Know when to slow down. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) HHHHH A news event is likely to start a conversation. Your fertile imagination spins off to other ideas, especially one involving a partnership. Adjust your schedule if need be. If you feel lucky today, buy a lottery ticket, but avoid going to extremes. Tonight: Be with a favorite person. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) HHHH You could be on cloud nine and somewhat oblivious to what is going on around you. Ground yourself, listen more and be as responsive as possible. You will note a degree of upheaval around you. You have unusual solutions that are likely to work. Tonight: In the thick of the moment. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) HHHH An onslaught of calls could have you feeling overwhelmed. Prioritize and decide not to be so responsive to the various forms of social media, at least for today. A serious conversation needs your time and attention; make sure you bring both to the table. Tonight: Hang out. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) HHH Your sense of what is going on around you
provides you with new opportunities to change your direction, if you so choose. Spontaneity seems to be a recurrent theme in discussions. Tune into your intuition, as it will serve you well today. Tonight: Run errands first. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) HHHHH You can handle an overly energetic individual in your immediate environment. However, others might resort to anger, as they do not get the honesty of this person the way you do. You might have to clarify or explain this person’s intentions. Tonight: Assess the damages of spending. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) HHH You might be looking at your motives more closely. Brainstorm with a trusted friend who has your best interests in mind. Your priorities are changing, which could result in different objectives. A loved one is likely to find this process to be unnerving. Tonight: Remain calm. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) HHHHH You are the sign of friendship, and you take it seriously. An older person might be more of a burden than a friend right now. You will want to consider pulling back some. Friendship is a two-way street. Tonight: A conversation illuminates a problem to the point of resolution. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) HHHH You could feel pressured to perform to your max, but know that it will only help you in the long run. You might be carrying too many responsibilities on your shoulders. Decide to have a discussion in the near future to explore ways of feeling less burdened. Tonight: Busy until late. Jacqueline Bigar is on the Internet at www.jacquelinebigar.com. King Features Syndicate
SPORTS 5B
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
NFL | OAKLAND RAIDERS
Coach: No regrets on call that led to injury By Josh Dubow The Associated Press
ALAMEDA, Calif.—Two days after losing star quarterback Derek Carr to a broken leg that dealt a serious blow to Oakland’s Super Bowl hopes, Raiders coach Jack Del Rio has no regrets about the decision to pass the ball with a 19-point lead in the fourth quarter. Del Rio said Monday that the decision to stay aggressive with 11 minutes left Saturday and Oakland leading Indianapolis 33-14 was validated when the Colts rallied within eight points before losing . “You won by one score basically,” Del Rio said. “Andrew Luck, people here in the Bay Area have a pretty good understanding of what he’s capable of. I know I do. We felt like you had to keep the pedal down on that opponent and that quarterback and that game. You’re talking about a team facing elimination.” The decision to pass on a second-and-18 proved harmful when usually reliable left tackle Donald Penn lost his footing and allowed his first sack of the season. Trent Cole twisted Carr to the ground and broke his right leg on the sack . Now, instead of looking to roll into their first playoff berth since 2002 behind Carr and a high-powered offense, the Raiders (12-3) hand the reins to Matt McGloin. The 2013 undrafted free agent hasn’t started a game since that year. McGloin will get his first test Sunday in Denver when the Raiders can clinch the AFC West and a first-round bye with a victory over the Broncos, or if Kansas City loses in San Diego. If Oakland loses the game and the division, the Raiders will open the postseason on wild-card weekend at AFC
Bowl
Associated Press
n Oakland Raiders quarterback Matt McGloin drops back as Carolina Panthers free safety Tre Boston applies pressure Nov. 27 during the second half in Oakland, Calif. After losing star quarterback Derek Carr to a broken leg, the Raiders now turn to McGloin with the AFC West title on the line in the season finale at Denver. South champion Houston. With so much still at stake, the Raiders have no time to feel bad for their fate. McGloin has thrown 55 passes since making six starts late in the 2013 season. He won his debut start at Houston before losing the final five and returning to the role of backup after Carr was drafted the following year But McGloin did have to deliver a few key throws to seal the victory over the Colts. He converted a third-down pass to Andre Holmes on his first drive to help burn about two minutes off the clock before the Raiders punted.
Then, with Oakland protecting an eight-point lead just before the two-minute warning, McGloin converted another third-down pass when he hit Amari Cooper for a 19-yard gain on third-and-8. The Raiders then took three knees to run out the clock. “Really competitive guy. Really attacks his preparation. A little bit fearless. I think he’s got a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, I’d say,” Del Rio said. “We expect our guys when they step in and play to play well, and we expect to win with them. I mean, he made a couple of nice throws at the end there.”
blocked with 5 seconds left. James Gardner and Ryan Smith caught TD passes for Miami, which also had an extra-point blocked in the opening half. “We had noticed on film that the kicker kind of did line drives. All that was going through my head was get your hands up as quick as you can,” Adams said. “It’s been a tough year for us. The only thing going through my mind was make a play, make something happen, and that’s what I did.”
against some guys that don’t look like the guys we normally go against,” Martin said. “I thought our kids definitely took advantage of that and made the most of today.”
Continued from Page 1B Even though we missed a lot of opportunities, we made the final play when it mattered.” Fitzgerald, who led the Southeastern Conference in total offense, scored on runs of 2 and 44 yards on the way to his eighth 100-yard rushing performance of the season. The redshirt sophomore also completed 13 of 26 passes for 126 yards. Gus Ragland threw for 257 yards and two touchdowns for Miami. He also threw his first interception of the season early in the fourth quarter, and Mississippi State turned the mistake into a 36-yard field goal that put the Bulldogs ahead with 12:03 remaining. “We were one play ahead of them for most of the game, if not more than one, but they were one play ahead of us at the end,” Miami coach Chuck Martin said. “We had opportunities. When you look at it, it didn’t need to come down to that last kick, but it did. They made one more play than us. Tough way to end. That’s sports, and that’s competition.” The RedHawks drove the ball deep into Bulldogs territory on their next two possessions, turning the ball over on downs at the Mississippi State 32 midway through the fourth quarter and reaching the 17 before Dowd had his kick
Miami became the first team in NCAA history to start 0-6 and finish the regular season 6-6. The senior class that entered school in 2013 had a 5-37 record before the RedHawks began their six-game winning streak in mid-October. “They should put statues of those guys TAKEAWAY While there’s a tendency to minimize outside of our stadium,” Ragland said. the importance of games played before New Year’s weekend, Mississippi State UP NEXT and Miami both felt fortunate to be Miami: The turnaround following the in St. Petersburg for Christmas. The 0-6 start carried the RedHawks to a Bulldogs had a losing record for the first share of the MAC East Division title time since 2009—Mullen’s first season and provides a solid foundation to build in Starkville—but qualified for a post- on next season with 13 starters returnseason berth because of the program’s ing, including Ragland. Gardner had an NCAA Academic Progress Rate. outstanding sophomore season as well, Miami’s rebound from a poor start was finishing with 45 receptions for 750 yards one of the feel-good stories of the year. and six TDs. Finishing in a bowl game against an SEC Mississippi State: Despite finishing opponent attracted additional national with a losing record for only the second attention for the RedHawks and also fig- time in eight seasons under Mullen, the ures to help in recruiting. Bulldogs think they have a promising “Like I told the guys a couple of weeks future with Fitzgerald at quarterback. In ago, if we invited Mississippi State down addition to throwing for 2,413 yards and to spring practice to scrimmage us for 21 touchdowns, the sophomore rushed 60 minutes, I don’t think they’d come. for 1,385 yards and 16 TDs after beginSo a pretty good opportunity for Miami ning his career as a backup behind Dak football to play Mississippi State and go Prescott.
Baylor
said. “It’s certainly a game that’s very interesting in college football.” A few more things to watch:
PERSEVERANCE
GROBE FINALE
Grobe will be coaching his final game with the Bears. Baylor hired Temple coach Matt Rhule on Dec. 6, though Continued from Page 1B LINWOOD OUT Grobe will still coach the team in the terback Seth Russell. Baylor will be without its one of its Cactus Bowl. But this will not be the The season turned with a close loss running backs. Shock Linwood is preend of Grobe’s coaching career—at least to Texas on Oct. 29. The Bears were paring for the NFL, following the lead of blown out the next week by TCU and LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Stanford’s he hopes. “I’ve got to tell you, my wife, Holly, would probably be disappointed spiraled downward. Russell sustained Christian McCaffrey. Linwood ran for to hear you say this could possibly be a season-ending broken ankle against over 1,200 yards each of the previous my last game. She probably wouldn’t be Oklahoma and Baylor closed the season two seasons, but wasn’t quite as effechappy hearing that,” Grobe said when with six straight losses. tive this season. The senior was susThe Bears (6-6) won’t have it any easi- pended for the Oklahoma game for dis- asked about this potentially being his er against Boise State. last game as a college coach. Offensive ciplinary reasons and was limited to 47 The Broncos (10-2) won their first yards on 14 carries in Baylor’s final two coordinator Kendal Briles was hired as seven games and were nine points games, finishing with 751 yards and two the head coach at Florida Atlantic, but from being undefeated. Boise State has TDs. Terence Williams is Baylor’s lead- will coach the Bears in the bowl game. a potent passing attack behind quaring rusher with 945 yards and 11 TDs. terback Brett Rypien and one of the SMITH’S TURN nation’s best running backs in Jeremy PASSING BRONCOS Russell’s injury thrust freshman Zach McNichols, who rushed for 1,661 yards Boise State had a stellar season Smith into a difficult position. He was and 23 touchdowns. through the air, averaging 297.8 yards a decorated high school player coming The Broncos also love playing in the per game. Rypien was the catalyst, out of Grandview, Texas, but being a desert. throwing for 3,341 yards and 23 TDs starting Big 12 quarterback is a huge Boise State burst onto the nationwith six interceptions. Boise State also step. Smith had some good moments, al scene at the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, had a pair of 1,000-yard receivers for throwing for 1,151 yards and 11 TDs, but trick-playing its way past Oklahoma, the first time in school history, with also had his share of struggles. He had and knocked off TCU three years later. Thomas Sperbeck finishing with 1,191 a particularly rough game in the reguThe Broncos also outlasted Arizona at and Cedrick Wilson with 1,041. Baylor lar-season finale against West Virginia, the 2014 Fiesta Bowl. was 63rd nationally against the pass but got an extra month of practice in to “I think it’s a game people want to and will have its hands full with the prepare for the Cactus Bowl. Broncos. see,” Boise State coach Bryan Harsin
Texans Continued from Page 1B Osweiler was benched in the second quarter two weeks ago against Jacksonville and Savage took over to help the Texans rally for a 21-20 victory. Coach Bill O’Brien said early last week that Osweiler would remain on the bench, but wouldn’t say then if Savage would start the rest of the season. On Monday he said that Savage would start in the regular-season finale against Tennessee, but didn’t say anything about Houston’s playoff game. Savage struggled in the first half against the Bengals, but picked it up in the second half to finish with 176 yards passing and help the Texans to the victory. “He got into a rhythm in the second
half and he was much better,” O’Brien said. “I think everybody could see that. What did we learn from that? I don’t know, we’re still talking about that right now.” Savage has not had a turnover in his two appearances this season after Osweiler threw 16 interceptions with just 14 touchdowns before he was benched. “He’s done a good job of taking care of the ball ... that’s the big thing. We have to continue to have 100 percent ball security,” O’Brien said. “That’s going to be the key going forward. Especially in this time of year and in the playoffs ... you’re not going to win if you turn the ball over.” With the division title wrapped up, O’Brien was asked how much his starters will play against the Titans . “We’re not even talking about that,”
O’Brien said. “We’re playing to win. We’ve got a chance to win 10 games. I don’t know how many double-digit win seasons the Texans have had, but I think that’s important. I think every game counts. “I think any time you line up in this league, I think it’s really just out of respect for the National Football League and football in general. You play to win.” Houston’s offense would get a boost this week if running back Lamar Miller, who missed his first game this season on Saturday against the Bengals because of an ankle injury, can return. “He’s feeling better,” O’Brien said. “He ran before the game on Saturday night. We felt like it was in his best interest not to play in that game. And then we’ll see how he looks when we get back in here on Wednesday.”
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in the game on The Associated Press All-America team, earning second-team honors, and showed why he merited the Continued from Page 1B recognition. The 6-foot-3, 250chance to drive for a go-ahead pound junior entered with TD. 15 sacks, tying with Florida “That’s all you can ask for,” State’s DeMarcus Walker for Maryland coach DJ Durkin the most in the nation, and had said. “You’ll take that in any 1 1/2 sacks against Maryland. game.” But the Terrapins didn’t gain Landry also had a one-handed interception and deflected a yard before Harold Landry passes on consecutive plays helped finish them off with a on Maryland’s drive late in the possession-ending sack. fourth quarter that ended with Maryland made some big plays on offense, but four turn- a fumble. Addazio said he and Landry overs, eight sacks allowed, 11 have talked about his upcompenalties and poor field position proved to be costly. In the ing decision, to stay for his senior season or to enter the first half, Perry Hills threw an interception, lost a fumble and NFL draft, and will discuss the was sacked four times. On the topic again soon after gatherTerrapins’ first snap of the sec- ing information. ond half, Hills handed off to Ty “My thing is, you do what’s Johnson and the running back’s best for the players,” Addazio fumble was recovered in the said. “If it’s best for a player to end zone by Boston College. leave, you advise him that.” With 4:02 left, the Terrapins got to the Boston College 1 MISSING FOR MARYLAND with a chance to cut into their The Terrapins were without nine-point deficit and Hills their leading tackler, linebacklost a fumble after bobbling a er Shane Cockerille, who was snap. They got the ball back ruled ineligible. Durkin and less than a minute later when school officials declined to proBoston College’s Jon Hilliman vide details. fumbled at his 6, and were forced to settle for a field goal. TAKEAWAY “The program is headed in Maryland: Durkin, a first-year the right direction, but we have to learn to not beat ourselves,” head coach, has built a career on defense and special teams. Durkin said. The Terrapins struggled on defense against a previously GOOD SEATS AVAILABLE offensively challenged team, The announced attendance was 19,117 and the actual crowd giving him plenty to work on in the offseason. appeared to be about half of Boston College: The Eagles that total. were impressive on offense in the first half, scoring 29 points IT’S TRICKY On a reverse and pass from and gaining 238 yards, with a receiver Jeff Smith, Towles creative mix of plays through scored on a 20-yard TD catch the air and on the ground in the second quarter to give before appearing to relax and Boston College a 23-7 lead. regress. “I was just glad I caught it and didn’t get ran down,” UP NEXT Towles said. Maryland: With Hills out of eligibility, the Terrapins will BIG PLAYS have North Carolina transfer Johnson had 62- and 30-yard Caleb Henderson and highTD runs in the first half and a ly touted freshman Kasim 29-yard run early in the fourth Hill competing for the job. quarter that gave Maryland the Maryland will play Sept. 2 at ball in Eagles territory, but it turned the ball over on downs Texas in Tom Herman’s coaching debut with the Longhorns. at the 41. Boston College: The Eagles “He’s consistently been a also will be looking also be big-play guy for us all year,” looking for a new quarterDurkin said. back. To replace the departing Hills threw a 63-yard TD pass to Teldrick Morgan and a Towles next season, Connor Strachan and Darius Wade will 52-yard pass to Levern Jacobs have a shot in the spring and for a score to get Maryland summer to take the first snap within nine points. when Boston College opens the 2017 season Sept. 1 at Northern SHINING STAR Illinois. Landry was the only player
Game
Top 25 Continued from Page 1B West Virginia is again No. 11, followed by Virginia, Butler, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Xavier, Arizona, Saint Mary’s and Florida State. The last five ranked teams are Oregon, Southern California, Cincinnati, Notre Dame and Florida. Florida (9-3) returns to the Top 25 after two weeks out of the rankings. The Gators come back in off a 94-71 victory over Arkansas-Little Rock in their first game in the renovated O’Connell Center. They had played their first 11 games on the road or at neutral sites. South Carolina (9-2) was ranked for four weeks, reaching as high as No. 16. The
Gamecocks lost 62-60 last week to instate rival Clemson. Kansas is ranked for the 150th consecutive poll, a streak that started on Feb. 3, 2009. The second-longest current streak is 86 polls by Arizona. The alltime record is 221 consecutive polls by UCLA from 1966-80. With the start of conference play this week, there are six games featuring two ranked teams. On Wednesday, No. 2 UCLA is at No. 21 Oregon and No. 6 Louisville hosts No. 12 Virginia. On Friday, No. 21 Oregon hosts No. 22 Southern California. On Saturday, Villanova puts the No. 1 ranking on the line by visiting No. 10 Creighton. The others are No. 6 Louisville hosting No. 16 Indiana and No. 20 Florida State is at No. 12 Virginia.
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
The long road to understanding Jeff Sessions and matters of race By Del Quentin Wilber Tribune News Service
Y B A RT, Ala.—Jeff Sessions’ uneasy history with race can be traced back to the long, winding roads that cut through the pine forests and farmland in this corner of the Deep South. As a boy, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III began each day before dawn, boarding a segregated bus to his all-white school. On the way, he and his classmates passed the bus carrying blacks students in the opposite direction. The day ended when he sat down to dinner each night with his father, an avowed segregationist. Reflecting on those years, Sessions acknowledged recently that he knew back then that segregation was morally wrong and
H
regretted standing by passively as civil rights leaders in the 1960s struggled and died in the fight for equality. “I should have stepped forward more and been a leader and more positive force,” Sessions said in February while participating in a ceremony honoring the Selma “foot soldiers.” Yet despite efforts to leave the past behind and even recast himself as something of a civil rights advocate in the face of opposition to his expected nomination as attorney general under Donald Trump, Sessions has not been able to shake questions about his views and positions on racial matters. Particular attention has focused on his early years growing up in Alabama and starting his career as a U.S. attorney. After becoming Alabama’s top law enforcement officer, he had his first opportunity to exercise prosecutorial discretion and was accused of using it in a way that adversely affected minorities.
Those decisions will take center stage in coming weeks when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its confirmation hearing for the Alabama senator. The committee in 1986 rejected Sessions’ nomination by President Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship, in part because Justice Department colleagues alleged that he had made racially insensitive comments. The issue of race, especially in the South, is painful, contentious, and sometimes nuanced. By all accounts, Sessions has enjoyed lifelong friendships with AfricanAmericans, is respected by former black employees and was praised recently by a top black state legislator. Even so, the conservative Republican’s policy positions, decisions as a prosecutor and racially tinged comments have led many civil rights advocates to fear how he would enforce the nation’s anti-discrimination laws as head of the Justice Department. “The bad outweighs the good
when we look at his overall record,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Civil rights advocates say Sessions recently tried to paper over his record by taking credit—in his Senate confirmation questionnaire to join Trump’s Cabinet—for bringing anti-discrimination lawsuits as a U.S. attorney in Alabama, despite having done little work on the cases. Trump transition officials concede that Sessions didn’t prepare or lead the lawsuits, but supported them. Sessions’ perceptions about race were forged as a boy, growing up in the northern section of then-segregated and sparsely populated Monroe County, best known for its high number of lynchings and being the birthplace of Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Sessions, who was named after the president of the Confederacy and a confederate general, has
largely avoided discussing his upbringing or his father’s views, even with some of his closest friends, both in childhood and as an adult. “It’s just not something we talk about or talked about,” said Ralph Reaves, a friend from his grade school and high school days. “It just was what it was.” That period also marked the start of Sessions’ embrace of conservatism and the Republican Party, fueled by a high school teacher who encouraged the promising student to read the National Review. It was a time when the Republican Party had few supporters in the South. During the 1964 presidential campaign, the family’s pickup truck notably featured a bumper sticker in support of Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. Sessions excelled at Huntingdon College, a small Methodist school in Montgomery, Ala., where he was a member of the Young Republicans Club and president of the student govern-
ment. Though his class of 1969 included the first black student and was near the epicenter of many civil rights protests, classmates say race and discrimination were rarely discussed. “It was just something our parents had done,” said Jack Mooresmith, a Huntingdon classmate. “But my generation didn’t believe in it and nobody paid any attention to it.” Thinking he might want to be an educator, Sessions spent his first year after graduation teaching sixth grade at a small black public school in Montgomery. “It was the end of segregation, but there were still some schools that were virtually all AfricanAmerican,” Sessions told the Washington Examiner in 2009. “I think my class was all AfricanAmerican. I really worked hard at it, but I’m afraid I learned as much as my students.”
Israeli opposition leaders criticize Netanyahu after U.N. council resolution By Michael S. Arnold Tribune News Service
TEL AVIV, Israel—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s domestic critics are coming out in force as the effects of the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements begin to sink in. After focusing initially on condemning what most Israeli politicians considered a hostile act, the opposition Monday blamed Netanyahu for hurting the country’s standing and criticized his response to the Security Council’s resolution. “The prime minister was bragging about our foreign relations, and now what’s underway is a total collapse of Israeli foreign policy,” Yitzhak Herzog, co-chair of Israel’s largest opposition party, said at the opening of the Zionist Union faction Monday. He called on Yair Lapid, head of the opposition party Yesh Atid, and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, whose Kulanu party is part of the governing coalition, to join him and “stop Netanyahu before it’s too late.” Israel Sunday summoned representatives from Security Council members and ordered the Foreign Ministry to reduce work ties with countries that voted for the UN resolution, which demands that Israel stop construction in all areas it captured in the 1967 Six Day War and describes the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory. A day earlier, Netanyahu recalled Israel’s ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, two of the resolution’s four co-sponsors, ended aid programs to Senegal and pledged to cut off $7.9 million in Israeli funding to UN institutions. “This is not policy, this is hysteria,” Lapid said at a Yes Atid meeting Monday. “We have enough haters who want to isolate us. There’s no reason to isolate ourselves.” In the days after the vote Netanyahu lashed out at President Barack Obama, with
whom he has had a testy relationship, saying the U.S. administration pushed the resolution behind the scenes and had broken a long-standing commitment not to allow the UN to impose conditions on Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. The U.S. decision to abstain in the vote, rather than veto the resolution, allowed it to pass. Now concerns have shifted to the possibility that the resolution won’t be Obama’s last foray into Mideast affairs. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the government fears that a Jan. 15 conference of foreign ministers in Paris will draft parameters for resolving the conflict with the Palestinians in a way Israel considers unfavorable, and will seek to impose them through the Security Council before Obama leaves office Jan. 20. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman Monday compared the Paris conference to an infamous 1894 trial in which a French Jewish army officer was imprisoned for treason after a trial considered an example of anti-Semitism. “What they’re preparing there in Paris is a modern version of the Dreyfus Affair,” Liberman said at a meeting of his parliamentary faction Monday. “With one difference—this time, the whole people of Israel and the whole State of Israel will be in the guilty dock.” The U.S. abstention highlighted the increasingly strained ties between Obama and Netanyahu. Israel looks forward to warmer relations with President-elect Donald Trump, who had pressured Obama to veto the resolution in an unusual breach of transition protocol. Obama was highly critical of Israel’s West Bank settlements from the moment he entered office. He and Netanyahu clashed publicly over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with Netanyahu denouncing it in a speech to Congress that wasn’t coordinated with the White House and that soured relations further.
Associated Press
n Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, shake hands following the group photo at the World Energy Congress on Oct. 10 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Assad gains Aleppo, but other world leaders are likely to shape Syria’s fate By Philip Issa The Associated Press
BEIRUT—Under different circumstances, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s capture of Aleppo would project an aura of invincibility. He has survived nearly six years of revolt. Instead, it has underscored his dependence on outside powers. Turkey, Iran, and Russia have tilted recent events in his favor, and it is those three players—and perhaps the incoming Trump administration—that are now best placed to determine Syria’s endgame. The three nations met in Moscow last week for talks on Syria that pointedly included no Syrians, indicating they prefer to pursue a grand bargain among great powers rather than a domestic settlement between the government and the opposition. The warming of ties between Russia and Turkey, who back opposing sides of the civil war, may prove to be a game
changer, potentially helping to end a conflict that has confounded the world’s top diplomats for more than five years. Their joint efforts on Syria—there is now talk of a nationwide cease-fire— reflect a desire to establish spheres of influence. Turkey might drop its support for rebels fighting Assad in exchange for freedom of movement in a border region where its troops are battling the Islamic State group and trying to curb the advance of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces. Hassan Hassan, a Syrian analyst at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute, called the Moscow summit “a perfect example of how the Syria solution is now about a grand bargain whereby other countries negotiate on behalf of Syrians.” Syria’s army was only able to win the battle of Aleppo with Russian support and the aid of thousands of Iran-backed militiamen from across the region. Turkey struck a deal with Russia to
manage the rebels’ surrender when they were on the verge of total defeat. Turkey was an early backer of the rebels, allowing them to retreat and rearm across its largely porous border. But as Syrian Kurdish forces—answerable neither to Assad nor to his opponents —have expanded their canton along the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has come to view them as a greater threat than Assad. Turkey sees the main Syrian Kurdish faction as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency raging in its southwest. It has also grown increasingly concerned about ISIS following a series of attacks. The Syrian Kurds are battling IS, but Turkey describes both as “terrorists” who must be eliminated. In August, Turkish troops and allied Syrian forces poured across the border, and in the following weeks they drove ISIS from its last strongholds along the frontier and halted the Kurdish advance.
Colombia probe finds human error in air crash By Alba Tobella and Cesar Garcia
Obama says he could have beaten Trump By Tracy Wilkinson Tribune News Service
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama says he could have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election by recapturing the same “vision of hope” that twice carried him to the presidency. Obama also was mildly critical of the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, saying her campaign didn’t do enough to get her message out. The remarks were notable because Obama has been careful since the election to avoid criticizing Trump, or to deliver a post-mortem on Clinton’s failed bid. Obama spoke in an interview with Democratic political operative and former senior adviser David Axelrod for his The Axe Reports podcast. The interview was released by CNN Monday.
“You know, I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I—if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama said. His comments were part of a wider discussion of what he called “ugly” sentiments of racism and xenophobia that resurfaced during the 2016 campaign. Obama repeated his assertion that Clinton faced a double standard as a woman that put her at a disadvantage. But he also said a kind of complacency set in that made the Clinton campaign too cautious and thus unable to get its message out enough. “If you think you’re winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer,” Obama said.
The Associated Press
BOGOTA, Colombia—A series of human errors caused an airliner to run out of fuel and crash in Colombia last month, killing 71 people including most of a Brazilian soccer team, aviation authorities said on Monday. Colombia’s Civil Aeronautics agency concluded in its investigation that the plan for the flight operated by Boliviabased charter company LaMia did not meet international standards. Among the errors made were the decisions to let the plane take off without enough fuel to make the flight safely and then to not stop midway to refuel. The pilot also did not report the plane’s emergency until it was too late, it said. Neither the company nor Bolivian authorities should have allowed the plane to take off with the flight plan submitted, said Freddy Bonilla, air safety secretary for Colombia’s aviation authority. He said the agency’s preliminary conclusions were based on the plane’s black boxes and other evidence. Experts had earlier suggested that fuel exhaustion was a likely cause of the Nov. 28 crash that wiped out all but a few members of the Chapocoense soccer team, as well as team officials and journalists accompanying them
Associated Press
n Rescue workers recover a body from the wreckage site of the LaMia chartered airplane crash on Nov. 29 in La Union, a mountainous area near Medellin, Colombia. to a championship playoff match in Medellin, Colombia. The BAE 146 Avro RJ85 has a maximum range was 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles)—just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the plane had taken off at almost full capacity. The plane was in the air for about 4
hours and 20 minutes when air traffic controllers in Medellin put it into a holding pattern because another flight had reported a suspected fuel leak and was given priority. Investigators found that crew members of the LaMia flight were aware of the lack of fuel but waited too long to report the emergency.
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE â&#x153;Ż TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
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BUSINESSDIRECTORY 272 Garage Door Service
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TEXARKANA GAZETTE ✯ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016 019
070
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RM-Medical
149 Houses Unfurnished
Bailey Creek Health & Rehab 1621 E. 42nd Street Texarkana, AR. 71854
We are accepting applications for the following positions:
C.N.A.’s & L.P.N./L.V.N.’s Competitive Pay Must be able to pass background check. LTC exerience preferred Please no phone calls EOE
MAINTENANCE MECHANICS NEEDED! LAND-O-FROST, Searcy, AR. SIGN ON BONUS, RELOCATION NEGOTIABLE. Comp. Wages and more! Processing and Pkg. facility maint requ.: HSD/ GED, Min. 1 yr. electronic training from Accredited School, or 2 yrs equiv. work exp., able to work confined areas and varying temps. Packaging Maintenance Also need 1 yr. of electronic or multi-craft maintenance coursework with a minimum grade of C OR equiv. knowledge as verified by an Electrical Aptitude test, Interested? Please submit a resume to: stacy.looney@landofrost.com
067 Truck Driving HIRING: CLASS A CDL driver/warehouse worker, must be able to pass drug test. 870-772-3581. TRUCK DRIVER TRAINEES NEEDED! Become a driver for Steven's Transport! NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED! New drivers earn $800+ per week! PAID CDL TRAINING! Stevens covers all costs! 1-877-649-3153. Drive4Stevens.com
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002 Auction Sale CONGRATULATIONS! YOU may have found a match for your Bingo Card 724 B7
003 Adoption
ADOPTION:
Adoring successful executive & teacher (will be Stay-Home-Mom) yearn for 1st baby. Expenses Paid 1-888-355-5151 Laura & John
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU may have found a match for your Bingo Card 724 I25
029 Trucks/Vans 2013 DODGE Ram 4x4 Big Horn Edition 46K miles, white w/factory chrome wheels, V6, lots of power and good gas mileage. Brown interior, crew cab, looks & runs like new! Must see to appreciate $26,000. 903-278-4450.
033 Motorcycles/ATVs 85 Red Four Track 250 Honda Four Wheeler 2WD. $900 OBO 501-422-9679.
EMPLOYMENT
013 Services Centre West Baptist Available for party rentals Inquires: 870-330-1788 909 N Bishop Wake Village, TX 75501
016 Lost & Found ************** $500 REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE RECOVERY OF A RED 1996 MITSUBISHI BULLDOZER SERIAL #BD2F-1B601025 IN THE POSSESSION OF KEITH SMITH HOUSE MOVER WHEN STOLEN. CALL 903-277-1860. ************************
FOUND SKYLER Dobbins Bible on HWY 549 Loop. Please contact 870-772-1318. 019 Special Notices RELAX AND SAVE! SAVE $1500 on a new WALK IN TUB. Heated Seat, Hand held Shower, Aromatherapy, 26 Massage jets, Vantage Therapeautic Walk-In-Baths. Call NOW! 1-800-227-6140 SUN DAMAGED SKIN? Do you have rough, pink to reddish, scaly, flaking spots on your face or bald scalp that won’t heal? You may qualify for our newest study. Call today to find out more information. 501-620-4449, Hot Springs, AR Burke Pharmaceutical.
TRANSPORTATION
027 Automobiles for Sale 1996 CORVETTE LT1 300HP Leather seats 85,758 miles. $8,850 903-691-0011. 02 PT Cruiser, 132K miles, $2000. 870-653-2736.
DUANE LIVINGSTON TRUCKING, INC., Texarkana, TX, hiring Full time Drivers for Hopper & Tanker. Full time daily runs and OTR weekly runs, Some runs require Haz/mat and TWIC, Part -Time daily runs. Ask about new driver qualifications. Need owner operators w/own authority. 800-441-0697/903-832-5373
069 Medical
CNA CLASSES Texarkana Nursing Academy 718 E. 5th St. Texarkana, AR. Scholarships available. Approved for Veterans. 12 day program, Licensed by SBPCE & OLTC. texarkananursingacademy.com
870-772-6860 COME GROW with us Rose Haven Retreat currently seeking CNAs & LVN’s. Rose Haven Retreat @ 200 Live Oak Atlanta, TX. 903-796-4127.
070 RM-Medical PONDEROSA NURSING & Rehabilitation Is currently accepting applications for the following positions: MDS Coordinator Competitive Pay Scale All applicants must be Certified and/or Licensed Must apply in person 12520 FM 1840 DeKalb, TX 75559 Ponderosa Nursing and Rehabilitation is an Equal Opportunity Employer WE’RE HIRING!! Full Time & Part Time LPN & CNA’s Benefits Include; Competitive Pay Rates, PTO, Vacation, Sick Days and 7 Paid Holidays Come by the facility for an application. We look forward to seeing you!! If you are interested please apply in person at 950 Homestead, Ashdown, AR. EOE
071 Beauty & Wellness CONGRATULATIONS! YOU may have found a match for your Bingo Card 724 N39
094 Livestock CONGRATULATIONS! YOU may have found a match for your Bingo Card 724 G53
065 RM-Help Wanted FULL TIME employment avail at Super Bingo. Applicants must be 18 years of age and able to work in a fast paced work environment, Apply at 1630 N Robinson Rd. 903-832-7868 JOB OPENINGS for metal roof Erectors, carpenters, and concrete finisher. Email resume to melissaharris@hewright.com or call Lynn (903) 276-0246. LIFENET,INC. POSITION: System Status Controller (Dispatcher) LifeNet Inc is a 24 hour business. Shift work is required, (Days, Nights, Weekends and Holidays) ________________________ Duties: Responsible for answering 911 and nonemergency calls for ambulance service. Dispatching LifeNet ground and air emergency medical services. ________________________ To apply and view complete job desciption/required qualifications. please visit our website at: www.lifenetems.org Life Net, is an equal opportunity employer. PART TIME servers, dishwashers and bartender needed. Experienced only may apply at 2605 New Boston Rd. Ask for Victor or Maggie REMOLDER’S NEEDED w/ 10yrs exp. with tools & truck 870-571-5820 WASTE MANAGEMENT is hiring Residential Route Drivers in Texarkana, TX! Great benefits and competitive pay! Apply online at www.wm.com/careers (#16 004261 & #16016533) or call 844.969.6754.
ANIMALS
101 Pets
ADOPT A DOG FOR CHRISTMAS!!! Low cost adoptions $25 minimum fee Pound Puppies of Ashdown Dog Rescue 870-898-6758 903-748-1448 Poundpuppiesofashdown@ gmail.com for pics & info. Dogs of all sizes & breeds.
We exist on DONATIONS. Account at Bear Sate Bank Looking to improve our kennels all donations are welcome & greatly appreciated.
All Bulldog adoptions will be subject to an adoption fee. •2 young Red & Blue
Heeler Mix • Large breed dogs • Spayed Female White German Shepherd • 1 Yellow Lab Mix • Tri color Blue Heeler • 5mo Female Black Lab Puppy * 4 mo Yellow Male Lab * 1 YR Terrier/ Daschund Mix *Pug Mix Female * Plott/Black Mouth Cur hound 3yrs *2 Chihuahua Whippet Mix * 4mo Mixed Male Pup dark red w/black face *7 Bloodhound Mix Puppies 8 weeks old
Need Volunteers for Adoption Days Many more to choose from. Watch for us in New Boston at the Old Walmart!
TINY AKC male Chihuahua puppies $300 & up. Health guarntee & puppy kit. New Boston 903-628-2034
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Alleged scheme to fix generic-drug prices began at dinner or playing golf By Liz Szabo, JoNel Aleccia and Mark Zdechlik Tribune News Service
he high prices Americans pay for generic drugs may have been cooked up by pharmaceutical salespeople on golf courses, at a New Jersey steakhouse or over drinks at “Girls Nights Out” in Minnesota. Details emerging from an investigation show that drug company employees gathered regularly at such places locations and conspired to keep prices and profits high, according to interviews and a complaint filed in U.S. District Court by the attorneys general of 20 states. “The wining and the dining and the dinners and the social repertoire sort of led to an atmosphere in which follow up conversations could occur (and) where price-fixing could occur … because they had these relationships,” Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said in an interview. “I think people should be absolutely appalled.” The lawsuit hits home for many middle-class families who have struggled in recent years to pay for generic medications while prices for some drugs soared more than 8,000 percent. The price for a decades-old antibiotic called doxycycline, for example, jumped from $20 for a bottle of 500 pills in October 2013 to more than $1,800 in April 2014. That price increase hike the result of secret efforts by generic drugmakers to make as much money as possible, the complaint says. “It is unconscionable for anyone to manipulate the system in order to line their pockets at the expense of people who need access to affordable medications in order to remain healthy,” Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills said The ongoing attorneys general investigation began in 2014, according to the complaint, and has “uncovered evidence of a broad, well-coordinated and long-running series of schemes.” The companies accused of price fixing include Aurobindo Pharma USA, Citron Pharma, Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Mayne Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA and Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which has come under fire for an unrelated increase in the cost of its EpiPen, used for severe allergic reactions. The Justice Department also charged two former executives at Heritage with price-fixing. In addition to doxycycline, the companies and executives were charged with fixing the price of an oral diabetes drug called glyburide, which helps control blood sugar. Spokeswomen for Teva and Mylan denied any wrongdoing. In a statement, Heritage said that it fired the two employees accused of price-fixing in August and has filed a separate lawsuit against them, accusing them of embezzlement. Aurobindo, Citron and Mayne did not respond to requests for interviews. Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in an interview that “he issues we’re investigating go way beyond the two drugs and the six companies. Way beyond … We’re learning new things every day.” Generic drugs now account for 80 percent of prescriptions in the U.S., with sales of $74.5 billion in 2015. These drugs saved consumers $193 million in 2011 alone, because their prices are typically a small fraction of the cost of brand-name drugs. Both consumers and governments have been hurt by skyrocketing drug costs, according to the complaint. Medicaid plans spent more than $500 million from June 2013 to June 2014 on generic drugs whose prices more than doubled. Generic drugmakers have explained recent price increases as the result of “a myriad of benign factors, such as industry consolidation, FDA-mandated plant closures or elimination of unprofitable generic drug product lines,” according to the complaint. In truth, the explanation for soaring prices is “much more straightforward and sinister—collusion among generic drug competitors,” the complaint said. “It’s always suspicious when you see dramatic increases in price in areas where there’s really no market protection, either through patents or something else,” said Dana Goldman, director of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. Executives of Heritage, a New Jersey company described as the “principal architect and ringleader of the conspiracies,” sought out competitors and got them to “agree to raise prices for a large number of generic drugs,” according to the complaint. A Heritage saleswoman from Minnesota would allegedly organize the Girls Nights Out, Swanson said. The gatherings were sometimes called “women in the industry” meetings, as if the aspiring executives intended to mentor each other on the secrets to getting ahead in a man’s world.
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But the cocktail conversation veered far from career advice. Instead, the saleswomen shared sensitive information about their companies’ business plans, according to the complaint. Male drug industry executives weren’t idle, either. In 2014, at least 13 male CEOs, company presidents and senior vice presidents allegedly met at a steakhouse in Bridgewater, N.J. At these “industry dinners,” one company typically paid for dinner for all of the guests. Executives decided which company would pay based on alphabetical order. Drug company representatives socialized at trade shows, golf outings and conferences, as well, the complaint said. Executives discussed how to divvy up market share to avoiding competing with each other for business, according to the complaint. Companies either declined to bid for certain customers or offered “cover bids” that they knew would be rejected. Companies knew they were breaking the law and took care to have most of these discussions on cell phones or in person, to avoid leaving a paper trail. Employees destroyed evidence from text messages and emails, the complaint said. Heritage and other companies routinely consulted their competitors before selling new medications so that they could avoid competing on prices, the complaint said. The agreement gave the illusion of competition, but kept prices high. In 2014, for example, Heritage “devised a scheme whereby it would seek out its competitors” and arrange to “raise prices for a large number of generic drugs,” including glyburide, whose price was targeted for a 200 percent increase, according to the complaint. Executives instructed the Heritage sales team to immediately contact competitors to agree on price increases. Heritage executives destroyed incriminating emails, knowing that the company didn’t have a policy about keeping copies of old messages, according to the complaint. Employees involved in the scheme “deleted all text messages from their company iPhones regarding their illegal communications with competitors.” “In August 2016, following an internal investigation that revealed a variety of serious misconduct by the individuals charged today, Heritage Pharmaceuticals terminated them,” the statement from Heritage said. “We are deeply disappointed by the misconduct and are committed to ensuring it does not happen again.” Minnesota’s Swanson noted that some information in the complaint has been blacked out at the request of government officials. Eventually, though, Swanson said she wants all of the allegations’ details made public. “I’m committed to try to see this through and have an unredacted copy of this complaint eventually get filed so people can see just what’s in all of these text messages an emails and what was occurring,” said Swanson. “I think that’s important.” The investigation has uncovered a hidden side of the generic pharmaceutical industry, said Michael Carrier, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in antitrust law in the drug industry. “It’s a bombshell,” he said. The charges should prevent generic drugmakers from dramatically raising prices in the near future, Carrier predicted. “These sorts of charges can filter out over months if not years,” Carrier said. Based on the complaint, he said, “it’s not just two bad apples acting alone.” The victims of the alleged price fixing include both consumers and taxpayers, who support government insurance programs, the complaint said. The price-fixing charges have surprised even pharmaceutical industry experts. “There are some economic experts who have suspected that there is some tacit collusion among brand-name drugmakers not to lower drug prices,” said Dr. Hagop M. Kantarjian, chair of the department of leukemia at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who has analyzed the strategies brand-name drugmakers use to keep their products out of the generic market. “But nobody has thought that possibly the generic companies could be potentially colluding to develop monopolistic prices.” Kantarjian called for stiff penalties that drugmakers can’t write off as the cost of doing business. “If they’re guilty, they should be penalized in a deterrent fashion,” he said. Goldman said drugs that have been used for years and cost pennies to make shouldn’t be regarded as ordinary consumer products. “They should be thought of like electricity or something we all need,” Goldman said. “In electricity, we take the view that there is a safe and steady supply and we provide a fair return to the manufacturers.”
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U.N.’s Ban Ki-moon to push the 2017 countdown button
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The Associated Press NEW YORK—United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon will perform one last ceremonial duty before ending his 10-year leadership of the world body. Organizers of the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration announced Monday that Ban will push the Waterford crystal button to begin the official 60-second countdown to 2017. The South Korean statesman was elected as the eighth secretary-general by the
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United Nations General Assembly in October 2006. Dec. 31 will be his last day in office. Antonio Guterres, of Portugal, will take over on Jan. 1. Times Square Alliance head Tim Tompkins praised Ban’s legacy of “bringing people and nations together, supporting refugee relief efforts and opposing war.” Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to watch the ball drop at midnight Saturday in Times Square.
10B NATION/WORLD
TEXARKANA GAZETTE O TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2016
South Sudanese create booming camps in Uganda By Justin Lynch The Associated Press
BIDI BIDI CAMP, Uganda—“I don’t want to go back,” James Issac declared, just minutes after becoming a refugee. “I don’t want to die.” For two days, the slender 30-year-old from South Sudan’s Equatoria region navigated his way out of civil war, riding a motorcycle along dirt roads and avoiding government soldiers who, according to accounts by refugees to The Associated Press, have taken aim at civilians. In his last steps on South Sudanese soil, Issac passed a group of rag-tag rebel soldiers and crossed a rickety bridge into Uganda, and safety. “I am happy,” he said, as Ugandan soldiers searched his belongings for contraband. “There (are) no problems here.” He is one of 440,000 refugees
who have fled South Sudan’s spiraling conflict into Uganda this year alone, creating some of the world’s largest refugee camps in just six months’ time. More than one million refugees have fled South Sudan, spilling across borders in East Africa as the international community warns that the conflict and its ethnic violence could destabilize the region. Since fighting erupted in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, in July and left a peace agreement in tatters, the world’s youngest country has experienced ethnic cleansing and teeters on the brink of genocide, according to the United Nations. Those fleeing have turned Uganda’s northwest from an empty bushland into a sprawling complex of refugee settlements. The largest, Bidi Bidi, is a pop-up city that holds roughly 260,000
people weary of war. Last week the U.N. announced the Bidi Bidi camp had stopped taking new arrivals because it was full, and it directed South Sudanese to nearby locations. The refugees “were in critical condition. Bullets remaining in their legs. Others had come with parts amputated. Others were severely bleeding,” recalled Rufaaaya Asiyati, a nutrition specialist working at the border crossing for the Ugandan government. Roughly 20 percent of those under 5 years old are severely malnourished, she said. Most of the refugees are women and children. When the refugees arrive in settlements set up by the U.N, some like 18-year-old Harriet Guo are alone and must fend for themselves. The refugees are given supplies to build shelters and must set them
up themselves. Like others in the camp, Guo tells stories of brutal violence that forced her to flee South Sudan. “There is war there, and here there is peace,” she said. Many of the refugees come from Yei, where the AP visited in November and heard stories of government soldiers killing, raping and arresting civilians based on their ethnicity. Some civilians also said that rebel soldiers would take money or phones from people fleeing to Uganda. “There are so many people who are shot dead by unknown gunmen, and when you are arrested by armed personnel your whereabouts cannot be found,” said Taban Jackson, a community leader in the Bidi Bidi camp and a former municipal official in Yei.
GOP vexed by factions on replacing health law By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar The Associated Press
W
ASHINGTON—Republicans are united on repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law, but ideologically and practically speaking, they’re in differcamps over replacing NALYsis ent it. Getting the factions together won’t be easy. Some Republicans would revise and rebrand “Obamacare,” junking unpopular provisions like its requirement that most Americans carry health insurance, while preserving well-liked parts. Others would rip up the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, and not replace it. President-elect Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders will have to unite the groups on complicated changes affecting the financial and physical well-being of millions of people. For some constituents in fragile health, it’s literally a life-and-death debate. Republicans have “a really narrow path,” says Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, a free-market health care research organization. “They’ve got to deal with the politics of this, they’ve got to make sure they come up with good policy, and they also have process challenges.” Success is not guaranteed, and Republicans may come to regret that their party defined itself as totally opposed to “Obamacare.” Yet House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady seems unfazed by the challenge. “It’s like tax reform,” says Brady, R-Texas, explaining that many pieces will be pulled together. “Unlike Obamacare, which ripped up the individual market, this will be done deliberately, in an appropriate timetable.” Republicans say they will move quickly to repeal the ACA, while suspending the effective date to allow them to craft a replacement. Here’s a look at the GOP camps and who’s in them:
A
REVISE & REBRAND Many Republicans may quietly be in this contingent, but fear being accused of promoting “Obamacare-lite.” They’d strip out some of the ACA’s taxes and requirements. The unpopular “individual mandate” to carry health insurance or risk fines could be replaced with other persuasion short of
a government dictate. Rules on insurers would be loosened. But popular provisions such as protecting those with pre-existing health conditions would be retained in some form, as well as financial assistance for low- and moderate-income people. The requirement that health plans cover adult children until age 26 would be fairly easy to preserve, since employers have accommodated it. A rebranded version of Obama’s law may well cover fewer people. But its GOP advocates believe most Americans will find their goal of “universal access” politically acceptable when measured against the Democratic ideal of “universal coverage” underwritten by government. Many GOP allies in the business community favor revising the ACA. That includes major players among hospitals, insurers and pharmaceuticals. Trump may have given this group some cover by saying that he wants to keep parts of the law, but his bottom line remains unknown.
Pelosi is rallying her lawmakers against “attacks on the ACA and Medicare.”
BUDGET HAWKS
PRAGMATISTS
For budget hawks, unwinding the Obama health law is a beginning. Next they could move on to much bigger objectives like restructuring Medicaid and Medicare, and placing a cost-conscious limit on tax breaks for employer coverage. Budget hawks see health care as the main driver of government deficits, and they are loath to address that imbalance by raising taxes. Instead they want to rewrite the social compact so individuals accept more responsibility and risk for their health care. House Speaker Paul Ryan is the most prominent member of this camp, and his “Better Way” agenda is its roadmap. Georgia Rep. Tom Price, Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, is a budget hawk. Vice President-elect Mike Pence has been in the same orbit throughout his career. The problem for budget hawks is that the 2016 political campaign did not give them a mandate. Issues like Medicare and Medicaid were scarcely discussed. Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicare, and sent conflicting signals on Medicaid. Many Democrats can’t wait for Republicans to follow the call of the budget hawks. Betting that will backfire, House Democratic Leader Nancy
At the core of this small group are legislative veterans who understand the excruciating difficulties of getting major bills to a president’s desk. GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine are pragmatists. They may find support from Republican governors who expanded Medicaid under the health law. GOP congressional leaders could gravitate to this camp. The biggest challenge for pragmatists will be to win over some Democrats for replacement legislation. While repealing most of “Obamacare” is possible with a simple majority in the Senate, 60 votes would probably be needed for a replacement. There will only be 52 GOP senators next year. “Republicans need a fancy Rose Garden repeal ceremony…and I expect them to have one,” said Dan Mendelson, CEO of the consulting firm Avalere Health. “On the other hand, there’s 20 million people with health insurance under the ACA, and they don’t want to dump them. There’s no clear path for how to square that conflict.” Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar covers health care policy for The Associated Press.
THE RIP-IT-UP SOCIETY The most conservative lawmakers want to “pull Obamacare up by the roots as if it never existed,” says Republican political consultant Frank Luntz. That sentiment is embodied by the 40 or so members of the House Freedom Caucus, and it’s probably broadly shared among conservatives. Some do not believe the federal government should be involved in health care, and they couldn’t care less about replacing the ACA. “They would say that Obama’s plan has failed,” said Luntz. GOP leaders may need these lawmakers to advance on replacement legislation; coaxing them to a middle ground might not be possible. Trump calls the ACA “a disaster,” and that’s pleasing to those farthest on the right. It’s unclear if he’d walk their walk.
‘Rogue One’ tops new releases to dominate holiday box office The Associated Press LOS ANGELES—It was an intergalactic holiday at movie theaters as “Rogue One” blasted past a spate of new releases to hold onto the top spot at the weekend box office. The “Star Wars” story added another $96 million to its coffers over the fourday holiday period, according to studio estimates Monday. “The power of the ‘Star Wars’ brand made it the odds-on favorite to be the No. 1 film on Christmas weekend despite a massive amount of competition,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker comScore. That left the weekend’s many new releases in a race for second place. The animated animal musical “Sing” claimed that spot, debuting to $56 million. The Jennifer Lawrence-Chris Pratt space tale “Passengers” opened in third place with $23.1 million, followed by the R-rated comedy “Why Him?” with $16.7 million. The video-game adaptation “Assassin’s Creed” debuted in fifth place with $15 million. “Star Wars” also dominated the holiday box office last year with “The Force Awakens.” “Mid-December is kind of a magic time to release a big franchise film,” Dergarabedian said, noting that the top-grossing films of all time, “Avatar” and “Titanic,” also opened in mid-December. Half a dozen other films either opened or expanded over the holiday weekend. Denzel Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s “Fences” expanded on Sunday, earning $11.37 million over the four-day weekend, good for sixth place. While still in limited release, the celebrated musical “La La Land” opened in 534 additional theaters and finished the weekend in eighth place. Also opening over the long holiday
Associated Press
n This image released by Lucasfilm Ltd. shows Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso in a scene from "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." weekend: Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta,” Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” J.A. Bayona’s dark fantasy “A Monster Calls,” Ben Affleck’s “Live By Night” and the NASA drama “Hidden Figures.” “There were so many cinematic presents under the Christmas tree, it was hard to keep track,” Dergarabedian said. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Monday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Tuesday. 1. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” $96.1 million ($47.1 million international). 2. “Sing,” $56.1 million ($27 million international). 3. “Passengers,” $23.1 million. 4. “Why Him?” $16.7 million ($2.2 mil-
lion international). 5. “Assassin’s Creed,” $15 million ($13.3 million international). 6. “Fences,” $11.4 million. 7. “Moana,” $10.4 million ($14.9 million international). 8. “La La Land,” $9.7 million ($4.3 million international). 9. “Office Christmas Party,” $7.3 million ($3 million international). 10. “Collateral Beauty,” $7.1 million ($3.6 million international). nnn Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to comScore: 1. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” $47.1 million. 2. “See You Tomorrow,” $37.9 million. 3. “Railroad Tigers,” $29 million.
Associated Press
n A group of children and adults gather around a bore-hole in the Bidi bidi refugee settlement on Dec. 10 in Bidi bidi, Uganda. About 440,000 people have fled South Sudan's spiraling civil war into Uganda this year alone, creating refugee settlements that have become some of the world's largest in just six months.
Experts: Victims of eugenics sterilization deserve reparations By Kate Morrissey Tribune News Service
California should pay reparations to victims of its eugenics-based sterilization programs, which took away the reproductive abilities of about 20,000 people in the first half of the 20th century, researchers said in a new study. In particular, Mexican immigrants were disproportionately affected by those programs. Overall, an estimated 800 victims may still be alive, according to the paper. “Given the advanced age and declining numbers of sterilization survivors, time is of the essence for the state to seriously consider reparations,” said Alexandra Stern at the University of Michigan, the study’s lead author. Nationwide, Virginia and North Carolina have set up funds to compensate survivors of sterilization programs that were based on the eugenics movement. Followers of the eugenics campaign believed that people they deemed genetically “unfit” shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce. The American movement was a model and inspiration for the atrocities that took place in Nazi Germany, experts have documented. California led the United States in the number of sterilizations during that movement; about a third of such procedures in the nation happened there. It’s unclear how active the programs were in San Diego County. California’s law permitting the sterilizations was passed in 1909 and remained on the books until 1979. In 2003, Gov. Gray Davis issued a brief official apology on behalf of the state. “To the victims and their families of this past injustice, the people of California are deeply sorry for the suffering you endured over the years,” he wrote. “Our hearts are heavy for the pain caused by eugenics. It was a sad and regrettable chapter … one that must never be repeated.” Lawmakers’ fears of the growing numbers of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in California led to disproportionate use of sterilization on Mexican-origin youths, said Natalie Lira, a researcher on Stern’s team and an assistant professor at the University
of Illinois. Stereotyping of Mexicans during the eugenics movement made its way into immigration laws, political discourse and popular media and persists today, Lira and Stern said. They noted that the National Origins Act, passed in 1924, was influenced by the California movement. The federal legislation created immigration quotas, including reductions in the number of people allowed into the U.S. from areas outside of northern Europe. Eugenicists believed young Mexican women were promiscuous and that young Mexican men were criminals by nature. Lira said Mexican women also were thought of as hyperfertile, which added to eugenicists’ fears that they would have many children and harm the American gene pool. These women were frequently compared to animals, Lira said. Young women who had children outside of marriage or who were deemed sexually promiscuous were institutionalized at places such as the Pacific Colony and State Narcotics Hospital in Pomona, as were young men who committed minor violations or crimes, including school truancy and petty theft, Lira said. Many of the institutionalized were then sterilized. In one case, Lira and Stern found a sterilization record from Pacific Colony for Fortuna Valencia, a “half Spanish, half Indian” California native who had 11 children from two marriages and at some point was referred to the welfare department. Valencia had scored “relatively high” on her IQ test, according to the researchers’ analysis. Officials justified her sterilization because she had “fully demonstrated that she falls into the feeble-minded group when that group is defined by any sort of social orientation. Thus, Fortuna was sterilized for being a poor Mexican-origin woman with a large family,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “What happened to the individuals that were committed to the institutions and sterilized really taught us a lot about how race and disability have been used and continue to be used to justify confinement and reproductive constraints,” Lira said.
Abuse charge filed after child left in frigid car The Associated Press THORNTON, Colo.— Prosecutors filed a felony child abuse charge Wednesday against a Colorado woman accused of leaving her 2-yearold son alone in a car overnight during a snowstorm when the temperature reached minus 8 degrees. The child was hospitalized with frostbitten feet and hypothermia after he was found Saturday inside the car in the Denver suburb of Thornton. Prosecutors say police rescued the boy after his mother, 26-year-old Nicole Alexandria Carmon, reported Saturday morning that she had left him in a car the previous night but couldn’t remember where. Carmon is represented by a
public defender. The public defender’s office didn’t immediately return a phone message Wednesday. Police began an urgent search for the boy after a woman who sometimes babysat for Carmon reported that Carmon didn’t know where the boy was, according to a police arrest affidavit. The baby-sitter said Carmon had come to her house Saturday looking for the boy, the affidavit said. Relying on information from Carmon and surveillance video from a gas station, police found her car in a parking lot outside a restaurant, covered by up to six inches of snow, the affidavit said. They found the toddler partially buckled into a car seat.