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Former Indiana postal manager gets 40 months for stealing hundreds of checks worth at least $1.7M

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former customer service manager at a U.S. Postal Service office in Indianapolis has been sentenced to 40 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing hundreds of checks worth about $1.7 million that businesses had mailed.James Lancaster, 42, fought back tears Wednesday after U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt sentenced him, saying the Indianapolis man’s actions warranted a significant sentence, including prison time, WTHR-TV reported.“The defendant really has no excuse for his actions,” she told the court after announcing Lancaster’s sentence. Pratt added that Lancaster was in a position of trust at a busy post office but had shown “nothing other than greed and disregard of the victims.”She also ordered Lancaster to pay more than $88,000 in restitution to his victims, saying that his actions had “seriously impacted” local businesses and also eroded trust in the U.S. Postal Service.Prosecutors said Lancaster was the cust...

Russian geneticist gets probation for DNA smuggling. Discovery of vials prompted alarm at airport

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Customs agents were alarmed at their discovery last August at Dulles International Airport: an undeclared cooler packed in a suitcase and filled with 10 test tubes of an unknown yellowish substance, brought to the U.S. by a woman claiming to be a Russian scientist.Authorities scrambled to uncover the truth: The woman was indeed a respected Russian scientist. The test tubes were not dangerous, but contained DNA samples of endangered species, including Siberian crane, that were related to her work as a geneticist with the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Novosibirsk.On Thursday the scientist, Polina Perelman, was sentenced to probation and a $1,000 fine at federal court in Alexandria in a case that authorities hope will serve as a reminder to scientists to follow the proper protocols when transporting scientific samples.“You didn’t think it was a big deal. It is a big deal,” said U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, who imposed the se...

Q&A: ‘Golda’ director Guy Nattiv seeks to soften, deepen the memory of Golda Meir

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the more famous quips attributed to Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister, was her response to how it felt being a woman in an overwhelmingly male political arena.“I don’t know,” she was oft quoted as saying. “I’ve never tried being a man.”Meir indisputably broke a glass ceiling — one that hasn’t been broken since — but she had a prickly relationship with feminism, a label she certainly didn’t embrace. Still, argues director Guy Nattiv, the trajectory of Meir’s career — especially the nature of the public blame she received for losses in the 1973 war between Israel and a coalition of Arab states — was very much connected to her gender.“A hundred percent,” Nattiv says, “if she was not a woman it would have ended totally differently.” And that’s one of the reasons Nattiv says he relished directing “Golda,” starring Helen Mirren: the chance to reframe the image of a woman many Israelis recall with great ambivalence — and who the yo...

What we know — and don’t know — about the crash of a Russian mercenary’s plane

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

The head of a Russian mercenary group who launched a rebellion against Moscow’s military leadership in June is presumed dead after a mysterious plane crash.But much remains uncertain. Here’s what we know and don’t know. What happened to the plane?Authorities said the private jet that took off from Moscow and was headed for St. Petersburg was carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants from the Wagner private military company. It went down northwest of the capital — after what appeared to be an explosion — minutes after takeoff. Everyone on board was killed.Is Prigozhin dead?Presumably. There’s been no official confirmation, but Russian authorities investigating the crash found 10 bodies and will use DNA to confirm their identities. President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences about it.Is it possible he was targeted?No one knows — but many are speculating that he was. After Prigozhin staged his short-lived rebellion and Wagner forces made a dash toward Moscow, se...

Analysis: Prigozhin, dead or alive?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

In Russia’s murky world of war and espionage, nothing is as it seems.A plane dropped out of the sky on Wednesday near the village of Kuzhenkino, about 60 miles north of Moscow, at 6:11 p.m. local time. It plummeted from approximately 28,000 feet according to various flight-tracking organizations. It was missing a wing. There were seven passengers and three crew members aboard. All were killed in a fiery crash.Yevgeney Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary organization, was listed on the passenger manifest. That is where most of the certainty about that plane and its final flight ends, and the speculation begins.The Embraer Legacy 600 business jet was believed to have been shot down. Eyewitnesses said they heard two explosions. Video published by Russian state media showed a trail of smoke behind the plane as it fell from the sky.But many questions persist. Chief among them is this: Was Prigozhin really on that plane? We may never know.I have heard unsubstantiated reports that a...

Telecom companies in Haiti report severed fiber optic cables; gangs are suspected

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Two telecommunication companies in Haiti said their fiber optic cables were severed this week, temporarily leaving customers without service in what were suspected acts of sabotage by criminal gangs.Digicel Haiti, one of Haiti’s biggest telecom companies, said one of its cables was cut on Thursday in the community of Martissant near the capital of Port-au-Prince, considered ground zero for warring gangs. The cable affects customers in Haiti’s western region, and it also had been severed earlier in the week. Meanwhile, Access Haiti said some its fiber optic cables were cut on Monday in what it described as an act of “sabotage.”The two companies, when contacted by The Associated Press, declined to say how many of their customers were affected. Gangs have grown increasingly powerful since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, prompting Haiti to request the deployment of an international armed force to restore order.Source

Gun control already ruled out, Tennessee GOP lawmakers hit impasse in session after school shooting

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Republican lawmakers hit an impasse Thursday just a few days into a special session sparked by a deadly school shooting in March, leaving little certainty about what they might ultimately pass, yet all but guaranteeing it won’t be any significant gun control change.After advancing a few bills this week, the Senate quickly adjourned Thursday without taking up any more proposals, promising to come back Monday. The announcement prompted booing and jeers from the crowd of gun control advocates watching in the galleries.Meanwhile, the House is continuing to churn through a full slate of other proposals, and the Senate has not promised to take any of those up.Senate Speaker Randy McNally told reporters Thursday that senators will consider any bills the House may amend but held off from promising to making a compromise with the other chamber.“We might be here for too long of a period of time,” McNally said. “We’re waiting to see what happ...

The return of Simone Biles and Sunisa Lee is a boon for US gymnastics. It’s created a logjam, too

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Joscelyn Roberson’s always had her eye on the 2024 Olympics. The math just sort of worked.The Texan is going to be 18 next summer, an age long considered an athletic sweet spot for elite female gymnasts, at least in the United States.Each of the six American women to become the Olympic all-around champion — from Mary Lou Retton in 1984 to Simone Biles in 2016 to Sunisa Lee in Tokyo in 2021 — were teenagers when gold medals were placed around their necks.So yeah, Roberson watched the end of the pandemic-delayed 2020 games and let her mind wander to what may loom for her in Paris. She knew she’d be old enough to compete. She figured a significant portion of the 2020 women’s team would move on to the next phase of their lives, ceding the spotlight to the next wave of elites.For quadrennium after quadrennium, that’s typically how things worked. Not in 2023.When Roberson walks onto the floor at the SAP Center on Friday night in the opening ...

General Motors to close information technology center near Phoenix and eliminate 940 jobs

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors says it will close a large computer center near Phoenix at the end of October, eliminating 940 jobs.The information technology center in Chandler, Arizona, opened in 2014 as part of a blitz by GM to attract software designers and other employees in metro areas with high numbers of technical workers.Similar centers in Warren, Michigan, near Detroit, suburban Atlanta, and in Austin, Texas, will remain open.The Arizona center has just over 1,000 workers now, and most of the eliminated jobs deal with information technology support for consumers, dealers and the company itself. Employees at the other three IT centers will take over that work, GM said Wednesday. A small number of employees working on software for vehicles will stay in Arizona, spokesman Kevin Kelly said. Laid-off workers will be able to apply for other positions in the company, he said. Some will get severance pay and outplacement services.Last week GM also eliminated about 200 engineering po...

FBC Glance

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:40:57 GMT

All Times EDTAMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCEConferenceAll GamesWLPFPAWLPFPACharlotte000000 East Carolina000000 FAU000000 Memphis000000 Navy000000 North Texas000000 Rice000000 SMU000000 South Florida000000 Temple000000 Tulane000000 Tulsa000000 UAB000000 UTSA000000 ___Saturday’s GamesNotre Dame vs. Navy at Dublin, 2:30 p.m.Thursday’s GamesArk.-Pine Bluff at Tulsa, 8 p.m.NC A&T at UAB, 8 p.m.Saturday’s GamesLouisiana Tech at SMU, NoonEast Carolina at Michigan, NoonAkron at Temple, 2 p.m.South Florida at W. Kentucky, 3:30 p.m.Rice at Texas, 3:30 p.m.California at North Texas, 4 p.m.Monmouth (NJ) at FAU, 6 p.m.SC State at Charlotte, 6 p.m.Bethune-Cookman at Memphis, 7 p.m.UTSA at Houston, 7 p.m.South Alabama...