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DELTONA, Fla. – A Deltona man is behind bars after deputies say he beat his dog with a chain and fought bystanders who tried to stop him, and it was all caught on camera.

Raymon Prush was at Circle K on Elkcam Boulevard and Lake Helen Osteen Road on Thursday afternoon when he says he witnessed the man hitting the dog in the face.

“I don’t understand why somebody could do that. It’s just heartbreaking,” he said.

He decided to step in and stop the man, identified by the Volusia Sheriff’s Office as 31-year-old Jose Rivera, from hurting the dog any further.

Video taken by witnesses shows Prush confronting Rivera as he continues to whip the dog with the chain.

“I could never see myself ever doing that to my best friend, who’s there to protect me and my family,” Prush said.

That’s when he says, and the video proves, other bystanders are trying to shield the dog from Rivera. But the mayhem didn’t stop there.

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“I wasn’t going to let anybody get hurt, so I put myself in between. He hit me in the face on this side, I guess, to try to knock me down. That’s when I yoked him up to get him to stop being violent,” Prush said.

According to VSO, a total of nine bystanders tried to get Rivera under control before deputies arrived. At least four of them, including Prush, were hurt.

Court records show Rivera has a history of violence, including several convictions for battery and domestic violence.

Prush is still trying to comprehend how someone could hurt their own pet.

“We treat them as children. They live with us. They eat with us. They sleep with us. They’re amazing things, and nobody deserves, nor any animal deserves, to get hit like that in the face, especially with a metal chain,” he said. “I just don’t understand how somebody could do that to something that’s so special.”

Rivera is facing multiple charges. A judge set Rivera’s bond at $51,000.

As for the dog’s condition, deputies say it suffered cuts and other injuries and is now in the care of someone else.

GARDNER, Kansas − Donna Knoche made her way up to the podium at the Johnson County Commission hearing on June 6, 2022, her new yellow shirt crisp and her voice steady. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d have to do in her 93 years in the place her grandfather first homesteaded in the 1860s.

Calmly setting aside her walker, she looked at the county commissioners arrayed to her left and began to speak.

“I never in all my life thought I would stand up here to protect our property rights by being able to use our land legally for the best benefit of our family,” she said.

Scores of people were in line behind her. Many of them had other ideas.

Some implored the commissioners to vote to allow the so-called West Gardner plan, a utility-size array of solar panels, saying the county needed to commit to clean energy for their children’s future.

But others were just as passionately opposed. Many wore matching T-shirts that implored the council to “Stop INDUSTRIAL SOLAR,” testifying for more than three hours against the plan for Knoche’s farm and others across the county.

To them, the solar plant  would “threaten health and well-being” and did not fit “the character of the land.” It would create “a landscape of black glass and towering windmills,” that would put lives at risk and cause “a mass exodus out of the area.”

The fight played out in front of one small county commission in one 613,000-person county. But at its heart, this fight – and hundreds of others like it across the country – was over the future of the whole nation’s energy supply and, perhaps, the future of the planet.

As the country races to shift to carbon-free energy to forestall climate change, opposition movements have popped up nationwide to fight new solar and wind farms, hampering America’s chances of meeting its climate pledges.

A USA TODAY analysis of local rules and policies nationwide found that, as of December, 15% of counties in the United States had banned or otherwise blocked new utility-scale wind farms, solar installations or both.

In the past decade, 183 U.S. counties had their first wind projects start producing power, while nearly 375 blocked new wind turbines. In 2023, almost as many counties blocked new solar projects as added them.

The reasons for local opposition are varied and the motives behind them can be murky but often boil down to one essential idea: Renewables are fine, but we don’t want them here.

That’s a problem, said Grace Wu, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies energy systems and land use change. “If nowhere seems to be the right place, increasingly we’ll have a harder and harder time to site them.”

The land owned by the Knoche family is just one spot in a statewide fight in Kansas, which has both the nation’s fourth best wind resources and, as solar power technology has become more efficient, strong solar as well: the same sunlight that drives photosynthesis in large-scale crops like corn can generate energy in solar panels.

Today, the state gets 47.13% of its electricity from wind and 0.33% from solar.

Yet now, 14 of the 105 counties in Kansas block wind turbines and 12 block solar farms. These include outright bans, height restrictions, unworkable setbacks for turbines, size limitations for solar farms, caps on the amount of agricultural land that can be used and, in McPherson County, an “indefinite moratorium” on solar applications.

These efforts mirror those in hundreds of counties and townships across the nation, where the merest hint of a potential project quickly brings forth a Facebook group, yard signs, organized protests and – increasingly – zoning rules and laws that make new renewable energy impossible to build.

Seen as just one flare-up in a nationwide trend to oppose local green-energy projects, the fight in Johnson County shouldn’t be surprising.

But to Donna Knoche, 93, and her husband Robert “Doc” Knoche, 95, it’s bewildering – and annoying.

For them, leasing acres to a solar farm would simplify their land’s care, keep it available for farming when the lease runs out and allow it to continue to be passed on through the generations.

“We figured it was just one of those sorts of things that you could do – like buying a house or leasing a car. You could just do it on your own and not have to deal with all this complexity,” Donna said.

Instead, it has become a five-year battle.

“I had no idea it would drag on this long,” said Doc.

Deep roots in Kansas

Both Donna and Doc have deep roots in this land.

Donna’s grandfather William Brecheisen came to the United States in 1850 as a 7-year-old. His German-speaking family was from Alsace–Lorraine, at that time part of France.

“They got the Kansas Fever,” she said. “They came out in a prairie schooner wagon,” she said.

William served in the Union Army during the Civil War and then came home to Kansas, where he homesteaded 160 acres of the flat, productive plains.

“We have the patent from 1868,” Donna said proudly from her well-worn chair next to her husband’s matching one in the living room of their simple rambler in Gardner, Kansas. They’ve lived here since 1959. It’s where they raised their six children.

Robert is universally known as Doc after working more than 60 years as a large animal veterinarian in the area – he still has his license. He grew up in the town of Paola. After the death of his mother he was raised on his uncle and aunt’s farm. At the time, they worked the land not with machines but with half a dozen horses – “and two mules,” he said.

Too young to serve in World War II, he had to wait several years to start veterinary school because all the slots were reserved for veterans.

He graduated in 1952 and settled in Gardner, a town of 650 at the time.

He roomed with a local woman who took in boarders, and went on dates with a few girls in town. “I never asked for a second date,” he says. Then his landlady’s daughter had a baby at the new hospital in Gardner and Robert met a nurse who had just been hired there – Donna.

Their first date was on July 12, 1952, “to a picture show in Ottawa” about 25 miles away. They drove in Doc’s 1951 Ford.

Today when they tell this story, the couple look at each other – their matching chairs side by side – and smile.

“We’ve been married for 70 years,” Donna said.

“So that’s how it all worked out,” Doc said.

Those 160 acres that Donna’s grandfather had farmed grew as the family bought up additional land.

Today that legacy is about 1,190 acres of farmland that straddles Johnson and Douglas counties. For many years, the Knoches rented out most of the ground to Donna’s uncle Lucky Brecheisen, who grew corn, soybeans and hay. After he died in 1997 they took over, eventually running a 200-head cow-calf operation in addition to the veterinary practice.

“We bought some land south of Gardner and we had mostly Angus cattle of our own,” Doc said. “I built the fences and mowed the hay. Mom would answer the phone when people called for emergencies.”

“It wasn’t easy, it was long hours,” Doc says of the 10-year stint. Shoulder surgery around 2010 forced him to give up his herd. Since then, they’ve rented the land to other farmers and ranchers.

Doc doesn’t call himself a farmer, but he knows the soil is not as fertile as it is elsewhere. “Lucky always said, ‘We’ve got all bottom land – because the top land is all washed away.’ So it’s not the good prime ground you think of,” Doc said.

Keeping the land healthy and productive is important to the family. “We’ve worked to conserve the soil and make it better through the years,” said Donna.

In time, they realized they would never farm the whole property, and no one person in their family was likely to, either. That led to a conundrum.

The Knoches have six children, 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. As they approached their 90s, they’d wrestled with how to divide the 1,190 acres among all those heirs.

They had a plan for sharing, but then a better one came up. In 2018, they came home to a message on their answering machine.

The caller was from a solar developer looking to lease land in the area for a solar farm.

“Well, I called him back and we talked about it,” Doc said, “and it sounded better than farming.”  It didn’t hurt that one of their sons-in-law, Steve Clark, was an engineer and solar consultant, so they had an expert to talk with.

The Knoches ended up signing a four-year lease on their land with NextEra Energy, as did other landowners and farmers nearby.

The deal gave the company an option to build on the land. The Knoches got a little bit of money for the agreement, and for a while, nothing else happened. “We didn’t make a big show of it,” Donna said.

They figured it would take a long time for an energy plant to be developed, if ever.

They’d heard stories about windmills in other places, and how people fought them. This seemed different. A solar farm would keep the rural land from being built up as something else – a subdivision, or a warehouse. The panels lasted a long time, up to 30 years, but after that, they could be removed and the land could be farmed again, if people wanted.

They didn’t think about it much for the next few years.

“I really hadn’t heard much about people fighting solar,” Doc said. Then he looked over at his wife, something between a smile and a grimace on his face.

“So we found out about it,” he said.

The opposition to solar

The planned solar farm – the West Gardner Solar Project – was originally proposed to include as much as 3,000 acres spread over Douglas and Johnson counties that would generate up to 320 megawatts of electricity. The project would also include 129 megawatts of battery storage, to make the solar energy available when the sun isn’t shining.

Then things got contentious.

People heard about the leases and began to organize against the proposed solar farm. A Facebook group opposing the project appeared, several groups were formed and a website was created.

Soon there were hearings scheduled before the Johnson County commissioners, who were considering various proposals amending the zoning regulations for solar facilities and battery storage.

There were work sessions. Planning commission meetings. Subcommittee meetings. The work stretched for more than a year.

Crowds of opponents flocked to public meetings to demand the plans for a solar farm be shut down.

The family estimates between the two counties they’ve attended more than a dozen meetings, not including the ones they’ve watched online.

Finally, June 2022 arrived. The goal on this warm summer night was to vote on exactly what the county would allow. How large could the solar installations be? How far must they be from towns? What about stormwater runoff? How much of a buffer should there be from the land of other neighbors who weren’t part of the project? How many years would permits be valid?

Even if county commissioners allowed solar projects, there would still be other hurdles.

Opponents decried what they call industrial wind and solar and said the installations have no place in an idyllic landscape of corn, wheat, soybeans and cattle.

They said solar panels would drip toxic chemicals from their glass into the ground, contaminating wells. The land under them would heat up and kill all surrounding vegetation. The solar cells and batteries planned to accompany them would be at risk for catastrophic fires that country firefighters would be unable to contain. Property values would fall and so much of the land would be consumed that the country would risk starving.

Those Johnson County meetings aired many of the same concerns that emerged nationwide, in more than a dozen different local zoning meetings reviewed online or in person by USA TODAY.

The problem with these concerns is that almost none of them are true.

“They had these meetings and they were very negative,” said Karlene Thomson, one of the Knoches’ daughters. “A lot of misinformation got put out.”

The meeting on June 6, 2022, lasted more than three hours.

It began with a solemn recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Then speaker after speaker came forward. There were many in favor of the project, but most were adamantly – though politely – opposed.

To them the solar farm was an intrusion of industrial energy production that would destroy the rural community that they loved.

Not that the area hadn’t long been home to more than farms. The 9,000 acre Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant was built there in 1942, employing more than 15,000 people at the height of World War II. In 2013, BNSF Railway opened an intermodal shipping hub in the southern part of the county. The 330-acre I-35 Logistics Park opened the same year. Panasonic broke ground on a new battery plant on the old ammunition plant in 2022.

And people from nearby Olathe, Overland Park and even Kansas City kept moving deeper into the county, buying small 5- and 10-acre plots to build their dream homes on.

But thousands of acres of solar panels was something no one had ever experienced, and they didn’t like it.

“This is so far off from being right, I don’t even have words. You will be affecting over 200 homeowners and 1,200 souls with one project,” said Lisa Huppe of nearby Edgerton, Kansas.

“We are not against solar energy. However, when it comes to utility scale facilities in the agricultural communities of rural Johnson County, it’s the wrong choice,” she said. “If you allow this to happen, commissioners, you will devalue the property and destroy the lives that we have spent years building here and threaten our health and well-being.”

Many opponents sported T-shirts that read “County Commissioners: Protect our Quality of Life. Let us help you draft regulations that stop INDUSTRIAL SOLAR.”

“We stand to lose the character of our communities, with a transition from agricultural to industrial use,” said Pam Ferguson of Eudora. “Developers want you to think that we need to turn our state into a landscape of black glass and towering windmills. And if you do so, the planet will be ruined.”

Solar and wind power need to be sited responsibly, away from places like Johnson County which have lots of people in them, said Carrie Brandon, chairperson for Douglas County/Johnson County Kansans for Responsible Solar.

“We realize that renewable energy is needed to offset oil and coal,” she said. “But we have brilliant people on our planet who are constantly coming up with new energy inventions. Haste makes for waste – we can be smart about it and not just go all in on blanketing rural areas and taking agricultural land out of our inventory.”

Brandon says her work to fight the project has taken a toll on her health and her business. “I’ve spent at least half a million dollars at my hourly rate, it’s been an enormous effort over the last three years,” she said.

For the Knoches, the desire to farm the sun on their land is a simple matter of property rights.  They and other landowners want to maximize the profit they make from their fields without having to sell it off or break it up. It’s their land. They should use it as they see fit.

“This opposition doesn’t seem to be concerned about property rights for anybody but themselves,” said Donna.

Of course, zoning restrictions are nothing new. The Knoches think the solar panels – not very tall, silent, no smoke or other emissions – make for a better fit in farm country than almost anything else that might get built.

But the family also can’t help but see it as a matter of seniority. After all, this has been their land for the better part of two centuries.

Doc does allow that things started to change even in the 1950s. People moved out of the city to small farms for the ambiance.

Back in those days they were called agriculturalists.

“There was a story about the difference between a farmer and an agriculturalist,” he said. “A farmer makes money on the farm and spends it in town. An agriculturalist makes money in town and comes out and buys a farm and spends it on his farm,” Doc said.

Back then, the spreads people bought were maybe 160 acres, he said. People actually farmed. Today the lot sizes of those seeking a rural lifestyle are a lot smaller, often as little as five acres, said their daughter Jane Knoche.

“Their big statement is they came out to the rural peace and quiet of the rural area,” she said.

The issue has been divisive enough that it’s made the county a less neighborly place. On a drive to visit the land where the solar farm would be built, Jane pointed out sign after sign on fenceposts and in storefronts reading “No Industrial Solar” and “Protect our Quality of Life.”

“Not so fun to see,” Jane said.

Doc, who loves airplanes and aviation, likes to hang out at the tiny Gardner Municipal Airport with his buddies. Until the day someone tracked him down there to confront him about the plan.

“He came in there and said ‘I guess you’re real proud of the fact that you’ve lowered everybody’s property values,’” he said.

Facing the future of green energy

Renewable energy plants do get built in Kansas.

Two hours northwest of the Knoches’ home is the Amerugi Farm. It’s 400 acres of corn, soybeans, barley, oats, rye and alfalfa, woodlands and pasture. It’s also home to one wind turbine that’s part of the Soldier Creek Wind Energy Center.

The wind project, which includes 120 turbines dotted across the fields of 200 participating landowners, went into operation in 2020 and today produces up to 300 megawatts of electricity, about enough for about 64,000 homes.

Mary Fund and her husband Ed Reznicek have farmed there since 1978 on land Fund’s family has owned since the 1870s. The one wind turbine on their land gives them a small lease payment.

“It’s a nice little addition to our retirement income but it’s not going to make us rich,” said Fund, 70.

She views that turbine in much the same way her mother and aunt saw the oil leases on the farm in the early 1980s.

“They struck oil, so we have a couple of oil wells on our land. They helped my mother in her old age,” she said.

Indeed, across the farm country where green energy is now controversial, pump jacks and gas wells have long extracted from the ground below to create a far less green kind of energy. Nemaha County is home to 22 oil wells and in 2022 produced 33,788 barrels of oil, enough to make as much as 675,000 gallons of gasoline.

The state as a whole has more than 48,000 oil wells and 19,000 natural gas wells in production in 2023.

It’s a kind of karma, Fund said. “You don’t let them extract oil from your land and then not let them put up a turbine.”

They signed a lease in July 2018 that gave a three-year option for NextEra to explore use of their land as a site for a potential turbine, but only after several months of communications with the wind farm representative, visiting other windfarms to see what it felt like to be near turbines and a lot of research.

“I really have to confess I didn’t think anybody would oppose it,” she said. “I mean, why would you?”

She was wrong. Things quickly got testy, much of it organized through Facebook. Speakers railed against wind and stacks of a misinformation-filled book appeared on the counters of local businesses and local libraries all winter long.

“It was never clear who brought these into the county, but the website of South Dakotans for Safe & Responsible Renewable Energy offers a case of 30 for $1,000 donations,” she said.

The furor over the plan made the couple enemies in the place they’d lived together for 45 years, the place where Fund grew up.

“There are people who don’t talk to each other anymore, and people who grudgingly moved on and talk about everything but the wind farm,” she said. “I’ve got a neighbor who won’t talk to me, but her husband will.”

In the end, county commissioners voted to approve the wind farm in 2019. It was built in 2020 and now brings about $900,000 in taxes to the county each year.

That’s on top of the lease payments made directly to landowners including Mary and Ed.

The Soldier Creek turbines dot a spare, wind-swept landscape of farms, grazing land, creeks and woodlots.

Living near the turbines hasn’t bothered the couple. On quiet nights they can hear both the turbine and the oil wells.

But theirs seems likely to be the last wind power that will be built in Nemaha County. After the first conditional use permits were approved in early 2019, the county commission passed a moratorium on new projects in May of 2019.

In October of 2023 they passed a resolution extending the moratorium for another year. A new County Comprehensive Plan documents opposition to further wind energy and effectively warns off developers.

When the Knoches first began considering the possibility of a solar project on their land, they were both in their 80s. Doc was still enjoying his hobby of going up in a gas-powered hang glider. Three of their children were still in their 50s and they only had 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

In December 2023, everyone was older. Doc had stopped flying and suffered a fall. Donna had to be more careful when she walked.

And they weren’t much closer to having a deal.

Both Douglas and Johnson counties have passed new zoning regulations surrounding solar. In Douglas as of 2022, projects are limited to no more than 1,000 acres and must be at least 500 feet from existing residences. In Johnson, there’s a cap of 2,000 acres per project and a one-and-a-half mile setback from neighboring cities.

Another solar project, which had nothing to do with their land, is now also going through the process in Douglas County. It ended the year with a packed planning meeting that went past 2:00 am on Dec. 19, which is now headed to yet another vote by the county commission.

The Knoches continue to live in their modest rambler, full of photos, mementos. They visit children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They offer donuts to guests and pull out scrapbooks with clippings about the project along with books on the family’s history in the area.

Both wonder at the changes they’ve seen in their lives. Donna tells of growing up with kerosene lamps and remembers when they first got an Aladdin lamp, which burned kerosene but used a mantle instead of a wick.

“It was almost like night and day compared to that old kerosene lamp,” she said. “We didn’t get electricity out in the farm until, it was 1947 or 1948, when I was in high school.”

Doc ponders the shifts in a state where he first plowed with horses and mules. As he testified to the county commission, he’s not afraid solar power will turn the county’s farmland into an industrial wasteland.

He’s afraid of the constant push to turn farms into subdivisions.

“Out here,” he said, “I think in five, ten years you’ll be glad it’s there because you’re going to be crowded out by other people.”

This story was produced with support from the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Solar power in Kansas: How one couple’s land lease became a fight

D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan indefinitely postpones the March 4th election interference trial as we await the D.C. Court’s decision about Donald Trump’s absolute immunity. Katie Phang talks with former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner about what happens next.

A 38-year-old Blaine woman was charged Friday with criminal sexual conduct after allegedly having sexual contact with juvenile boys in town last month for a hockey tournament.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Allison Leigh Schardin with one count each of criminal sexual assault in the third and fourth degree. Both charges involve two 15-year-old boys.

According to the criminal complaint, the contact occurred when Schardin and her family were taking a “staycation” at a Roseville hotel in the 2500 block of Cleveland Avenue North. Team members from a boys hockey team were staying at the same hotel.

Schardin spoke with members of the team in the hotel’s pool area Jan. 14. She later messaged one of the boys on Snapchat and asked to go to his room, according to the charges.

At the room, Schardin asked the boys their ages and told them they were young enough to be her kids. She then had sexual contact with two of the boys, the charges state.

The two boys said they felt pressured and eventually told her she had to leave. She later showed up at one of their hockey games and texted the two boys after they returned home, according to the charges.

Schardin was arrested Thursday. She allegedly told investigators she kissed and had sexual contact with the boys, the charges say.

Her first court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

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Butch Cassidy’s legacy is a bit complex.

Cassidy, whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker, is viewed by some as a ruthless criminal who robbed trains and banks throughout the West at the turn of the 20th century. Others see his actions in a more redeeming light, as he targeted large businesses that threatened the existence of smaller ones.

What isn’t up for debate is that he was from Utah and remains one of the state’s more memorable figures even a century after his reported death.

“Whether you think he’s a villain or a Robin Hood, he’s definitely a colorful character for our state,” says Rep. Steven Lund, R-Manti.

Now, an effort to turn the childhood home of Utah’s most notorious outlaw into the state’s newest monument has cleared its first hurdle. Members of the Utah House Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee voted 11-0 Thursday to advance HCR8, a resolution to create Butch Cassidy State Monument near Circleville.

Who was Butch Cassidy?

The property, which is an attraction near the Garfield and Piute county line maintained by local officials, is where Parker grew up with his family after he was born in Beaver in 1866.

The nonprofit Utah Humanities, which compiled a short history of Butch Cassidy’s life, says family raised him there until his teenage years before they lost the farm. That’s when he met a cattle thief named Mike Cassidy and life turned.

Mike Cassidy influenced Parker to hit the road and become an outlaw, as noted by historian John Barton in Utah History Encyclopedia. It was on this journey he developed the persona for which he’s remembered.

“Parker rode the fringe between being an outlaw and a migrant cowboy,” Barton wrote. “He worked several ranches as well as one time in a butcher shop at Rock Springs, Wyoming, from which he took the name ‘Butch.’ And to not bring shame upon honest parents, he added the name Cassidy.”

Butch Cassidy went into American folklore from there, becoming a well-known bank and train robber across the West. He would go on to form the infamous outlaw gang known as the “Wild Bunch,” which carried out some of the largest robberies in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

But some say he committed these crimes for the little guy, targeting large cattle operations that pushed smaller ones out of business, Utah Humanities noted.

“The best way to hurt them is through their pocketbook. … I steal their money just to hear them holler. Then I pass it out among those who really need it,” it quoted him as once saying.

Whatever the case may be, it made him a wanted man. The impacted railroad companies hired a detective agency to track down members of the gang, some of whom fled to South America with Butch Cassidy.

In 1908, soldiers in Bolivia finally tracked down Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, known as “The Sundance Kid,” who were reportedly killed after a shootout. But as a part of their lore, some to this day believe the two never died in that fateful shootout and lived under new identities.

Butch Cassidy’s legacy went on to be cemented in literature and cinema, including the classic 1969 Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

A new state monument

Butch Cassidy’s legacy has fueled interest in his childhood home, which was restored and is now a popular tourist destination. HCR8, sponsored by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, would make it a state monument operated by the Utah Division of State Parks.

Albrecht pointed out both Garfield and Piute counties approved resolutions to preserve and maintain the facility in a land lease agreement with the land’s private owner. He added the state also has a memorandum of understanding with the landowner in place, providing utilities and upkeep for the 1-acre site.

“It’ll provide more recreational, cultural, historic, scenic and economic value,” he said. “Monument status would give the area more recognition, more signage on maps, more (identification), resulting in more visitors to the area. … It would just be a great economic driver, I think, for Garfield and Piute counties.”

The motion garnered support from local leaders who attended the meeting, as well as the division. There wasn’t any pushback from committee members before they passed the measure to a full House of Representatives vote.

“This is a great use and a way to care for and be wise stewards of the history and the treasures we have here in the state,” said Rep. Kevin Stratton, R-Orem, before casting his vote in favor.

The bill must be approved by the House and Senate by March 1 before it can be signed into law.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Many Chinese are venting their frustration at the slowing economy and the weak stock market in an unconventional place: the social media account of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

A post on Friday on protecting wild giraffes by the U.S. embassy on Weibo, a Chinese platform similar to X, has attracted 130,000 comments and 15,000 reposts as of Sunday, many of them unrelated to wildlife conservation.

“Could you spare us some missiles to bomb away the Shanghai Stock Exchange?” one user wrote in an repost of the article.

The Weibo account of the U.S. embassy in China “has become the Wailing Wall of Chinese retail equity investors”, another user wrote.

The U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

While Weibo users can publish individual posts about the market and the economy, Chinese authorities regularly block what they view as “negative” online comments when they gain traction.

The comments function on posts related to the economy or the markets on social media platforms can also be turned off, or only show selected comments, restricting channels in which people can express their opinions.

China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index tumbled 6.3% last month, plumbing five-year lows, after a raft of government support measures failed to prop up confidence dented by multiple economic headwinds, including a multi-year property slump, tepid domestic consumption and deflationary pressures.

In late January, state media reported that China will take more “forceful” measures to support market confidence after a cabinet meeting chaired by Premier Li Qiang.

Chinese authorities have since ramped up efforts to calm investors, sending out positive messages that sometimes produce the opposite effect.

On Friday, the official People’s Daily published an article with the headline: “The entire country is filled with optimism”.

The headline was soon mocked on Chinese social media.

A Weibo user, in an repost of the U.S. embassy’s giraffe protection article, wrote: “The entire giraffe community is filled with optimism.”

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; editing by Miral Fahmy)

• Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, capturing over 96% of the vote.

• But primary challenger Dean Phillips on Sunday said that warning signs remain for Biden.

• “He should have passed the torch,” Phillips said of Biden’s 2024 reelection bid.

President Joe Biden on Saturday swept the South Carolina Democratic primary, winning over 96% of the vote and dominating intraparty rivals Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips.

But despite Biden’s huge win, Phillips during a Sunday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” continued to insist that Biden is not the best choice for Democrats and said the president should have “passed the torch” to a new generation of leaders.

“Americans are really suffering right now. 60% living paycheck to paycheck, 40% don’t have $400 in the bank,” Phillips said. “And here we have the president in our party saying GDP growth is up, job growth is great. People are frustrated and they are fearful and they’re seeing wars around the world.”

“I respect Joe Biden. He should have passed the torch,” the Minnesota congressman continued. “This was not a mission for me. But someone had to do this.”

Phillips then said that despite Biden’s overwhelming victory in South Carolina, the president remained vulnerable against former President Donald Trump, pointing to the slew of competitive national polls — and swing state polls — that show the former president leading in key battlegrounds that could decide the race for the White House in November.

“Jimmy Carter was at 58% in January of 1980,” Phillips said as he referenced the former Democratic president’s standing before he eventually lost reelection later that year. “Joe Biden’s at 38%. I’m just trying to wake up our party.”

“We are the Progressive Party. We should be moving forward. I see the writing on the wall,” he added.

Phillips announced his long shot candidacy last October but has so far been unable to gain traction in the contest despite Biden’s polling struggles over the last year. The congressman has also taken heat from fellow Democrats like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who in December derided his presidential campaign as “a dream for Trump.”

On Saturday, Phillips won less than 2% of the vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary, coming in third place behind Williamson.

Many of Phillips’ House Democratic colleagues remain puzzled by his candidacy and have become openly critical of the primary challenge against Biden, who is likely to be locked in a highly competitive rematch against Trump this fall.

“I think it’s more of a joke at this point,” Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost recently told Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger of Phillips’ candidacy. “He doesn’t have the resources to be super competitive.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

Tom Terzin has been fascinated by beetles since he was a child.

“They behave like tiny natural robots,” Terzin said in a Jan. 30 University of Alberta news release. “They crawl around obeying simple rules. If there’s an obstacle in their way they usually go around it, which is generally how a robot would behave.”

That’s why the researcher and biology professor participated in two expeditions to the Philippines to search for beetles and collect samples, he told McClatchy News in a Feb. 2 email.

While sifting through the specimens he collected from Northern Negros National Park on Negros Island, Terzin spotted something unusual, according to the university. It was a short-nosed weevil known as Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus, which was thought to be extinct.

The “colorful” species had not been seen on the island in 100 years. Researchers believed it was killed off after its habitat in the rainforest’s lowlands was “wiped out by deforestation.”

“In the world of insects, it’s almost like discovering a dodo bird,” Terzin said.

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The specimen Terzin found is the first female of the species recorded, according to a study published Dec. 8 in the journal Topola Poplar.

The species is “large to medium sized,” Terzin and his co-author, Bangoy Shirley, said in the study. The female beetle measured about 0.5 inches.

Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus have “metallic green and blue scales” on their head beneath oval-shaped eyes, the researchers said. The upper half of their body is “shiny, smooth” and “rusty brown” with a collar covered by “metallic green and blue scales.”

The lower half of the species’ body is “smooth” and “reddish-brown to black.” It is covered in “round metallic mixed green and blue scales,” and it has two “shiny brown spots” on its sides that lack scales.

Photos show the brightly colored new species.

Terzin found the Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus specimen in a rainforest at about 4,600 feet above sea level, according to the study.

“Somehow this species has managed to survive in higher altitudes of over 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), which shows a struggle for life, that they refused to become extinct from deforestation,” he said in the university’s release.

A new species of weevil

Terzin spotted another strange specimen while sorting through his collection from the park: a black bug that didn’t have the same “metallic sheen” as similar weevils.

It was a new species.

“This guy was a bit strange, some sort of rebel in refusing to mimic the species,” Terzin said.

Identified as Metapocyrtus (Trachycyrtus) augustanae, the new species is small, and the single female specimen measured about 0.26 inches, according to the study.

The “small-sized” weevil has a gray-black body with “several prominent yellow” bristle-like protrusions, researchers said. The lower half of its body is “rough,” and its “oval” eyes are black.

Scientists named the new species after the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus, where Terzin works.

The female specimen was found in a rainforest habitat about 4,600 feet above sea level.

Terzin said the discovery of the new species is exciting.

“It could mean there’s a redirection of the habits of these species, evolutionarily speaking, and being only known from a single specimen, for now, indicates it’s probably a rare species,” he said.

‘They’re like asteroids’

Continuing to learn about weevils is necessary because they can possibly become pests, according to Terzin.

“They’re like asteroids that cross the Earth’s orbit,” he said. “Some of them can be dangerous, but they’re even more dangerous if we don’t know about them. So it’s important to monitor their population — and that means we first need to discover them.”

Terzin also encountered a third type of “rare” weevil while visiting Kanlaon National Park in the Philippines, he said in his email.

Known as Eumacrocyrtus canlaonensis, the “large sized” creatures have a “shiny rusty brown” upper body with “dense semi-metallic gray-bluish scales” on their sides, according to the study. Their lower bodies are “dark brown or black, smooth” and “covered in round semi-metallic gray-bluish scales.”

When Terzin was in the park in 2016, the previously dormant Kanlaon Volcano erupted. Since then, the area where Eumacrocyrtus canlaonensis specimens were collected has been closed, according to Terzin.

“My brief encounter with E. canlaonensis may be the last one,” he said.

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Pregnant ‘odorous’ creature seen on branch above stream. It’s a new ‘cryptic’ species

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tourists have barely started trickling back into the Mexican resort of Acapulco after deadly storm damage last year, but the gangland killings on the beaches have already returned.

Late Friday, the government of the Pacific coast state of Guerrero said it was deploying 60 gun-toting detectives to patrol the beaches “in light of the violent events that have occurred recently.”

At least three people were shot dead on beaches in Acapulco last week, one by gunmen who arrived — and escaped — aboard a boat.

The violence continues despite the presence of thousands of soldiers and National Guard officers deployed to the city after Category 5 Hurricane Otis in late October.

The storm killed 52 people and left 32 missing. It also caused severe damage to almost all Acapulco’s hotels. Only a fraction of the city’s hotel rooms — about 5,000 — have been repaired.

The government has pledged to build about three dozen barracks for the quasi-military National Guard in Acapulco. But even with throngs of troops now on the streets, the gang violence that has beset the resort for almost two decades appears to have continued.

In January, the main Acapulco chamber of commerce reported that gang threats and attacks caused about 90% of the city’s passenger vans to stop running, affecting the resort’s main form of transport.

Acapulco has been bloodied by turf battles between gangs since at least 2006. The gangs are fighting over drug sales and income from extorting protection payments from businesses, bars, bus and taxi drivers.

Also Friday, the government of the northern border state of Sonora issued a video-taped warning to local youths who they said were being recruited by drug cartels on social media.

The state prosecutors office said that young people in Sonora had been lured by acquaintances or social media sites with offers of jobs out of state in industries like agriculture, only to find they would be forced to work for a drug cartel.

“These youths have left their hometowns and gone to other states, where they have found out that these offers were deceptive and aimed at forcing them to work in crime gangs,” the office said in a statement.

The office added that some of the youths targeted were under 18.

Drug cartels in Mexico have resorted to force and deception in the past to recruit foot soldiers, and there is increasing evidence they use minors to fill out the ranks of gunmen.

At the same time, the expansion of the cartels into seemingly legitimate businesses in Mexico sometimes makes it hard to determine if a job offer is linked to the gangs.

For example, in 2023, eight young workers were killed in the western state of Guadalajara after they apparently tried to quit jobs at a call center operated by a violent drug cartel that targeted Americans in a real estate scam.

TOPEKA (KSNT) – Bobby Parkhurst had cause to celebrate in 2023 after he broke a nearly 60-year-old Kansas state fishing record dubbed a “catch-of-a-lifetime”. That is, he did until his catch was taken off the record list by wildlife officials.

What happened to Parkhurst’s supposed record? KSNT 27 News investigated this question by reaching out to Parkhurst and the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) to get to the bottom of this fishy situation.

A New State Fishing Record?

KSNT 27 News spoke with Parkhurst shortly after he landed the record-breaking white crappie in April, 2023. He caught the fish on March 5, 2023 at Pottawatomie State Fishing Lake No. 2 on a rod and reel, according to the KDWP. The fish measured 18 inches in length and 14 inches in girth and weighed 4.07 pounds.

Top big game records in Kansas for deer, elk and antelope

The record beaten by Parkhurst last year measured 17.5 inches in length and weighed 4.02 pounds. This fish was caught by Frank Miller of Eureka on March 30, 1964. It is once again the current state fishing record for white crappie.

At the time, Parkhurst said he was ready to throw the fish back in without checking to see if it was a record. After being prodded by his family and friends, he decided to submit the crappie to the KDWP to check for its record status.

“I didn’t think I had it beat,” Parkhurst said in April, 2023.

He shared his plans with KSNT 27 News to get the fish mounted as a gift for one of his children. All was well for the next several days, but this changed on April 20, 2023 when Parkhurst said law enforcement visited his home.

Fish Seizure

Parkhurst said game wardens came to his home and took the fish he had caught under a search warrant. KDWP spokeswoman Nadia Marji confirms law enforcement seized the frozen fish in connection to a “formal investigation.”

“They didn’t tell me anything,” Parkhurst said. “I don’t understand why they’re doing this to me.”

Kansas man breaks nearly 30-year-old state fishing record with trophy catch

Claiming to be confused in the aftermath of the seizure, Parkhurst said he tried to get answers from the KDWP. However, he has yet to get his fish back.

On Nov. 14, 2023, the KDWP updated its original press release issued on Parkhurst’s record crappie catch. A statement added to the top of the release states that, after further review by wildlife officials, the crappie caught by Parkhurst could not be confirmed. The previous record was restored with Parkhurst’s catch removed from the state fishing records website.

Why Was The Fish Taken?

Marji provided some answers regarding why the fish was taken and Parkhurst’s name removed from the list of state fishing records. She pointed to a clause listed at the bottom of all fish record applications in Kansas.

“There was not an error in the verification process,” Marji said. “Rather, information supplied to the Department by the angler via his written application form was not ‘true and correct.’”

The KDWP received a “tip” following the announcement of the new record status of Parkhurst’s catch in April last year. This prompted wildlife officials to launch an investigation into the supposed record-breaking fish and, following this review process, made the decision to reinstate the old record.

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When asked what went wrong with Parkhurst’s application, Marji said the issue came from the listed weight of the white crappie on the form.

“The fish appeared normal and healthy, and was accurately identified by staff; However, had the application been filled out accurately by the angler, it would have not qualified as a state record,” Marji said.

Parkhurst insists he filled out his application form correctly and says he wants his catch to be returned.

“I did it the whole way they wanted me to do it,” Parkhurst said. “I went through the procedures, I wrote down what I caught it on, I did everything they wanted me to do by the book. I did everything I was supposed to do. Their biologists looked at it more than once.”

What fish are safe to eat in Kansas?

Marji said additional information on the investigation is on hold because it’s still an active case. We’ll keep you informed on any updates as this progresses.

For more Kansas Outdoors, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our mobile app and by signing up for our news email alerts. To download our Storm Track Weather App, click here.

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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KSNT 27 News.