UNITED STATES

A Illinois man died Saturday while waterfowl hunting in Iowa, the state’s department of natural resources confirmed.  Seth Egelhoff, 26, was shot in the face by an individual in his hunting party, according to The Associated Press.  Someone called 911 to report the shooting around 1 p.m. in the Bays Branch Wildlife Area in Guthrie County.  Emergency medics rushed Egelhoff to a spot to be picked up by a medical helicopter, but he died en route, the department said. IOWA POLICE ARREST SUSPECT AFTER ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULT OF FORMER ARIZONA SEN. MARTHA MCSALLY Conservation Officer Jeremy King said the shooting appeared to be accidental, but is still under investigation by the Iowa DNR Law Enforcement Bureau. The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa State Patrol are assisting. “Hunting waterfowl is a popular sport in many parts of the country. Federal and State regulations help ensure that these birds continue to thrive while providing hunting opportunities,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website states.  FORMER ARIZONA SEN MARTHA MCSALLY SAYS SHE WAS SEXUALLY ASSAULTED WHILE ON RUN IN IOWA Iowa has three zones for waterfowl hunting, according to the DNR website. The season generally runs from September through January. Shooting hours are listed as a half hour before sunrise until sunset. Egelhoff is the second hunter to be fatally shot in Iowa since last month, according to CBS News. The wildlife area is about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines, and is open for public use. The Associated Press contributed to this report. 



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Publish date : 2023-11-13 20:43:38

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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that her state is increasing its staffing to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in response to a “rise in hate crimes and incidents of harassment” since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.  The additional $2.5 million being directed to the New York State Police will allow it to “deploy ten additional investigators in New York City, Albany, Buffalo and Rochester, ensuring the State Police has a presence in all JTTF investigative groups and areas,” Hochul’s office said in a statement.  “I immediately deployed the New York State Police on October 7 to protect at-risk communities and we have continued our laser focus on public safety since then,” the statement quoted Hochul as saying. “Surging resources to the Joint Terrorism Task Force is a critical step to ensure New Yorkers are protected from domestic and international threats.”  Hochul’s office says the deployment will allow State Police to work as a “force-multiplier for the JTTF, ensuring that all cases with New York State ties are thoroughly examined and investigated. LIVE UPDATES: ISRAEL AT WAR WITH HAMAS  “It will also strengthen ties already existing between the JTTF and the New York State Intelligence Center Counter-Terrorism Center, allowing for greater involvement in investigations into Racially Motivated Violent Extremists, Domestic Violent Extremist groups, Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Violent Extremists, as well as into conspiracy theories & disinformation/misinformation,” it added.  Statistics from the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force show that bias incidents under investigation rose by 124% since October, including a 214% growth in anti-Jewish incidents, according to Hochul’s office.  CORNELL STUDENT WHO ALLEGEDLY MADE THREATS TO JEWISH CENTER IDENTIFIED BY AUTHORITIES  “Overall, hate crime investigations year to date continued their downward trend with a decrease of 9%,” the office also said.  In October, an Ivy League student who allegedly made threats of a mass shooting and antisemitic violence at Cornell University was criminally charged following a JTTF investigation.  Cornell University administrators had dispatched campus police to a Jewish center after threatening statements appeared on a discussion board.  Fox News’ Stepheny Price contributed to this report. 



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Publish date : 2023-11-13 20:03:12

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On a bright day this fall, tractors crisscrossed Gayle Goschie’s farm about an hour outside Portland, Oregon. Goschie is in the beer business — a fourth-generation hops farmer. Fall is the off-season, when the trellises are bare, but recently, her farming team has been adding winter barley, a relatively newer crop in the world of beer, to their rotation, preparing barley seeds by the bucketful. In the face of human-caused climate change impacting water access and weather patterns in the Willamette Valley — a region known for hops growing — Goschie will need all the new strategies the farm can get to sustain what they produce and provide to local and larger breweries alike. All of a sudden, climate change “was not coming any longer,” Goschie said, “it was here.” BEER INDUSTRY EXPERT: BUD LIGHT’S DECLINE LOOKS ‘QUASI-PERMANENT,’ ‘THOSE CONSUMERS ARE JUST LOST FOREVER’ UFC ANNOUNCES BUD LIGHT AS ITS OFFICIAL BEER IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ANHEUSER-BUSCH Climate change is anticipated to only further the challenges producers are already seeing in two key beer crops, hops and barley. Some hops and barley growers in the U.S. say they’ve already seen their crops impacted by extreme heat, drought and unpredictable growing seasons. Researchers are working with growers to help counter the effects of more volatile weather systems with improved hop varieties that can withstand drought and by adding winter barley to the mix. Researchers have known for a while that beer production will be affected by climate change, said Mirek Trnka, a professor at the Global Change Research Institute. He and his team recently authored a study modeling the effect of climate change on hops, out last month in Nature Communications, that projected that yields in Europe will decrease between four to 18% by 2050. His first study on hops 15 years ago issued a similar warning to his latest paper. “If we don’t act, we’re just going to also lose things that we consider not to be, for example, sensitive or related to climate change. Like beer,” he said. SOME AMERICANS MOVING ON FROM BUD LIGHT BOYCOTT, MARKING ‘SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT’ FOR BRAND: SURVEY Climate change moves faster than we might realize – but still too slowly for many to notice, he said. The fact that researchers have started picking up on this means that there’s promise for adaptation and solutions in the form of farming changes, but Trnka still has his concerns. Hops declines in Europe mean changes for American producers too. One craft brewery that gets some of their hops from Goschie said that the company is trying to replicate the flavors of German hops using new varieties grown in the U.S. because the ones they depend upon from Europe have been impacted by hot, dry summers over the last couple of years. That’s why some researchers are working on varieties of hops that can better withstand summer heat, warmer winters, changing pests and diseases and less snowfall, which could mean less available irrigation, said Shaun Townsend, an associate professor and senior researcher at Oregon State University. Townsend is working on a project where he subjects hops to drought stress to eventually create more drought-tolerant varieties. It’s no easy task, one that can take a decade, and one that also has to take into account brewers’ main considerations, taste and yield. But the possibility of running out of water is a reality that’s on people’s radars, he said. Better hops might still be a technology that’s a work in progress, but the story of barley improvements is already well underway. Kevin Smith, professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota, said that while spring barley is the dominant type for the U.S. beer industry, winter barley – which is planted in the fall and kept on fields during the coldest months of the year – may be more feasible now in the Midwest, where other barley types had been given up due to climate, plant disease and economic factors in favor of crops that are less risky. Winter barley may also be desirable for craft breweries that have started emphasizing local ingredients and who want something grown close by. And it can also be grown as a cover crop, meaning that farmers can prevent erosion, improve their soil health and keep carbon stored in the ground by planting it during the off-season when fields are normally bare. But there hasn’t always been complete consensus on the promise of winter barley. Smith told a story about his predecessor, who was a longtime spring barley breeder. Another scientist – Patrick Hayes, a professor at Oregon State University – was describing to him his hopes for the future of winter barley. Smith’s predecessor wrote on a business card, “it can’t be done,” referring to his firm belief that winter barley just wasn’t worth the trouble. Hayes kept the card in his office, and has made it his life’s mission to work on improving winter barley. There are now winter barley programs at nearly every state in the country, said Ashley McFarland, the vice president and technical director of the American Malting Barley Association. She doesn’t think winter barley will ever be the entirety of the crop in the U.S., but says that producers will need to diversify their risk in order to be more resilient to climate shocks. Molson Coors and Anheuser Busch, the two biggest beer companies in the U.S., issue annual environmental reports that pledge commitments to sustainably sourcing hops and barley and reducing water usage, but neither company responded to an Associated Press request for comment on the specifics of those efforts. BUD LIGHT’S ISSUES ‘CONNECTING WITH MIDDLE AMERICA’ COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED, BEER INDUSTRY GURU SAYS Hops can be a finicky crop when it comes to their climate, and without water, you simply can’t make beer, said Douglass Miller, senior lecturer at Cornell who teaches a class on beer. He added that the price of beer might rise due to climate impacts on the supply chain — but so will the price of everything else on the menu. “All beverage categories are being impacted by this,” he said. No matter what farmers and companies do with hops and winter barley, climate change may affect what beer-lovers are able to buy in the future. “It will be increasingly difficult for us as plant breeders to provide new varieties of barley and new varieties of hops that can meet, just, all of the terrors of the climate change process,” Hayes said. “And I say terrors because … it’s that volatility, which is so, so frightening.”



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Publish date : 2023-11-13 19:15:31

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“Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is to face a rematch in the 2024 Democratic primary to keep her House seat against former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels.  Samuels, who was narrowly defeated by Omar by just about 2 percentage points in the 2022 primary, announced Sunday that he will once again try to unseat the prominent House progressive. “Ilhan hasn’t helped herself,” Samuels said, after formally announcing his campaign on WCCO News Talk 830 Radio. “She has made missteps, even after the last race. There are some folks who are coming [to support me] because of what I am, who I am, and what I will do. And some are coming because of what she’s done and what she’ll do.” Omar won re-election twice despite making comments in her first term that were widely criticized for invoking antisemitic tropes and suggesting Jewish Americans have divided loyalties.  But Omar, a Somali American and Muslim, has come under renewed fire for condemning the Israeli government’s handling of its war against Hamas.  “We have to remember that Israel is our ally,” Samuels said of the conflict on WCCO. “Hamas is in fact a terrorist organization. But our number one allies are justice and peace.”  IRAQI-BORN MUSLIM REPUBLICAN RUNNING AGAINST OMAR CALLS OUT ‘HAMAS SQUAD’ AMID CRITICISM OF ISRAEL “Our congresswoman has a predilection to divisiveness and conflict,” Samuels said of Omar in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of his official announcement Sunday.  The Jamaican-born Samuels still maintains that his narrow primary loss in 2022 showed Omar was beatable, and that he could have won if they had competed later in the general election, where Omar won 74% of the vote over a little-known Republican in the staunchly blue district.  The big issue in 2022 was the future of policing in Minneapolis, which descended into violent rioting and protest following the 2020 death of George Floyd in police custody.  Omar was among the progressives who slammed former President Barack Obama for criticizing the “defund the police” movement as just a “snappy slogan.” “It’s not a slogan but a policy demand,” she posted on Twitter, now known as X. ADL LEADER SAYS ‘SQUAD’ HAVE ‘MARGINALIZED THEMSELVES,’ LOST INFLUENCE WITH RADICAL POSITIONS ON ISRAEL In contrast, the centrist Samuels helped lead the opposition that defeated a proposal on the city ballot in 2021 that arose from the “defund” movement and would have replaced the police force with a revamped public safety agency. Samuels thinks safety will be a top issue again. “The long tails of the George Floyd and COVID issues continue, with empty storefronts and empty strip malls because people don’t want to invest anymore. They don’t think it’s safe,” Samuels said. Omar issued a written statement Sunday touting her work in Congress and for her district, including fighting to combat climate change and codify abortion rights. She also noted her part in securing an affordable housing facility for veterans in Minnesota and a public safety measure that provides mental health support and services for victims of gun violence. CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Right-wing donors have targeted me since I first entered public life,” Omar said in the statement, which also accused Samuels of taking hundreds of thousands in contributions from far-right donors and political action committees. “If we’re going to stop Donald Trump, we need record turnout, and I am confident in our ability to drive turnout, particularly in a presidential election year.” The Associated Press contributed to this report. 



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Publish date : 2023-11-13 18:03:43

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Roughly 250 small animals that were transferred from California to Arizona may have ended up being fed to reptiles, according to two humane societies. Tucson TV station KVOA investigated the animals’ whereabouts in September, a month after 300 small animals were transferred from the overcrowded San Diego Humane Society to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona in Tucson. The Arizona Republic reported that the transfer was a collaboration between the two groups and that the animals then went to a man who ran a reptile breeding company that also sold both live and frozen animals for reptile feed. DOG THROWN OUT OF CAR IN OHIO IS REUNITED WITH ITS RIGHTFUL OWNER: ‘ACTIVELY INVESTIGATING’ ASPCA GIVES 2% OF BUDGET TO PET SHELTERS WHILE ‘HOARDING’ MILLIONS, PUSHING ‘ANTI-FARMER’ AGENDA: THINK TANK The newspaper said the man ended up returning 62 of the animals to the Tucson-based humane society, leaving about 250 rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and mice to an unknown fate. “We could not have conceived something like this happening in connection with our organization,” Humane Society of Southern Arizona board chair Robert Garcia said at a news conference Thursday. “I’m heartbroken for the animals, I’m heartbroken for our community, I’m heartbroken for our organization whose mission it is to protect and save animals.” The Humane Society of Southern Arizona fired its CEO last month and also accepted the resignation of its chief operating officer. MAINE’S SURGE IN CAT POPULATION CAUSES CROWDED ANIMAL SHELTERS: ‘SAD SCENARIO’ The Tucson organization now is considering legal actions against the reptile breeding company, with a completed report of its internal investigation expected next month. The San Diego Humane Society’s investigation remains ongoing.



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Publish date : 2023-11-13 17:18:30

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