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Broncos midseason report card: After 0-3 start under Sean Payton, a ray of hope heading into second half

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

The Broncos have reached the midpoint of Year 1 of the Sean Payton era. The season began with playoff hopes then quickly flipped to calls to tank for Caleb Williams. But Denver won two straight before its bye week, and the trade deadline came and went without the team sending away any key players to jumpstart a rebuild. With the playoffs still a longshot at 3-5, here’s how each position group grades out through eight games in 2023:OffenseQuarterbackIs Russell Wilson back? After throwing three touchdowns in Denver’s win over Kansas City in Week 8, there’s at least a ray of hope that might be the case. Wilson has thrown for 1,613 yards, 16 touchdowns and four interceptions. His touchdown total at the bye week matches his entire 2022 season. He also has the fourth-best passer rating in the league at 101.7.Yes, Wilson has not been perfect. He threw for 95 yards and two picks in the first matchup at Kansas City. He’s had issues with execution in the second half, with a comple...

Metro Denver home sales continue to slow under weight of higher interest rates

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

Home sales in metro Denver fell last month under the pressure of mortgage rates on 30-year loans approaching 8%, but the market found ways to keep on breathing, according to a monthly update from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.Buyers closed on 2,986 homes and condos in October, down 11.6% from September and 15.7% from the pace of sales a year ago. Through the first 10 months of the year, the metro market has seen a fifth fewer home and condo sales than in the same period of 2022 and a third fewer than in 2021.There were 7,482 properties listed for sale at the end of October in the Denver area, down 1.9% from September and up 2.6% from last year. Sellers provided 3,816 new listings, which was down 16.8% from September and off 0.6% from a year earlier.The median price of a single-family home that sold in October was $649,000, up 1.4% from September’s median sales price of $640,000 and 3.8% from a year earlier. For condos and townhomes, the median sales price was $425,0...

Who's who: Overview of Parliament's leadership  

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

MEPs elected a new Parliament president, vice-presidents and quaestors in January 2022. Find out from our infographic who was chosen for Parliament's key posts, EU affairs .Who's who: The BureauRoberta METSOLA (European Parliament President)Access to the MEP's card ( Roberta METSOLA )The President is elected for a renewable term of two-and-a-half years14 Vice-presidentsThey chair debates when the president is not in the chamber.The President can also delegate duties to them.Othmar KARAS (First vice-president) ( EPP )   Access to the MEP's card ( Othmar KARAS )Pina PICIERNO ( S&D )   Access to the MEP's card ( Pina PICIERNO )Pedro SILVA PEREIRA ( S&D )   Access to the MEP's card ( Pedro SILVA PEREIRA )Ewa KOPACZ ( EPP )   Access to the MEP's card ( Ewa KOPACZ )Marc ANGEL ( S&D )   Access to the MEP's card ( Marc ANGEL )Evelyn REGNER ( S&D )   Access to the MEP's card ( Evelyn REGNER )Rainer WIELAND ( EPP )   Access to the MEP's card ...

Elias: California should try same test on homelessness as addiction

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

“The business of America is business,” President Calvin Coolidge famously observed in 1925.Related ArticlesLocal News | Elias: California’s denser housing ‘solutions’ are failing badly Local News | Elias: Butler does California Democrats a big favor in U.S. Senate race Local News | Elias: Science only seems to justify Newsom’s policies when convenient Plenty of other American cliches support his view: “Money talks, and (other stuff) walks,” goes one. “Show me the money,” says another. California authorities have now begun testing this principle on drug addiction, one of the state’s most obdurate problems.If it works there, they also ought to try it on homelessness, where high percentages of the unhoused either refuse temporary shelter or end up back on the streets after getting thrown out of housing for various types of misbehavior.The state’s ongoing trial run is a response to the failure of drug addictio...

Opinion: Banning AI in the classroom would be a generational mistake

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

American higher education is in a tug-of-war over the merits and potential abuses of AI. Fearing the self-learning artificial intelligence algorithm will render meaningless the traditional teacher-student relationship, some want to ban the technology from the classroom altogether.That would be a generational mistake.Each generation of students, it seems, is faced with some newly discovered technology that threatens to destroy the education system as we know it. At one point it was the handheld Texas Instruments calculator, a wonder of 1970s digitization, that many mathematics instructors initially forbade students from using. Mathematics was considered too important for personal development to hand off to a machine. It was pencil and eraser or nothing.Of course, it turns out calculators didn’t upend math education as many feared. Educators adapted the new technology into the curriculum and pivoted to teaching broader concepts than simple addition and subtraction.Similarly, AI holds ...

Review: Colman Domingo shines in terrific ‘Rustin’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

By Mark Kennedy | Associated PressThe 1963 March on Washington drew an estimated 250,000 people from across the country — the largest march at that point in American history — and was the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.It likely wouldn’t have happened without the work of a master strategist: Bayard Rustin, a gay Black socialist and pacifist-activist from Pennsylvania, whose close friendship with King was the engine in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement.The winning, triumphant Netflix movie “Rustin” explores the stressful weeks leading up to the march from the grassroots level, with Colman Domingo starring as the organizer who many people know nothing about.It was he who wrangled 80,000 boxed lunches, 22 first aid stations, six water tanks, 2,200 chartered buses, six chartered flights, 292 latrines, over 1,000 Black police officers and a change to the city’s subway schedule, not to ...

Review: An unorthodox teacher shines in violent border town in ‘Radical’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

By Jake Coyle | Associated PressOn their first day sixth grade, the students of Jose Urbina Lopez Elementary School in the Mexican border city of Matamoros find their new teacher rolling on the floor surrounded by overturned desks.They’re not desks, he exclaims. They’re lifeboats.So begins Christopher Zalla’s “Radical,” an inspirational based-on-a-true-story drama about an unconventional teacher named Sergio Juarez Correa (Eugenio Derbez). His day-one lesson is ultimately about buoyancy. But the metaphor isn’t hard to grasp. In Lopez’s classroom, education is a life raft.“Radical,” which opens in theaters Friday, is a conventional but stirring entry in the crowded canon of uplifting educator tales like “Stand and Deliver,” “Lean on Me” and “The Class.”“Radical,” though, isn’t set at an inner-city school in Los Angeles, New Jersey or Paris, like those films are. Matamoros, alon...

‘Real Housewife’ Shannon Beador pleads no contest to DUI and avoids jail

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

“The Real Housewives of Orange County” cast member Shannon Beador pleaded no contest to DUI charges on Thursday, Nov. 2 and received probation and community service, despite the objections of prosecutors who wanted her to spend some time behind bars.Beador agreed to an offer from a judge allowing her to plead no contest to a pair of misdemeanor DUI charges — essentially neither disputing nor admitting to the allegations — in return for the dismissal of a misdemeanor hit and run charge.Along with three years of informal probation and 40 hours of community service, Orange County Superior Court Judge Brett London also ordered Beador to enroll in a first-time offender alcohol program.The crash left Beador with a fractured left wrist, a cut and bruising around her left eye, prosecutors said. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.24%, – three times the legal limit.“I am grateful that no one else was injured besides me in this incident,” Beador said in a statement following the hearing. “I have le...

Crews strengthening lines on Highland fire in Aguanga, increasing containment to 25%

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

Firefighters on Thursday, Nov. 2, expected to make more progress in containing the Highland fire in Aguanga as winds from the ocean were forecast to increase the humidity in the light grasses and medium-sized shrubs that have been burning since Monday in rural southwest Riverside County.“It’s going to aid in the control and allow us to button up this fire and get home,”  Justin McGough, a spokesman for Riverside County incident command, said in a video briefing.A map of the burn area of the Highland fire in Aguanga on Nov. 2, 2023. (Courtesy of Cal Fire) Crews on Wednesday were able to strengthen the hold on the east end of the fire by scratching out lines with hand tools. They planned to return with fire hoses to continue the job, McGough said.“There is still quite a bit of hot material on the east end of the fire,” McGough said.The fire had burned 2,487 acres as of Thursday morning and was 25% contained. Containment refers to the percentage of a fire’s perimeter that has been...

What Cedar Fair-Six Flags $8 billion merger means for California theme parks

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 11:19:36 GMT

Longtime theme park fans shaking at the notion of a Cedar Fair-Six Flags merger can take some solace that Cedar Fair will be handling operations even if the Six Flags name is about to be slapped on every park in the expanded theme park chain.Knott’s Berry Farm owner Cedar Fair and Magic Mountain owner Six Flags agreed on Thursday, Nov. 2 to an $8 billion merger of equals that will combine the two companies into a North American amusement park juggernaut.The combined company will be known as Six Flags once the deal is done.That’s right. You’re going to have to get used to saying Six Flags Knott’s Berry Farm. Or Six Flags Berry Farm. Or Knott’s Berry Farm presented by Six Flags. Or some other mouthful of a name involving Six Flags branding. The Six Flags national name recognition is one of the key things Cedar Fair gets out of the deal.Together, Cedar Fair and Six Flags will have a portfolio of 27 amusement parks and 15 water parks in the United States, Canada and Mexico that attracte...