Exact burial spot of St. Nicholas, inspiration for Santa Claus, discovered in Turkish church


Kristina Killgrove
Wed, October 19, 2022 

Mural in the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey.
A fresco of Jesus in a church in Turkey's Antalya region hinted at the exact location of Saint Nicholas' burial. (Image credit: Izzet Keribar/Getty Images)

Archaeologists in southern Turkey have just uncovered the original burial place of Father Christmas himself, formally known as St. Nicholas, but whose modern nicknames of Santa Claus, Saint Nick and Kris Kringle are known by children the world over.

While researchers already knew that the saint's body was buried in the fourth century A.D. church in Turkey's Antalya province, the holy man's remains were stolen around 700 years after he died, so the specific spot where he was originally interred was a mystery.

Now, clues gathered during a new excavation of this church, including the eccesiastical building's similarity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the placement of a fresco depicting Jesus, hint at exactly where St. Nick's body was likely laid to rest.

Related: Possible Crusader ring depicting St. Nicholas unearthed in Israel

Located on Turkey's southern coast, the modern town of Demre boasts the Church of St. Nicholas, built in A.D. 520 on top of an older church where the Christian saint served as bishop in the fourth century A.D. Then known as Myra, the small town was a popular Christian pilgrimage spot following St. Nicholas' death and burial there in A.D. 343.

Very little is known about Nicholas's life, but legends abound — he is said to have rescued three girls from prostitution, to have chopped down a demon-possessed tree, to have resurrected three murdered children who were pickled in brine, and to have gotten into a fist-fight during the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, according to Britannica. And, of course, Nicholas was said to have frequently given away his inherited wealth anonymously to the poor, eventually leading to the legend of St. Nick as Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, in A.D. 1087, "some wise and illustrious men of Bari [Italy]… discussed together how they might take away from the city of Myra… the body of the most blessed confessor of Christ, Nicholas," according to a contemporaneous manuscript translated from Latin by late medievalist Charles W. Jones. Their plan was to "break open the floor of the church and carry away the holy corpse." The group succeeded, carting off most of the skeletal remains of St. Nicholas, and leaving just a few bones and a broken sarcophagus in Myra.

In spite of this desecration, the church of St. Nicholas in Demre itself has survived for more than a millennium, with archaeological excavation beginning at the end of the 20th century. Through this work, researchers discovered the foundations of the earliest church, covered by many feet of sand and silt. Last week, Osman Eravşar, chairman of the Antalya Cultural Heritage Preservation Regional Board, announced the discovery of the location of St. Nicholas's tomb at the base of a fresco of Jesus.

In an interview with the Turkish news organization DHA (Demirören Haber Ajansı), Eravşar noted that the current excavations have revealed "the floor on which St. Nicholas's feet stepped" from the original church. "This is an extremely important discovery, the first find from that period," DHA's English coverage quoted Eravşar as saying.

The sarcophagus of Saint Nicholas is located in a church named after the saint in the town of Demre, Turkey.

The original burial place of St. Nicholas has also been found, according to Eravşar. When the Bari contingent removed the saint's bones in the 11th century, they also shoved some sarcophagi aside, obscuring their original location. Eravşar told DHA that "his sarcophagus must have been placed in a special place, and that is the part with three apses covered with a dome. There we have discovered the fresco depicting the scene where Jesus is holding a Bible in his left hand and making the sign of blessing with his right hand." A marble floor tile with the Greek words for "as grace" could mark his exact grave.

Supporting that hypothesis is the shape of the church itself. Just as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has an unfinished dome on top, so does the Church of St. Nicholas at Myra. When it was restored by Emperor Alexander II of Russia in the 1860s, the dome was never completed. This unfinished dome may have been a purposeful attempt to link St. Nicholas with the story of Jesus's crucifixion and ascension into the sky.

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"It's not unusual for churches to be built atop one another," William Caraher, an archaeologist at the University of North Dakota with a specialty in early Christian architecture, who was not involved in the excavation, told Live Science in an email. "In fact, the presence of an earlier church on a site has been a reason to build a church since Early Christian and Byzantine times."

But Caraher thinks that the marble floor tile with Greek letters could be from some other context, reused possibly in antiquity because of the common word "charis" (grace) etched into it.

Caraher noted that St. Nicholas is significant in Orthodox and Catholic traditions, with churches and chapels dedicated to him throughout the Mediterranean. "I think many people — from eager kiddos on Christmas Eve to world weary science reporters and grizzled archaeologists — have at some point in their lives hoped to get a little glimpse of the real St. Nick," Caraher said.

U$A

'They Forgot About Us': Inside the Wait for Refugee Status

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Miriam Jordan
Wed, October 19, 2022 

Ferozah Binti Abdul Rashid, a Rohingya refugee, and her 5-year-old daughter at their home in Milwaukee, Wis. on Sept. 16, 2022. (Taylor Glascock/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — For the past eight years, Ahmed Mohamed Aden has been trying to reunite with the sons he left behind when he fled Somalia.

He sought help from immigration advocates in Wisconsin, where he was legally resettled. He filed reams of paperwork with the United Nations refugee agency. He submitted DNA samples to prove he shares a genetic relationship with his children, which he hoped would speed up processing.

But earlier this month, he learned that their applications were still pending, stuck in a backlog of people fleeing violence and persecution who hope to find sanctuary in America.

“I did everything I can,” an emotional Aden said, holding his head in his hands as the social worker assigned to his case explained that his children would not be joining him in Milwaukee any time soon. “I tried.”

Aden’s sons are among thousands of people living in limbo as delays in the U.S. refugee system stretch to an average of five years or more, according to government estimates.

The average wait used to be roughly two years, before the Trump administration gutted the refugee program with the intention of sealing off the United States from refugees and other immigrants. And the coronavirus pandemic forced many U.S. embassies to close or curtail their operations, allowing cases to back up even more.

Many of the people who have been in the pipeline for years have grown increasingly frustrated, saying they are being pushed to the back of the line as the Biden administration prioritizes those fleeing crises in Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said she understands that the Biden administration is working with an overburdened system inherited from the Trump years.

But, she said, her patience is wearing thin.

“We’re at a point in the administration that while we recognize how the Trump administration decimated the infrastructure, it can’t be an excuse for too much longer,” Vignarajah said. “Because lives depend on the administration stepping up.”

President Joe Biden, who has promised to rebuild the refugee program, issued an executive order last year that directed his administration to cut the processing times to six months.

But in a report submitted to Congress last month, the White House acknowledged that the effort to provide temporary protection to roughly 180,000 people escaping Ukraine and Afghanistan “required a significant reallocation of time and resources” and “hampered the program’s rebound.” Last week, the administration said it would offer a similar status for up to 24,000 Venezuelans looking to escape their broken country, even as many more who cross the border would be expelled under a pandemic-era rule put in place by President Donald Trump.

The shift means people in desperate conditions in countries like Somalia, Eritrea and Myanmar are facing the prospect of even longer waits. More than 76,000 prospective refugees were in the system’s pipeline waiting to be cleared for travel as of this summer, according to State Department data obtained by The New York Times.

Mulugeta Gebresilasie, a case manager at a resettlement agency in Columbus, Ohio, said that refugees already in the United States have felt penalized as their loved ones languish in camps for displaced people.

“Suddenly, the resettlement agencies were focusing on Afghan people,” Gebresilasie said. “The African refugees told me: ‘They forgot about us. We have been waiting so many years.’”

The U.S. refugee system was designed to provide a legal pathway for displaced people to find protection in the United States. Applicants must be recommended by the United Nations, a U.S. Embassy or a nonprofit; undergo interviews with U.S. consular officers overseas; and gather documents that can be difficult or impossible to procure in failed states: birth certificates, marriage certificates, travel documents, school records. They also undergo extensive medical and security vetting.

Once they are resettled, the refugees can petition for their immediate relatives to join them in the United States by providing DNA or other evidence of their relationship. The relative would then be interviewed at an embassy by a U.S. official before being approved for travel.

But millions of people are being admitted into the United States outside the traditional refugee program, diverting resources from those who have been waiting for years.

Much attention has been paid to migrants crossing the border in record numbers, in part because of decisions by Republican-led states like Florida and Texas to send some of them to liberal bastions like Martha’s Vineyard as a way to provoke outrage.

Those migrants can secure asylum if they can prove they would be persecuted at home; otherwise they face deportation. More than 1 million have been turned away on the basis of a Trump-era public health measure called Title 42, which allows the United States to expel people who would have otherwise been admitted for an evaluation of their asylum claims or placed into deportation proceedings.

In special circumstances, the United States government can grant “parole” to people from other countries, a legal tool that allows them to enter the country but does not automatically confer a green card or citizenship. That is what Biden’s administration has done in the cases of many refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine and now Venezuela.

Over the past two years, the Biden administration has taken some steps to rebuild the overburdened refugee system, even as the president and his senior aides have debated how to unwind the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. Biden has expressed concern about Republican attacks over his immigration policies, particularly as apprehensions at the U.S. southern border have hit record levels.

The White House named Andrew Nacin, a former WordPress developer who worked on immigration issues for the Obama administration, to lead the effort. Nacin is streamlining the White House’s digital services and is trying to apply some lessons learned from the scramble to assist Afghans and Ukrainians.

His team plans to expand a program, currently used for Afghans and Ukrainians, that has allowed private citizens to sponsor refugees who seek to move to the United States.

Officials also are developing a more efficient application system, modeled after the emergency response to help Afghans, that would allow refugees to do their medical exams, interviews and security screening in tandem rather than waiting years between each step.

While the administration has a goal of hiring nearly 400 refugee officers, it currently has just 240, according to data from Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The president has said he is committed to fulfilling a campaign promise to reverse Trump’s limits on accepting refugees. The administration recently informed Congress that it would set the annual cap on the number of refugees at a maximum of 125,000 people, the same level as last year.

Trump, by contrast, set the limit at 15,000, the lowest it has been in the history of the refugee program.

The refugee numbers include only those who are legally resettled in the United States; asylum-seekers who cross the border from Mexico, for example, do not count toward the limit. Nor do the Ukrainians, Afghans or Venezuelans who come in under humanitarian parole.

But the United States has not even come close to hitting the 125,000-person limit, in part because it simply has not had enough personnel to get through the backlog.

By the end of 2021, the United States had tallied just 11,411 refugees, the smallest number since the establishment of the refugee program. The Biden administration resettled about 25,400 refugees this past fiscal year, according to the State Department.

In interviews, senior administration officials said it was unlikely they would hit their target in the coming year.

For some applicants, time has run out.

Redi Rekab, an Eritrean widower, applied more than four years ago for his two teenage children stranded in Ethiopia to join him in Columbus, Ohio. He thought their reunion was imminent after the family submitted DNA.

Almost two years later, there had been no movement in their case. His son, Tiferi, grew impatient.

A few weeks ago, Rekab, a 54-year-old warehouse worker, said he was shocked to receive a call from his son, who said he had reached Libya and needed money to pay a smuggler for onward travel. Rekab said that he has been trying, in vain, to persuade his son to wait a little longer for approval to make a fresh start in the United States, rather than take the perilous — and often deadly — trip by sea for an uncertain future in Europe.

“The U.S. didn’t help me bring my children,” Rekab said. “But they approved people from Afghanistan and Ukraine in a very short time. It shows the U.S. doesn’t value us.”

Back in Milwaukee, Aden says his sons, who are now 21 and 22, represent a gaping hole in the life he has built in the United States. They were babies when he left Somalia and young teenagers when he started the process to bring them to the United States eight years ago. He missed their entire childhoods.

His 13-year-old daughter, Aisha, who was born in Uganda while Aden waited for approval to come to the United States, has yet to meet her siblings.

“I kind of lost hope,” she said. “And I feel like they’re not going to come.”

Feroza Binti Abdul Rashid, a 32-year-old Rohingya Muslim — a minority group that has faced a campaign of ethnic cleansing — arrived in Milwaukee in the summer of 2021, but her husband has not even been interviewed by U.S. authorities yet.

Through an interpreter, Rashid said her 5-year-old daughter will often point at airplanes in the sky and ask if her father is finally coming. Last week, she called her father on WhatsApp and said she would send him $2 to help fly him over.

“She always says: ‘I only need my dad. I don’t need anything else,’” Rashid said.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Migrant survivors of West Texas shooting detained by ICE

ACACIA CORONADO

Wed, October 19, 2022 

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — One migrant is dead, another is wounded and at least seven others are languishing in detention three weeks after twin brothers allegedly opened fire on them in the Texas desert, claiming they mistook them for wild hogs during a hunting trip.

Yet, the accused shooters, 60-year-old brothers Michael and Mark Sheppard, who both worked in local law enforcement, were initially released on half a million dollars bail after being jailed briefly on manslaughter charges.

The case has caused outrage among advocates for the victims and survivors, who say their detention violates a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement directive that calls for giving strong consideration to the fact that they were crime victims who cooperated with authorities in determining whether they should be released.

“This is a hate crime that occurred immediately after they were crossing into the United States,” said Zoe Bowman, the supervising attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, who is representing the seven detained survivors.

Michael Sheppard, who was a warden at the troubled West Texas Detention Facility where he was accused of abuse, and his brother, Mark, who worked for the Hudspeth County sheriff's office, were recently again taken into custody and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the Sept. 27 shooting.

The sheriff's office did not say where they were being held or why they were initially released on bond. The case is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, an arm of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are often victims of crimes, including human trafficking, but most happen south of the border. A clear cut case like this one, in which migrants are the victims of a widely publicized crime on U.S. soil in which charges have been brought against identified suspects, can provide a rare paper trail to protection under a visa for migrants who are crime victims in the U.S., Bowman said.

But despite the August 2021 ICE directive that strongly encourages the release of crime victims while the lengthy visa process is underway, these migrants remain in detention, Bowman said.

Six of the surviving migrants are being held at the El Paso Processing Center — an ICE detention facility — while a seventh is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and is expected to be transferred to the West Texas Detention Facility, the embattled lockup where Michael Sheppard was a warden.

“It certainly seems like they are not putting the needs of these people first by choosing to hold onto them,” Bowman said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on the migrants' detention.

The migrants told authorities they were drinking water from a reservoir on county land in Sierra Blanca, south of El Paso in the hot, dry Chihuahuan Desert, when two men — identified in court documents as the Sheppard brothers — pulled over in a truck. The migrants said they ran to hide.

Mark Sheppard told investigators he and his brother were out hunting and thought they had spotted a javelina, a kind of wild hog, when they opened fire. “Mark Sheppard told us he used binoculars and saw a ‘black butt’ thinking it was a javelina,” court documents said.

But the migrants told authorities the men in the truck yelled and cursed at them in Spanish, taunting at them to come out, and revved their engine as they backed up. When the group emerged from hiding, the driver exited the vehicle and fired two shots at them.

Jesús Iván Sepúlveda was shot and killed. Brenda Berenice Casias Carrillo was struck in the stomach and seriously wounded.

Silvia Carrillo, the wounded woman's aunt, told The Associated Press that she heard from her niece via WhatsApp on Sept. 25 that the group was beginning the precarious desert journey from Mexico into Texas and was turning off their phones. When she next made contact with Casias two days later, her niece told her the group had been shot at and she lay wounded, fearing she would die.

Carrillo encouraged her niece to call 911 for help. Also in the group of 13 migrants were Carrillo's two sons, another niece and a son-in-law. Casias told her they were all okay but another man who was with them — 22-year-old Sepulveda of Durango, Mexico, — was dead.

“I felt like I was going to die, I was desperate and imagined the worst,” Carrillo said.

When authorities arrived in response to her 911 call, Casias was taken to a hospital and the other survivors were questioned by federal and immigration officials. Their testimonies led to the arrest of the Sheppard brothers, after which the witnesses were placed in ICE custody.

On Oct. 7, Carrillo said she spoke to Casias again, this time from the hospital. Casias sounded weak, but said she was slowly getting better and had one more surgery to go.

Casias remains stable and improving and has some legal protection, her attorney, Marysol Castro, managing attorney for Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services in El Paso, said Tuesday. She declined to provide specifics because she said her client is afraid for her safety since learning of the Sheppard brothers’ initial release.

Bowman said she is seeking visas intended for migrants who are crime victims for her clients, but even though the case has been widely publicized it could take months to produce the necessary court documents.

In the meantime she has petitioned, without success so far, for them to be released to sponsors in the U.S. — a decision that is solely at the discretion of ICE authorities.

John Sandweg, an attorney who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, said other factors like the survivors' role as witnesses could mean that authorities choose to keep them in detention so they are nearby to testify in the case.

Still, on the face of it, he said, “there is not a good reason” why these migrants remain detained.

“The bottom line is that study after study after study and ICE’s own data has demonstrated the effectiveness of alternatives to detention,” Sandweg said, adding that the system “is in critical need of reform.”

Meanwhile, Carrillo said she and relatives of the other survivors await answers on the fate of their loved ones in the country they journeyed to for a better life, and are calling for the shooters to be brought to justice.

“I just want them to do justice for my niece and for Jesus, the man who died,” Carrillo said.

———

Associated Press reporters Jake Bleiberg in Dallas, Texas, and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

Tensions between Black and Latino residents in L.A. spike in wake of Nury Martinez scandal

Joel Huerto

·Editor

Wed, October 19, 2022

Officials in Los Angeles are struggling to contain the fallout stemming from the leaked audio of racist comments made by former City Council President Nury Martinez that forced her to resign.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the council held virtual meetings to try to move forward from the Martinez scandal after angry protesters disrupted in-person meetings at City Hall last week. But the topic that nearly all the callers wanted to discuss during the public comments portion of the virtual meetings was the leaked audio involving Martinez, a Hispanic woman who hurled crude and racist comments against Blacks and Americans of Oaxacan descent during a private meeting in October 2021.

Much of the anger was directed at council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, neither of whom attended this week's meetings, for their involvement in the Martinez scandal, with several callers demanding their resignations. So far, the two men have refused to step down. Both chaired high-profile committees that dealt with housing and homelessness before being stripped of their duties this week.

De León defended himself in a television interview with Univision, saying he "will not resign."

"I'm so sorry. I am extremely sorry, and that is why I apologize to all my people, to my entire community, for the damage caused by the painful words that were carried out that day last year," he told "Noticiero Univision" anchor León Krauze, according to a transcript released by the network.

"No, I will not resign, because there is a lot of work ahead," de León said.

Hundreds of people from L.A.'s Oaxacan community, along with leaders from Indigenous communities across California, protest at City Hall on Oct. 15. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

During Wednesday’s meeting, a representative from the L.A. County Business Federation — an alliance of 220 organizations representing over 410,000 employers in the city — delivered a stark message to Cedillo and de León.

“Your residents and our own colleagues have spoken,” she said. “It’s time for you to step down so that our city can move forward and begin to heal and finish tackling the many important issues that have been placed on hold because of your refusal to do the right thing for the city. You’re proving yourself completely unfit for office, and we’re calling on you to step down now."

Christian Green, a sociology and African American history professor at Cal State University, said during Tuesday’s meeting that the past week was a “total disgrace and disheartening,” adding it was mind-boggling to see Cedillo and de León maintain their seats on the council.

“We deserve more than an apology,” Green said. "We keep talking about the word 'healing.' But we cannot heal without facing the truth. What these elected officials did was revolting, repelling, repulsive, sickening, uninviting and unsavory."

Khansa Jones-Muhammad, a Black commissioner on L.A.'s reparations task force, called in Tuesday in her capacity as a regular citizen, decrying the “institutional racism” that still exists. “Racism from the city's leadership will in no way be tolerated by Black Angelenos,” she said.

Anger flares at a Los Angeles City Council meeting on Oct. 11. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Dozens of angry callers — many using expletives and insults — flooded the meetings, giving credence to the perception that the relationship between the Black and Latino communities is in an especially precarious state. One caller used clown music to mock the chamber, while others suggested the removal of the entire council.

Several callers raised past grievances relating to systemic racism, while others called the chamber complicit with the actions of their Hispanic colleagues who had been caught on tape.

Callers sharply criticized acting President Mitch O'Farrell for not allowing the hearings to go forward in person, with one describing him as “cowardly.” O'Farrell had justified moving the hearings online after Councilman Mike Bonin, who delivered an emotional speech at an Oct. 11 meeting addressing racist comments that Martinez made about his young son, tested positive for COVID in the hours after that meeting. Bonin was in close physical contact with several other council members.

But not all callers were against de León and Cedillo remaining on the council. A woman who didn't identify herself asked de León not to resign. “[He] has done a great job, and his real voters in his district respect him,” she said. “I know the pressure on him is great with the L.A. City Council, [and his critics] acting like he killed someone.”

Former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The virtual forums did not stop dozens of protesters on Tuesday and Wednesday from making their voices heard outside City Hall.

“No resignations, no meeting!” protesters chanted, with some attempting to force their way into City Hall. Police officers in riot gear were able to push them back without incident.

Cedillo and de León, along with labor union leader Ron Herrera, who has also since resigned, were present in the room in 2021 when Martinez referred to white council member Bonin’s 7-year-old son, who is Black, as “parece changuito,” or “that little monkey.”

“They’re raising him like a little white kid,” Martinez can be heard saying in the audio. "I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner, and then I'll bring him back." She also referred to Bonin, who is gay, as a “little bitch.”

A female caller at Tuesday’s meeting who did not identify herself by name vented frustration over the remarks. “This is nothing new for us. We’ve dealt with this kind of specific racism towards Black Americans from the Latino community before,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with it for a long time.”

The recording of the three powerful politicians discussing with a labor leader how to maintain their grip on power and expand Latino influence in the city has plunged the council into turmoil, and with Martinez’s resignation could dramatically reshape it. Cedillo, who lost his bid for a third term in June, is leaving office in December. De León is not up for reelection this year.

L.A. City Council members Gil Cedillo, front left, and Kevin de León at the council meeting on Oct. 11. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

A group of protesters affiliated with Black Lives Matter has been camping near de León’s home in Eagle Rock since Sunday morning to ramp up the pressure on the embattled council member to resign. They also want a review of redistricting decisions and other policies affecting the Black community that the council worked on.

“What came out of the recordings we heard last week was clear evidence that our city’s redistricting process was manipulated for personal political gain,” said council member Nithya Raman, who successfully pushed for a city charter amendment that created an independent redistricting commission.

Council member Paul Krekorian now has the unenviable task of restoring trust in the City Council after being voted unanimously to be the next president. On Tuesday, he described this moment as “one of the most challenging times” the city has ever faced and said it was time for Angelenos to begin to heal.

“I just need to reiterate that we just can’t allow two members who are in a position now of having dishonored their offices to hold the business of the city hostage,” said Krekorian, who has vowed to advance tangible steps to ensure that the power of the council president is reduced and not increased.

“It’s a privilege to serve in City Hall,” he said. “It’s a privilege to serve in any kind of public service. And we have that privilege. We have to commit ourselves to setting aside the differences that divide us, setting aside the idea that we serve a faction or a group or a neighborhood at the expense of others. Los Angeles can’t afford that kind of thinking anymore. We have to recognize that you serve all of the people of Los Angeles.”

Cheating scandal rocks fishing world after lead weights found in winning catch

Natalie Stechyson - Oct 4,2022 - CBC

With tens of thousands in prize money and the integrity of anglers hanging on the line, a walleye fishing tournament in Ohio turned ugly after an apparent cheating scandal was uncovered last week.

An expletive-laced video posted to social media shows Jason Fischer, tournament director for the Lake Erie Walleye Trail (LEWT), cutting open the winning catch of five walleye on Friday and finding lead weights and prepared fish fillets inside them.

"We've got weights in fish!" Fischer shouts in the video, before winding up his arm and gesturing at the anglers to leave. "Get out of here!" he shouts at the would-be winners. In the background, people in the crowd shout "call the cops" and accuse the men of theft.

The winning anglers, Jacob Runyan, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Chase Cominsky, of Hermitage, Penn., were immediately disqualified. They were in line to win about $39,000 Cdn, according to CNN.

The video shows Fischer urging Runyan to leave for his own safety as people hurled insults at him. According to news site Cleveland.com, Cominsky had already locked himself inside his truck in the parking lot.

Previously failed polygraphs: reports

The duo had previously won several other LEWT competitions, according to Toledo newspaper The Blade, and have earned a "considerable" amount of prize money in the past. A Facebook post from February, for instance, announces Runyan and Cominsky as the winners of The 2021 Walleye Slam. The Slam's website lists Runyan as the 2021 winner for catching a fish weighing 12.79 pounds

The pair had been previously disqualified from a 2021 competition for failing a polygraph test, according to an article from Cleveland.com. The news site reports that all the big winners are required to take the test.

The Global Polygraph Network notes that polygraphs can be administered in fishing tournaments to "determine whether the winning anglers have followed the tournament rules, caught the winning fish personally (ie. hook and hand violations) and during tournament hours, used unapproved lures, or weighted or altered the fish."

Related video: Something fishy about Lake Erie fishing tournament

Duration 1:04

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Runyan and Cominsky later passed the lie-detector test that allowed them to win the Walleye Slam.

"I knew we would pass the Walleye Slam test," Runyan told Cleveland.com in 2021. "Our reputation means the world to us and we would never cheat."


From left, Rossford, Ohio Mayor Neil MacKinnon III, Rossford Walleye Roundup Tournament champions Jacob Runyan and Chase Cominsky, and Bass Pro Shops general manager Tony Williamson celebrate on April 16, 2022 at Bass Pro Shops in Rossford. Prosecutors in Cleveland are investigating an apparent cheating scandal involving the winning pair during a more recent lucrative walleye fishing tournament on Lake Erie.© The Blade/Isaac Ritchey/The Associated Press

'Forever tainting our sport'

In a video statement posted to Facebook Monday, an emotional Fischer called the apparent cheating "one of the most disgusting, dishonest acts that the fishing world has ever seen."

"There's always been stories about dishonesty in competition, but I personally have never seen anything quite like this — in competitive fishing, that is," Fischer said.

"The individuals involved here appear to have put greed and ego in front of anything else, forever tainting our sport."

Fischer also apologized for his use of profanity in the original video, noting that he "acted out of emotion."

He noted the information from Friday's tournament has been turned over to the Ohio Division of Wildlife, which will handle the case and "any potential criminal action from this point forward." The division enforces fishing regulations in the state.

A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources told The Associated Press on Monday that the agency's officers gathered evidence from the tournament and were preparing a report for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office.

In an email statement to CBC News Tuesday night, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Michael O'Malley said his staff had met with officers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources that day.

"I take all crime seriously, including attempted felony theft at a fishing tournament. These individuals will be held accountable," he said.

LEBANON

Banks close indefinitely after «attacks» by people demanding to withdraw their funds in the face of the crisis

Banks in Lebanon will close their doors indefinitely following "attacks" in recent days, the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) has announced, after the latest incidents in which a number of people broke into branches to demand the withdrawal of their funds in the face of restrictions on the delivery of cash due to the crisis.


A Lebanese policeman in front of a bank window in the capital Beirut. - Marwan Naamani/dpa© Provided by News 360

"In the face of the attacks on banks, all banking agencies in the country will close their doors and focus for now on guaranteeing their services through ATMs for individuals and customer service for companies," the organization said.

NOT ROBBERY; EXPROPRIATION

Related video: Lebanon’s Banks Remain Shut Down Following Robberies by Angry Depositors
Duration 8:10
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ABL sources quoted by the Lebanese daily 'L'Orient le Jour' have pointed out that several banks had already closed their doors during the day on Thursday in the face of the latest incidents, following the three-day closure in September to protest recent violent incidents in several branches in the country, where several people have burst in armed or by force to manage to withdraw part of their savings.

The entities have imposed since 2019 tough restrictions on the withdrawal of foreign currency in the face of the severe economic crisis in the country, which has effectively led to an impediment for many people to withdraw their savings, at a time when about three quarters of the population have fallen below the poverty line.

The country has been plunged into a serious crisis for years, a situation deepened by the August 2020 explosions in the port of the capital, Beirut, the coronavirus pandemic and the political situation, with tensions that have paralyzed the government for months. In addition, the Lebanese pound has plummeted over the past few months, leading the World Bank to state in June 2021 that the crisis is one of the worst recorded globally since the mid-19th century.

Rare toad fight similar to landmark endangered species case

 This photo provided by the Center for Biological Diversity shows a juba skipper, a subspecies of skippers, in the meadows at Baltazor Hot Spring in Humboldt County, Nev., on Sept. 13, 2021. The Center for Biological Diversity is suing to block a geothermal power plant near Denio, Nev., in an effort to protect the the bleached sandhill skipper, a close relative of the juba, which lives only in this area.

 (Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity via AP, File)

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The unusual circumstances that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on the Endangered Species Act in 1978 have not surfaced much since then.

But the stage is being set in Nevada for another potentially significant test of the nation’s premier wildlife protection law in a legal battle over a geothermal power plant with similarities to the precedent-setting fight over the snail darter and a dam in Tennessee nearly a half century ago.

Even smaller than that tiny species of perch, the endangered critter in Nevada is a quarter-sized toad found only in high-desert wetlands fed by underground springs on federal land.

Citing the potential threat posed by the water-pumping power plant, the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Dixie Valley toad endangered on a temporary, emergency basis in April — only the second time in 20 years it’s taken such action.

And while the geothermal plant would generate electricity by spinning turbines with steam tapped from hot water beneath the earth instead of hydropower harnessed from rivers, both projects were born with the promise of producing some of the cleanest, renewable energy of their time.

Decades ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger seemed to anticipate the significance of the 1978 ruling and controversy that would follow when he authored the 6-3 majority opinion on the snail darter just five years after President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.

“It may seem curious to some,” Burger said, “that the survival of a relatively small number of three-inch fish among all the countless millions of species extant would require the permanent halting of a virtually completed dam for which Congress has expended more than $100 million.”

“We conclude, however, that the explicit provisions of the Endangered Species Act require precisely that result,” he wrote in the case pitting the fish against the Tennessee Valley Authority.

More than four decades later, a similar scenario is unfolding 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno where environmentalists and tribal leaders are trying to block the geothermal plant Ormat Technologies agreed to temporarily stop building in August — four months before it was scheduled to start producing power.

The Bureau of Land Management rushed to approve the Nevada project during the final days of former President Donald Trump's administration. But President Joe Biden's administration continues to defend it as part of its own agenda to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Environmental groups insist they share the president’s goals to combat climate change. But they say the bureau ignored repeated warnings from state and federal wildlife biologists, the U.S. Navy and even its own experts about potential harm to the Dixie Valley toad.

“The expert agency, FWS, has determined that Ormat’s project is likely to cause extinction of the species — the very catastrophe the Endangered Species is intended to prevent,” the Center for Biological Diversity's lawyers wrote in recent filings in federal court in Reno.

The case already has made one trip to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and seems likely to return in the months ahead.

On Aug. 1, the appellate court refused to reinstate a previous injunction temporarily blocking construction, concluding further delay would make it “all but certain” Ormat would be unable to meet a Dec. 31 contract deadline.

Ormat, which already had invested $68 million, argued failure to meet the deadline would cost it another $30 million over 20 years and could jeopardize the project altogether. But later that day, Ormat agreed to suspend all work pending consultation between the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

41 Indian narrow-headed softshell turtle hatch in United States
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Like the snail darter, the conflict differs from most battles over endangered species. They typically target broad government management plans for things like hunting grizzly bears, energy exploration near sage grouse habitat, logging around northern spotted owls and dam operations on Pacific salmon rivers. Less common are disputes over specific projects like TVA’s dam or Ormat’s geothermal plant.

Now, with the full force of the Endangered Species Act at play, Ormat's opponents are zeroing in on the section of the law the Supreme Court cited in prohibiting construction of the Tellico Dam in 1978.

“The case is analogous to (that case), where it was discovered late into the construction of a $100 million federal dam project that completing and operating the dam would eradicate a rare species of minnow,” environmental lawyers wrote Sept. 16.

They said Congress specifically mandated that federal agencies secure Fish and Wildlife Service approval before taking any action that could jeopardize a species to “prevent a situation like the one presented in TVA” and “avoid an outcome in which the only choices left to an agency are to violate the Endangered Species Act or scrap a virtually completed project.”

Last week, a judge granted a request from the Bureau of Land Management and Ormat to extend the deadline for their responses until Oct. 28.

Central to the Nevada dispute is uncertainty about effects groundwater pumping will have on surface water levels and temperatures.

Ormat insists water it would pump and return to the ground will come from a different aquifer than feeds the wetlands. But environmentalists say the bureau ignored every caution flag raised en route to the project's approval.

"BLM disregarded repeated warnings and objections from scientific experts and nearly every other federal and state agency involved in the project’s development, all of whom warned the project would likely dry up, or at the very least degrade, the hot springs that the Dixie Valley toad depends on for its survival, and cautioned that the project’s monitoring and mitigation plan would be ineffective.”

They cite internal documents that show:

— The Navy, whose Fallon Naval Air Station borders the site, characterized the plan as “inadequate and incomplete.”

— UFWS said it was “a plan describing the development of a plan.”

— BLM staff acknowledged the estimates were “rough guesses.”

In May, the BLM said informal consultation had started and produced a draft biological assessment concluding the project “is likely to adversely affect" the toad. But the FWS said the BLM's assessment was ”inadequate to initiate formal consultation ... missing major elements and lacking necessary analysis.”

The toad is in the spotlight, but similar disputes are brewing at other Nevada green energy projects.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the FWS in August to list a rare butterfly where Ormat plans another geothermal project near the Oregon line.

Last October, the agency formally proposed listing a desert wildflower as endangered where Ioneer USA wants to dig a lithium mine halfway between Reno and Las Vegas for the mineral essential for electric car batteries.

And a U.S. judge has scheduled a hearing Jan. 5 in Reno for another lawsuit brought by conservationists, tribes and a rancher challenging a bigger mine Lithium Nevada plans near the Oregon line.

That case has focused primarily on threats to groundwater and cultural resources near a site where tribes say their ancestors were massacred by U.S. troops in 1865. But last month, Western Watersheds Project petitioned for endangered species listing of a tiny snail that lives nearby.

In the original 1978 snail darter case, the Supreme Court found “an irreconcilable conflict" between operation of the dam and compliance with the act.

After it ruled, Congress exempted the dam from the Endangered Species Act altogether. But the court's precedent remains, and it's now front and center in Nevada.

“It is clear from the Act’s legislative history," the 1978 ruling said, “that Congress intended to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction — whatever the cost.”

Scott Sonner, The Associated Press

Loo rolled: Japan’s oldest toilet damaged as driver backed up

Worker mistakenly accelerated while the car was in reverse, crashing into the building’s roughly 500-year old wooden door

The Toyota was reversed into the ancient communal toilet by a man who works for the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association. Photograph: Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education

Justin McCurry in TokyoTue 18 Oct 2022

Japan’s oldest existing toilet, dating back hundreds of years, has been damaged after it was accidentally rammed by a car driven by an employee of an organisation that preserves cultural relics.

The 30-year-old man, who works for the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association, damaged the communal toilet, located inside Tofukuji temple in Kyoto, after he mistakenly accelerated while the vehicle was in reverse, crashing into the building’s wooden door, according to media reports.

The man, who has not been named, immediately called police after the incident on Monday morning. No one else was inside the Zen Buddhist temple at the time of the accident, and the driver was unhurt.


The sento owners making group bathing in Japan cool again

The “tosu” restroom, an important cultural property, was built during the Muromachi period about 500 years ago for use by trainee monks, according to the public broadcaster NHK.

Its 2-metre-tall double door and interior pillars were damaged in the incident, the Sora News 24 website reported.

A photo in the Sankei Shimbun newspaper showed the car – a 20-year-old Toyota WiLL Vi – inside the building surrounded by what was left of the wooden doors.

The temple, which could accommodate up to 100 monks at a time, contains a row of about 20 toilets, according to the Asahi Shimbun. The newspaper said the conveniences were still in use as recently as the start of the Meiji era (1868-1912).

Fortunately for the hapless driver, who had been visiting the ancient capital on business, experts say the damage can be repaired.

Toshio Ishikawa, director of the temple’s research institute, said he was “stunned” by the extent of the damage, but relieved that no one had been injured. “We’d like to restore it before the autumn foliage season, but it will probably take until the new year [to repair it],” he told the Kyoto Shimbun.

While the building is usually closed to visitors, the rows of toilets can be viewed through gaps in the building’s exterior.

The toilets – little more than circular holes cut into blocks of stone – are a far cry from the modern-day Japanese toilets that continue to fascinate foreign visitors.

While they did not feature bidet or drying functions, the temple’s toilets were at least located in a convenient place for monks who spent many hours trying to achieve Zen enlightenment – right next to the meditation hall.

'Swift-footed lizard' named Massachusetts state dinosaur


BOSTON (AP) — A “swift-footed lizard” that lived millions of years ago in what is now Massachusetts has been named the state's official dinosaur under legislation signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Charlie Baker.

Podokesaurus holyokensis received more than 60% of the roughly 35,000 votes cast in a social media campaign initiated early last year by state Rep. Jack Lewis, beating out another dinosaur that was also discovered in the state.

“If I think about my own childhood ... the thing that got me interested in science in the first place was dinosaurs," the Republican governor said at the signing ceremony at the Museum of Science in Boston, with some of the state's leading paleontologists standing behind him. “And the main reason they got me interested is because of their majesty, and their ferocity and their almost alien-being status. As a kid, they just created wonder."

Lewis came up with the idea of a state dinosaur while trying to find engaging projects for the Cub Scout den he led during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project did not just get people involved in science, but also taught them about the legislative process, the Framingham Democrat said.

Podokesaurus holyokensis, which means “swift-footed lizard of Holyoke,” was discovered in western Massachusetts in 1910 by Mount Holyoke College professor Mignon Talbot, “the first woman to find, discover, name and describe a dinosaur," Lewis said.

“Hopefully if this project inspires just a couple young girls to grow up and explore paleontology, it would have been all worth it,” he said.

The species was 3 to 6 feet (around 1 to 2 meters) in length, weighed approximately 90 pounds (40 kilograms), and was estimated to run 9 to 12 mph (14 to 19 kph), Lewis has said.

Baker called the creature “a tough, spunky underdog from Holyoke."

About a dozen other states also have official state dinosaurs, Lewis said.

The Associated Press

NORTH VANCOUVER

Archaeologist Bob Muckle digs deeper into shelf-worthy new book at MONOVA

Anyone who has closely followed the adventures of Capilano University professor and archaeologist Bob Muckle will be familiar with his groundbreaking discovery in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve.

Now, those few who have long awaited the finer details on his unexpected unearthing of an unknown 20th century Japanese settlement can dig deeper into the story, thanks to the release of Forgotten Things: The Story of the Seymour Valley Archaeology Project.

Muckle's much anticipated book takes the reader through the entirety of the two-decade archaeology project, from the very beginning when the idea was first formed, through his work in the field with school students, the discovery and excavation of archaeological sites and to the final disposition of the artifacts in museums.

Approachable and interesting, with layman's terms, illustrations and student anecdotes, the book belongs on the shelves of historians, students, archaeologists and the general public alike.

"It is an interesting and fairly unique book of its kind in the sense that its target is both university students, as a case study in archaeology, but I also wrote it with the public in mind," said Muckle.

"Anybody who is really interested in archaeology as a whole, and how we do our work, and how we think and how we figure things out, it will be interesting to them. Alongside anybody who is really interested in local history, particularly in North Vancouver."

Muckle said the book answers his most often fielded questions, including what his biggest challenges had been, what his other excavations have produced, and what artifact had been his most interesting to find. They are questions he expects to delve into once more on Wednesday (Oct. 19) evening, when he hosts a talk and a Q&A session on the book at the Museum of North Vancouver.

Afterwards guests can obtain signed copies of the book and wander the galleries of the museum, where much of the Muckle's noteworthy findings call home.

Forgotten Things: Seymour Valley Archaeology with Bob Muckle takes place at MONOVA, 115 West Esplanade in North Vancouver, on Oct. 19, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., tickets are $12-$20 and can be purchased on the museum's website.

Mina Kerr-Lazenby, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, North Shore News