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Mike Preston: Ravens OC Todd Monken makes a strong first impression | COMMENTARY

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken says his job description is simple, but the process is ever-changing.The Ravens hired Monken on Feb. 14 to replace Greg Roman, and last week was the first chance to see him at work with a full roster during the team’s three-day mandatory minicamp.There are still questions about how Monken is going to rescue the offense’s passing game, but there was no doubt about who ran the show this offseason.The Ravens haven’t had an offensive coordinator as demanding and demonstrative since Gary Kubiak put up record numbers with the Ravens in 2014.“I’ve always tried to bring a certain amount of energy, a certain amount of personality, a certain amount of juice to whatever I’m doing, " said Monken, 57. “The bottom line is that you’re paid to do a job. Our job is to score points. So you fight like heck every day to put the pieces together and do it the best way you know how, but the players make you come ...

Multiple tornadoes leave 1 dead and nearly 2 dozen injured in Mississippi

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG and ROGELIO SOLIS (Associated Press/Report for America)LOUIN, Miss. (AP) — Multiple tornadoes swept through Mississippi overnight, killing one and injuring nearly two dozen, officials said Monday. State emergency workers were still working with counties to assess the damage from storms in which high temperatures and hail in some areas accompanied tornadoes. The death and injuries were reported by officials in eastern Mississippi’s Jasper County. The small, rural town of Louin bore the brunt of the damage. Drone footage and photos showed wide expanses of debris-covered terrain, decimated homes and mangled trees. At least one person was lifted from the wreckage in a stretcher. Standing in front of his damaged home on Monday, Lester Campbell told The Associated Press that his cousin, 67-year-old George Jean Hayes, is the person who died. Reached by phone Monday, Jones County Coroner Don Sumrall said Hayes was pronounced dead at 2:18 a.m. from “mult...

Inside the deepening rivalry between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom says there’s no chance “on God’s green earth” he’s running for president in 2024, but he wants to make clear that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running, is “weak” and “undisciplined” and “will be crushed by Donald Trump.”DeSantis, meanwhile, likes to mock Newsom’s apparent “fixation” on Florida while insisting that the Democratic governor’s “leftist government” is destroying California.Welcome to one of the fiercest rivalries in U.S. politics, featuring dueling term-limited governors who represent opposite ends of the ideological spectrum and lead two of the nation’s largest and most influential states. Newsom and DeSantis will not face each other on any ballot in 2024, but in many ways, they are defining the debate from their corners of America as the presidential primary season gets underway.Newsom addressed his contempt for DeSantis and his loyalty to President Joe Biden in ...

Sudanese official urges international probe into violence against residents in Darfur

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — The governor of Darfur on Tuesday called for an international investigation into violence against residents of the region that witnessed some of the worst battles in Sudan’s ongoing conflict.Mini Arko Minawi urged the U.N. Security Council to allow the International Criminal Court to probe “crimes and assassinations” that took place in the western region over the past two months.Sudan descended into chaos after fighting erupted in mid-April between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.The conflict, which capped months of tensions between rival generals, killed more than 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others, according to Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim. It forced more than 2.2 million people to flee their homes to safer areas inside Sudan and to neighboring nations.The fighting has centered in the capital, Khartoum, but spread elsewhere in the African country, inc...

Southeast Asian nations move ahead with plan for navy drills near disputed area of South China Sea

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is moving ahead with plans for joint naval exercises in September, the first held by countries in the bloc on their own, at a time when several are responding more strongly to increasing Chinese assertiveness in the area.The Indonesian military said Tuesday that ASEAN member countries held an initial planning conference for the joint exercises, to be held Sept. 18-25 near a disputed area of the South China Sea, despite skepticism from Cambodia.China says the vast majority of the South China Sea lies within its “nine-dash line,” which it uses to demarcate what it considers its maritime border. That has brought it into tense standoffs with the ASEAN nations of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, with Chinese fishing boats and military vessels becoming more aggressive in the disputed waters.Indonesia’s military chief, Adm. Yudo Margono, initially said the exercises would take place in an ar...

Police in P.E.I issue Amber Alert issued for 9-year-old autistic girl

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

EGLINGTON, P.E.I. — Prince Edward Island RCMP officials say a missing nine-year-old girl has triggered an Amber Alert.Kings County RCMP say Jazlyn Blaisdell, who is autistic, is believed to have been abducted by a man considered to armed and dangerous.They say she was last seen at 1:30 a.m. in Eglington, P.E.I.Police describe Jazlyn as being four-feet-eight-inches tall, with long brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a green tank top and green camouflage shorts.An RCMP notice on Facebook also says she is believed to be in a blue Mitsubishi SUV with Andrew Blaisdell, who is considered armed and dangerous. The suspect is described as five-foot-eight, with a slim build, 120 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, multiple tattoos, wearing a white ball cap, black jacket, blue jeans, and red shoes.The police say if spotted, do not try to apprehend the suspect and call 9-1-1 instead.This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 20,2023.The Canadian Press

Ukraine downs Russian drones but some get through due to gaps in air protection

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 Shahed exploding drones launched by Russia early Tuesday, most of them in the Kyiv region, officials said, in a bombardment that exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war.Russian forces mostly targeted the region around the Ukrainian capital in a nighttime drone attack lasting around three hours, officials said, but Ukrainian air defenses in the area shot down about two dozen of them.The attack was part of a wider bombardment of Ukrainian regions that extended as far as the Lviv region in the west of the country, near Poland.The Shahed drones made it all the way to Lviv because of the inability of air defense assets to cover such a broad area, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said.Air defense systems are mostly dedicated to protecting major cities, key infrastructure facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the front line, he said.“There is a general lack of air defense asset...

Ukrainian refugees helped push German population up 1.3% last year

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Large numbers of refugees from Ukraine fleeing Russia’s war fueled a 1.3% rise in Germany’s population last year, helping push up the number of inhabitants in the European Union’s most populous country to more than 84.4 million, official statistics showed Tuesday.Germany’s population expanded by 1.12 million in 2022, the Federal Statistical Office said. That compared with an increase of just 0.1%, or 82,000 people, the previous year.All of Germany’s 16 states saw their populations increase. The largest proportional increases were in the country’s two biggest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, which both saw rises of 2.1%.At the end of last year, Germany was home to 12.3 million people with only foreign citizenship, the statistics office said. Of those, 1.34 million Turkish citizens — a substantial minority in the country for decades — made up the biggest single group.There were also 1.05 million Ukrainians, an increase of 915,000 compared w...

Germany’s intelligence agency says there’s been a rise in far-right extremism in 2022

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday that it has recorded a new high in crimes by political extremists in 2022, with the far right posing the biggest security threat to the country.Figures published by the BfV agency show that there were almost 2,000 more instances of cases linked to extremists of all political shades — 35,452 in 2022, compared to 33,476 in 2021. Meanwhile, the number of crimes classified as violent crimes dipped by just over 140 — to 2,847 last year, from 2,994 the year before. The agency also counted 38,800 far-right extremists in the country last year — an increase of almost 5,000 in the overall number from 2021. The agency said it believes 14,000 of those individuals could potentially resort to violence. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser expressed particular concern at a rise in attacks on refugees and migrants and said the country should not underestimate the danger posed “by right-wing extremism and right-wing terrorism.”Faeser ...

French investigators search the offices of Paris Olympic organizers in suspected corruption probe

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

PARIS (AP) — French investigators are searching the headquarters of the Paris Olympic organizers in a probe into suspected corruption, according to the national financial prosecutor’s office.The Paris organizing committee said in a statement that a search is under way at their headquarters in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, and that “Paris 2024 is cooperating with the investigators to facilitate their investigations.” It would not comment further.An official with the financial prosecutor’s office said the searches are linked to two investigations based on information provided by an anti-corruption agency. The official was not authorized to be publicly named according to prosecutor’s office policy.___AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsThe Associated Press