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The third anniversary of Tovuz clashes and its message for the ongoing peace process between Baku and Yerevan

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

On 12-17 July 2020, a series of clashes took place between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan after the former launched a sudden attack against the position of Azerbaijani armed forces with heavy artillery along the state border straddling Azerbaijan’s Tovuz and Armenia’s Tavush regions. This was the first major escalation between the sides since the April War of 2016 and particularly since Nikol Pashinyan took over the political leadership in Armenia in mid-2018. The clashes, involving heavy artillery as well as aerial drones, resulted in the deaths of several military personnel and civilians along with the destruction of infrastructure in the border region, writes Vasif Huseynov.The Tovuz clashes came on the heels of a series of provocative moves by the Armenian government, in particular, the so-called inauguration of a new leader of the separatist regime in the historical Azerbaijani city of Shusha in May 2020 with the attendance of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan...

Man struck in head with machete near Anaheim Burger King

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

Police are searching for whoever struck a man in the head with a machete near an Anaheim Burger King restaurant Wednesday night. The incident took place around 8:15 p.m. in the 800 block of North Brookhurst Street. A man was struck with a machete in Anaheim on July 12, 2023. (OnScene.TV)Officers were dispatched to investigate the possible assault along with reports of an injured male inside a nearby restaurant. Anaheim police found a victim at a Burger King who was bleeding from the head. The victim said he had been struck over the head with a machete. Los Angeles face transplant recipient recovering after drunk driver crashes into him Investigators determined the attack did not happen inside the restaurant. The unidentified male victim was transported to a UCI Medical Center in Orange with a large laceration to his head, the Police Department confirmed. No arrests had been made in connection with the incident.

Historic face transplant recipient doing well four years later

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

A Los Angeles man who underwent a historic face transplant after suffering extensive burns in a 2013 crash is recovering well and happy for a second chance at life.Robert Chelsea, 68, was driving home from church in 2013 when his car overheated, so he pulled over on the side of the freeway. While waiting for roadside assistance, a drunk driver crashed into his car, causing it to explode on impact. Chelsea suffered third-degree burns on over 50% of his body as a result.He underwent an extensive 16-hour surgery in July 2019, which he said at the time, made him the oldest person and the first African American to get a face transplant.Robert Chelsea, a Los Angeles man who underwent a historic face transplant after suffering extensive burns in a 2013 crash is recovering thanks to the surgeries providing him with a second chance at life. (KTLA)"After enduring more than 30 surgeries, three years of tests, physical and psychological evaluations, and a longer than usual wait for a donor, Che...

If you see these, push them over, Yosemite National Park says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

Have you ever passed by a rock cairn and felt the urge to knock it over? Well, officials with Yosemite National Park strongly advise that you do.Rock cairns are man-made piles of rock stacked on top of each other. According to park rangers, Leave No Trace ethics states that when recreating in wilderness spaces, the goal is to leave no signs of human impact on the land so as to respect the other creatures living in it.And while the effort and aesthetics of these rock cairns may seem too precious to ruin, oversized cairns are a mark of human impact and are distracting in a wilderness setting. Push these over, say rangers at Yosemite National ParkOfficials also say building them disturbs small insects, reptiles, and microorganisms that live on the underside of these rocks.In general, park rangers say rock cairns should only be built by trail workers and are meant for navigation, safety, and delineating new or hard-to-follow trails.Yosemite National Park advises visitors to dismantle an...

A’s second-half preview: What will it take to avoid historically bad season?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

OAKLAND — Forgive manager Mark Kotsay for the unrestrained optimism that often accompanies baseball at the close of spring training.Kotsay was sitting in the Athletics’ dugout at the Coliseum on March 26 before their Bay Bridge Series game against the Giants, talking about his team’s 102-loss 2022 season and having come through a “transition period” that gave young players some opportunity.“Our expectation this year is we’re going to go compete and find ourselves in a position to hopefully add at the break and surprise people,” Kotsay said.Fast forward to the All-Star break, with the A’s a major league-worst 25-67 as they open a 10-game homestand Friday night with a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins at the Coliseum.Besides the losing, the first half of the season saw the franchise cease negotiations with the city of Oakland for a proposed ballpark at Howard Terminal and commit to a 30,000-seat stadium in Las Vegas and the d...

Opinion: Why courts shouldn’t ban government from talking to Big Tech

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

Last Tuesday a federal judge banned communications between large parts of the federal government and social media platforms. The case was brought by two Republican attorneys general and several individuals to allege that the government has unconstitutionally censored online speech from conservatives.The issue of government interference in what social media platforms can publish is real. But the judge’s solution — widely halting contact between the government and Big Tech — is both legally dubious and practically dangerous. It’s important that online speech, irrespective of political viewpoint, flourish without the specter of censorship. But it’s also essential that the government be allowed to engage with social media giants to address manifest harms from online content.The solution lies not in this ban, but in exposing government communications with tech to scrutiny so that both parties are held accountable for ensuring that their relationships serve the public interest.The Biden a...

Real estate report reveals Silicon Valley’s weakest office markets

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

SAN JOSE — Tech layoffs and retrenchments have shoved South Bay office vacancies higher and transformed downtown San Jose and Santa Clara into the region’s weakest office markets.The worsening vacancy rates in Silicon Valley were a key revelation in a new report for the April-through-June second quarter of 2023 that was issued by CBRE, a commercial real estate firm.“The office market continued its downward trend in the second quarter of 2023,” CBRE stated in its new report.During the second quarter, the South Bay’s office vacancy rate was 18%, CBRE reported. That was worse than the 15.5% first-quarter vacancy rate for Silicon Valley as estimated by CBRE. The real estate firm defines the South Bay as Santa Clara County and the Fremont-Newark area for the purposes of the report.“Many large tech tenants continued to offload their underutilized space,” CBRE researchers stated in the quarterly report.Yet while the South Bay office vacancy rate is...

Are SF Giants a true contender? Plus more outstanding questions entering second half

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

As the San Francisco Giants embark on the second half of their season, the answer will inevitably reveal itself: What is the true version of this team? Is it the one that reeled off 10 straight wins, the one that went 18-8 in June? Or is it something closer to the middling squad that didn’t own a winning record until Memorial Day weekend?Farhan Zaidi, head of baseball operations, leans toward the former.“I think (the first half) sort of validated our belief in spring training that this was a good team,” Zaidi said. “We’ve had our ups and downs health-wise and performance-wise, but I think we are a playoff team, a playoff-caliber team.”The projection models back up Zaidi’s confidence.They are much more bullish on the Giants’ postseason chances than they were on Opening Day. Both Baseball Prospectus (62.5%) and FanGraphs (58.4%) give them better than 50-50 odds after rating their chances between 20% and 40% entering the season. At 49-41, they ...

Army veteran paralyzed from run-in with Northern California police gets $20 million settlement

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

By TRÂN NGUYỄN | Associated PressSACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man who was left paralyzed after he was slammed to the ground during a traffic stop won a $20 million settlement, one of the largest in the state’s history, officials announced Tuesday.Gregory Gross, an Army veteran who lives in Yuba City, sued the police department in 2022 after police officers used “pain compliance” techniques and expressed disbelief when he repeatedly cried out, “I can’t feel my legs.” Police officers also dismissed Gross when he said, “I can’t breathe,” while being held facedown on the lawn outside a hospital, video released by Gross’s lawyers shows.Gross was accused of driving drunk and causing a slow-speed collision in April 2020.Gross was left with a broken neck, and he underwent two surgeries to fuse his spine. He said the officers’ use of force left him unable to walk or care for himself, and he now needs round-the-clock nursing care for the rest of his life.“We are not against...

California man accused of killing 3 women in Tijuana arrested

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:59:54 GMT

LOS ANGELES  — U.S. authorities have arrested a California man accused of killing three women in the Mexican border city of Tijuana and crossing back and forth across the border after each of the deaths that occurred over the course of nearly a year starting in 2021.According to U.S. court records, 30-year-old Bryant Rivera, a resident of Los Angeles suburb Downey, was arrested July 6 on a femicide charge in the strangulation death of Angela Carolina Acosta Flores, whose body was found in a hotel room in Tijuana on Jan. 25, 2022.Mexico plans to request his extradition in order to present evidence to add charges for the deaths of two more women in Tijuana, according to court filings. Ricardo Ivan Carpio, the attorney general of the state of Baja California, said they will include new evidence found when Rivera was arrested in California. It was not immediately known if Rivera had retained an attorney.Rivera appeared in federal court Monday, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen L. Steven...