New York Liberty win first WNBA championship, beating Minnesota 67-62
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Liberty finally have a WNBA championship after beating the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime of a decisive Game 5 on Sunday night.
Jonquel Jones scored 17 points to lead New York, which was one of the original franchises in the league. The Liberty made the WNBA Finals five times before, losing each one, including last season. This time they wouldn’t be denied, although it took an extra five minutes.
The win gave the city of New York its first basketball title since 1973 when the Knicks won the NBA championship.
With stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu struggling on offense, other players stepped up. Leonie Fiebich started off OT with a 3-pointer, and then Nyara Sabally had a steal for a layup to make it 65-60 and bring the sellout crowd to a frenzied state.
Minnesota didn’t score in OT until Kayla McBride hit two free throws with 1:51 left. The Lynx missed all six of their field goal attempts in overtime. After Ionescu missed a shot with 21 seconds left, her 18th miss on 19 shot attempts, the Lynx had one last chance, but Bridget Carleton missed a 3-pointer with 16 seconds left.
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Israel says it will target Hezbollah's financial arm and begins striking Beirut
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel's military announced Sunday it is now taking aim at the Lebanon-based Hezbollah's financial arm and will attack a “large number of targets” in Beirut and elsewhere. Explosions began in Beirut's southern suburbs about an hour later.
Evacuation warnings affected southern Beirut, the eastern Bekaa valley and parts of southern Lebanon. AP video showed strikes near Lebanon’s only airport but it continued to operate.
The strikes will target al-Qard al-Hassan "all over Lebanon,” a senior Israeli intelligence official said. Al-Qard al-Hassan is a Hezbollah unit that's used to pay operatives of the Iran-backed militant group and help buy arms, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with army regulations.
The registered nonprofit, sanctioned by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, provides financial services and is also used by ordinary Lebanese. Its name in Arabic means “the benevolent loan,” and Hezbollah has used it to entrench its support among the Shiite population in a country where state and financial institutions have failed in recent years.
“It’s a big deal,” said David Asher, an expert on illicit financing who has worked at the U.S. Defense and State Departments and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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Environmental delegates gather in Colombia for a conference on dwindling global biodiversity
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world’s plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats.
The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity.
The accord includes 23 measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.
“We hope that (COP16) will be an opportunity for countries to get to work and focus on implementation, monitoring and compliance mechanisms that then have to be developed in their countries and in their national plans,” said Laura Rico, campaign director at Avaaz, a global activism nonprofit.
All evidence shows dramatic decline in species abundance and distribution, said Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity at The Nature Conservancy.
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Trump works the fry station and holds a drive-thru news conference at a Pennsylvania McDonald's
FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump manned the fry station at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania on Sunday before staging an impromptu news conference, answering questions through the drive-thru window.
As reporters and aides watched, an employee showed Trump how to dunk baskets of fries in oil, salt the fries and put them into boxes using a scoop. Trump, a well-known fan of fast food and a notorious germophobe, expressed amazement that he didn't have to touch the fries with his hands.
“It requires great expertise, actually, to do it right and to do it fast,” Trump said with a grin, putting away his suit jacket and wearing an apron over his shirt and tie.
The visit came as he's tried to counter Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' accounts on the campaign of working at the fast-food chain while in college, an experience that Trump has claimed — without offering evidence — never happened.
A large crowd lined the street outside the restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, which is part of Bucks County, a key swing voter area north of Philadelphia. The restaurant itself was closed to the public for Trump's visit. The former president later attended an evening town hall in Lancaster and the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.
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Trump boosts a hard-right Christian worldview that paints the election as 'spiritual warfare'
LIVONIA, Mich. (AP) — Standing before hundreds of people in a suburban Detroit chapel, at an event organized by Donald Trump's campaign, Marlin J. Reed declared that God had called on them to vote for the former president.
“You are being called upon to stand up and face down this darkness and face down these lies and refuse to stop speaking, but to speak up and to stand up and make it known that we are not going to take this," said Reed, the pastor of New Wine Glory Ministries in Livonia, Michigan. “We are not going to lie down, we are not going to allow you to take our country and take our rights and our freedoms.”
“Even if it means war, we are not going to allow you to take it,” Reid said to cheers.
Trump's campaign has directly nourished a fusion of hard-right politics and theology to energize evangelical Christians in swing states. The campaign has launched a “Believers for Trump” program and conducted several calls with conservative faith leaders, overwhelmingly evangelical pastors, on how to mobilize their congregations for Trump. The Republican nominee plans an event Monday near Charlotte, North Carolina, with allied pastors.
The “Believers for Trump” initiative includes outreach to Black voters, a traditionally Democratic constituency with which Trump has tried to increase his support. The Oct. 5 stop in Michigan included Black speakers such as Ben Carson, a longtime Trump surrogate who was his housing secretary. Carson urged evangelicals not to shy away from what he called “corrupt” earthly politics.
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Harris urges Black churchgoers in Georgia to head out to vote and gets an assist from Stevie Wonder
JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Kamala Harris on Sunday summoned Black churchgoers to turn out at the polls and got a big assist from music legend Stevie Wonder, who rallied congregants with a rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song."
Harris visited two Atlanta area churches as part of a nationwide push known as “souls to the polls." It's a mobilization effort led by the National Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders, which is sending representatives across battleground states to encourage early voting.
After services, buses took congregants straight to early polling places.
At both churches, Harris delivered a message about kindness and lifting people up rather than insulting them, trying to set up an implicit contrast with Republican Donald Trump's brash style. With just 16 days left until Election Day, Harris is running out of time to get across her message to a public still getting to know her after a truncated campaign.
“There is so much at stake right now,” she said at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. “Our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try to suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up. And that spirit is very much at stake in these next 16 days.”
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Voting groups that got a boost from Harris' candidacy are still working to persuade voters of color
WASHINGTON (AP) — Left-leaning voter engagement groups that saw a surge in support and energy after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats' White House nominee are aligning with a key pillar of her campaign in the final stretch before Election Day — trying to turn out uncommitted voters of color.
But many of those groups are finding they still have much work to do to introduce Harris and her policies. The challenges reflect Harris' late campaign start, as well as attempts to overcome the earlier lack of enthusiasm for a rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump. They also reflect inroads that Republicans have been trying to make in particular with Black and Latino voters.
Activists with Siembra NC, a grassroots organization that focuses on Latino communities in North Carolina, found many potential voters are willing to vote in downballot races for state and local offices while leaving the top of the ticket blank. Their feeling is that the closer-to-home races affect their daily lives, while neither Trump nor Harris addresses all their desires in a presidential candidate.
“What we’ve had to do is a lot of conversations around trust-building, and that takes time,” said Kelly Morales, the group’s co-director. “It’s really about helping folks see that not casting a vote is also a political decision.”
The organization hosted a get-out-the vote event followed by a block party in late September in Greensboro. Labor policies, Harris’ position on the border and Trump’s rhetoric about the Latino community were top issues, Morales said.
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Cubans struggle as power not fully restored days after blackout and hurricane hits island
HAVANA (AP) — Many Cubans waited in anguish late Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after a country-wide blackout. Their concerns were heightened as Hurricane Oscar slammed into Cuba's eastern coast, lashing it with heavy wind and rain.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a press conference he hopes the country's electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.
But he recognized that Oscar, which hit Cuba's eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba's recovery since it will touch a “region of strong (electricity) generation.” Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.
Rain and thunderstorms were reported in Cuba's eastern provinces and strong two-meter swells were hitting the seafront promenade in the city of Baracoa, near where Oscar made landfall. No deaths have been registered so far, but local media reported damage to roofs and walls.
Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.
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Man charged in NYC subway chokehold death set to stand trial
NEW YORK (AP) — To some New Yorkers, he’s the white vigilante who choked an innocent Black man to death on the subway. To others, he’s the U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose attempt to subdue a mentally ill man ended in tragedy.
A Manhattan jury will soon have its say on Daniel Penny, who is charged with manslaughter for placing Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on May 1, 2023. Jury selection in Penny’s trial begins Monday.
The court proceedings, which are expected to last six weeks, will shed light on a killing that was a flashpoint in the nation’s debate over racial injustice and crime.
Neely's death also divided a city grappling with what to do about people experiencing mental health crises in a transit system where some subway straphangers still don't feel safe, despite a drop in violent crime rates.
“There is simply no reason for Jordan Neeley to be dead today,” David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “So many systems failed Jordan and contributed to his death."
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Thelma Mothershed Wair, a member of the Little Rock Nine who integrated an Arkansas school, has died
Thelma Mothershed Wair, one of the nine Black students who integrated a high school in Arkansas' capital city of Little Rock in 1957 while a mob of white segregationists yelled threats and insults, has died at age 83.
Mothershed Wair died Saturday at a hospital in Little Rock after having complications from multiple sclerosis, her sister, Grace Davis, confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press.
The students who integrated Central High School were known as the Little Rock Nine.
For three weeks in September 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block the Black students from enrolling in Central High, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated classrooms were unconstitutional. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into school on Sept. 25, 1957.
Davis said she was enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville when her sister and the other students — Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls — integrated Central High School.
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