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Fentanyl overdoses, deaths among young people continue to rise in Hays County

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

HAYS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) -- More young people continue to overdose and die from fentanyl in Hays County, according to the Hays County Sheriff's Office.HCSO sent KXAN new data tracking fentanyl overdoses since January 2022. According to the data, there's been 67 total fentanyl overdoses since last January. Of those overdoses, 14 people died. HCSO Fentanyl overdoses: Juvenile - 26Adult - 27 Hays County approves additional mental health counselor for Hays CISD HCSO Fentanyl overdose deaths: Juvenile - 5Adult - 9 "Fentanyl ODs and OD deaths are continuing to trend up," the report noted. The report tracked the overdoses by every month this year: January - 5 February - 3March - 3April - 4May - 5June - 1July - 2August - 1September - 4October - 2November - 0When it comes to young people, the report said "juvenile OD and OD deaths have increased by 13% since 2022."The sheriff's office said Narcan was administered to save a life in about 40 different situations. In total, more than 80 dose...

Man sentenced to 27 years for wife's murder in Austin

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A man was sentenced to 27 years in state prison for the 2022 murder of his wife, according to court documents. Jose Villa-Denova, 49, was sentenced after pleading guilty to murder on Dec. 14. A charge of tampering with evidence was dismissed for the murder conviction. PREVIOUS: Woman at center of CLEAR Alert found dead, police say In June 2022, Austin police responded to a missing person report for Yolanda Jaimes in east Austin. Officers suspected foul play and issued a CLEAR alert for Jaimes, according to APD. After interviewing her family members, Villa-Denova was arrested and charged with tampering with evidence. Later in June, police found unidentified human remains, which were identified as Jaimes in July.

Other voices: Human intelligence must rule: AI needs limits impose by people

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

Days before Sam Altman was fired — and then rehired — as CEO of OpenAI, researchers at the company wrote a letter to its board of directors warning that a major new discovery could threaten humanity. We don’t know more about the details of that breakthrough or its precise role in the soap opera that’s consumed the tech world in recent weeks, but we do know that artificial intelligence is advancing at a rapid pace, and our public policy to regulate it is moving at the speed of Washington.We’re sorry, Dave. We’re afraid we can’t have that.What can AI already do? As anyone who’s fiddled with ChatGPT knows, it can write reasonably credible, fact-based essays about fairly complicated questions, and fiction and poetry to boot. It can write computer code. It can transcribe speech and summarize long texts with remarkable accuracy. It can generate photorealistic or stylized images of just about anything. It can aid in the discovery of new medic...

Josh Paul: How can the U.S. renew Mideast peace talks? Recognize Palestinian statehood

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

On Sept. 13, 1993, with a famous handshake on the White House lawn, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat sealed the Oslo accords, which have, in theory, provided the theoretical and practical basis for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ever since: a set of measures and confidence-building steps that would ultimately lead to a two-state solution.Thirty years later, it is time to acknowledge that Oslo has failed. One can assign plenty of blame for this to all parties involved. Israel’s vast expansion of settlements in the West Bank violated its pledge that the “integrity and status” of the occupied territories would be preserved. Palestinian leadership fell into a pattern of corruption and mismanagement. And the U.S. and the international community didn’t hold both sides accountable.As Israel’s bombardment on the Gaza Strip continues, it’s hard to think of what comes next. But we shoul...

David French: Behold, MAGA Man

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

Last Wednesday, an election worker named Ruby Freeman took the stand in a Georgia courtroom and told the story of how her world was turned upside down by Rudy Giuliani. Three Decembers earlier, Giuliani shared a routine surveillance video of Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, doing the routine yet vital work of counting 2020 presidential ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.But Giuliani’s description of the video was anything but routine. He falsely claimed that the footage was evidence of vote fraud. In that moment, everything changed for Freeman. As she said in her testimony, “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.” That’s a polite way of describing the horrors that followed. She faced an avalanche of threats, racist attacks and harassment at work and home. She had to leave her house — and then, after law enforcement officials found her name on a death list, the house of the friend she’d been staying with. Even now she’s afraid to walk in public without a mask.The purpose of F...

Maureen Dowd: Supreme contempt for women

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

WASHINGTON — The Irish expect the worst to happen at any moment. And they have what my colleague Dan Barry calls “a wry acceptance of mortality.”Still, Ireland was shaken to its core in 2012 by the death of Savita Halappanavar, a beautiful, sparkling 31-year-old Indian immigrant, a dentist married to an Indian engineer. Savita was expecting her first child. She wore a new dress for the baby shower and prayed for the future. But that night she got sick. She went to a Galway hospital, where she was crushed to learn that her fetal membranes were bulging and her 17-week-old fetus would not survive.Knowing her life was at stake, she begged the medical staff to remove the fetus. As Kitty Holland wrote in “Savita: The Tragedy That Shook a Nation,” a midwife explained to her, “It’s a Catholic thing. We don’t do it here.” Ireland had a long history of punishing women, sending them to religious asylums if they were pregnant out of wedlock or deemed “fallen.” Savita developed septic shock and ...

Lakeville man’s high school classmate tipped off FBI to ‘selfie’ he posted in U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, federal charges say

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

The day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the FBI got a tip from a high school classmate of a now-43-year-old Lakeville man.The tipster said Martin James Cudo posted a “selfie” from the Capitol on his social media, and the FBI also received information from someone at Cudo’s workplace who identified him in photographs as participating in the Capitol riots, according to federal charges unsealed against him Monday.Cudo was arrested in Lakeville on Monday.Martin James Cudo wearing a red, white and blue “45” hat at the U.S. Capitol. (Courtesy of the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia)FBI agents had interviewed Cudo in Apple Valley on Jan. 13, 2021, and showed him a photo that appeared to show Cudo inside the Capitol and Cudo confirmed it was him, according to the criminal complaint. Cudo said he was the person wearing a red, white and blue hat with “45” in a circle in the middle. Donald Trump was the 45th president.Cudo ...

Mats Zuccarello’s downgraded status adds to Wild’s injuries woes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

BOSTON — The wins are coming since John Hynes became Minnesota’s head coach on Nov. 27, but there’s one thing that hasn’t changed for the Wild.The injuries keep coming.After missing Monday night’s 4-3 loss at Pittsburgh with an upper body injury, points leader Mats Zuccarello was downgraded from day to day to week to week, Hynes said before Tuesday night’s 6 p.m. puck drop against the Bruins at TD Garden.“It was something that was kind of lingering a little bit, and he just got it checked out this morning,” Hynes said. “So, that’s the report we got.”Zuccarello has six goals among 28 points in 28 games, the team’s most consistent player, and playmaker, this season. Ryan Hartman took his spot on the second line Monday and scored his first goal since Nov. 4. Vinni Lettieri took Hartman’s spot on the fourth line and scored the tying goal early in the third period.“Zucc’s obviously a really important part (of the team),” Hynes said. “He’s played real good hockey, at least in my experienc...

Hiring fairs planned after abrupt St. Louis nursing home closure

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

ST. LOUIS - Officials have planned two hiring fairs for workers out of a job after the sudden closure of St. Louis' Northview Village Nursing Home last weekend. The St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment (SLATE) will hold emergency hiring fairs on Friday, Dec. 22, and Wednesday, Dec. 27. The Northview Village Nursing Home abruptly shut down on Friday, forcing 170 residents out to other care centers around the St. Louis-area. Many employees are out of a job and did not receive a payday as previously scheduled on Friday. “Shame on this owner for treating the people who lived in this facility like pawns who can just be moved at moment’s notice,” said St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones on the situation. “Shame on this owner for not paying the workers what they deserve and shutting down in the middle of the night.”  Charges reduced for Bar:PM owner arrested after police crash Workers at the nursing home want their final paychecks and more. They’re asking for severance pay, and compens...

Two men sentenced in Illinois for attempted child enticement

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:50 GMT

BENTON, Ill. - A man from Illinois and another from Kentucky were sentenced in federal court on Tuesday after being caught in an online sting aimed at child predators.Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois said Timmy Wayne Smith, 59, and Joseph Randall Edmaiston, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted enticement of a minor.In August 2020, Smith and Edmaiston met an undercover agent online posing as a 15-year-old girl. The two men discussed meeting the teen in order to have sex.The men drove to a house in Marion, Illinois, for the sexual encounter, but police met them there and arrested them.A U.S. District Court judge sentenced each man to 10 years in federal prison. Smith and Edmaiston will also serve five years of supervised release after leaving prison.