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How and why tar balls end up on Texas beaches

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (KXAN) -- A phenomena washes up on Texas' beaches: sticky, black balls of tar.According to the Texas General Land Office (GLO), the tar balls come ashore in the summer due to changes in ocean currents. The balls occur when petroleum, whether arising from naturally occurring oil seeps or from off-shore oil spills, combines with seawater and solids. Report: Texas beaches could be unsafe for swimming Tar balls also occur near California, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration.The first record of tar balls in Texas comes from Luis de Moscoso in 1543. Moscoso's expedition came ashore between Sabine Pass and High Island, according to the GLO. The expedition collected the tar balls to use as hull caulk.In terms of health risks, the GLO claims that brief contact is harmless, but should be cleaned off the body with soap and water, baby oil or other skin-safe cleaning compounds.Despite the low risks, the ba...

Sainted & Tainted: Jessica runs home to get her tools and, voila, the rear tire spins!

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

SaintedI’m on my scooter in line to pick up a prescription at a Walgreen’s drive-up window. I put on the parking brake to keep from rolling back. Then, when it’s my turn, I can’t release the parking brake!The rear wheel is immobilized, and I can’t push the scooter aside.I call AAA for a tow and tell folks coming for prescriptions they need to use the other line, scooter is immovable. One woman, Jessica, asks, what’s wrong with it? I tell her and she says, well the cable needs to be released from the caliper and the rear wheel should free up. She’s eying the brake mechanism while waiting in line for her prescription and figures out what needs to be done but we’ve got no tools.I’ll run home and get mine, she said. Wait right here, she said.Jessica returns, removes the emergency brake assembly, and voila! The rear tire is spinning again!Thank you Jessica. There really are angels in our midst, and Jessica is definitely among them.Michael G...

Hunters, plan your seasons with this 2023 calendar for Minnesota, Wisconsin

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

The nights have been sticky and the days hot for much of summer, but August will fly by quickly, and, in just a few weeks, as the weather cools and the leaves change color, the army of camo- and orange-clad hunters will be back in the woods and fields.If you haven’t already, it’s time to start planning your 2023 fall hunting seasons.Again this year, the News Tribune has compiled a calendar of important hunting dates to remember, and some permit application dates are coming up quickly.Minnesota bear hunters who entered the lottery for bear hunting licenses should check to see if they were selected for a license, with the deadline to buy that license Aug. 1. Lottery winners should have received a postcard notification, but you can also check dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/bear/index.html. Any leftover licenses go on sale Aug. 4. Permits for no-quota bear hunting zones are on sale now.Minnesota 2023 hunting seasonsBailey Petersen and her Llewellin setter, Hatchet, get ready to move in on a ru...

Former police captain accused of stalking fellow officer

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

LINCOLN COUNTY, Mo. - FOX 2 was the only news station in court Friday where a former police captain was accused of stalking a fellow officer. How it all ties back to a decade, an old murder case, and a woman named Pam Hupp.  No one is more interested in this case than Russ Faria. He watched as former Lincoln County Captain Mike Merkel walked into a preliminary hearing over charges he stalked a fellow officer."Little bit surreal – kind of a good feeling to be sitting in the audience," Faria said.Faria had been wrongfully imprisoned for more than three years for the murder of his wife Betsy in 2011. Hupp is now charged with Betsy's murder, but while Faria was in jail, Merkel was one of the officers who supported Hupp's changing stories to keep Faria imprisoned.  She says an Uber stranded her, then things really got weird Following Faria's acquittal, a new sheriff put Chief Deputy Randy Lambert in charge of investigating what happened. Lambert testified in court on Fri...

Grading the Week: Good on CU Buffs for finally calling Pac-12’s big bluff

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

The bum who runs the Grading The Week staff meetings now says he’s met George Kliavkoff a couple times. Nice guy. Great teeth.But to paraphrase a GTW movie favorite, “Jaws,” the embattled Pac-12 commissioner is now the mayor of Shark City. There’s blood all over the water now. And the teams in his league don’t want to be the ones lining up to become somebody else’s hot lunch.There’s a little bit of the fictional Larry Vaughn in the real Kliavkoff, whose public statements about his conference, and its future, seem to be drifting further and further from reality. And by finally throwing up its hands and joining the Big 12, of all places, a league it ran away from 13 years ago, the CU Buffs just swam up and bit Gorgeous George square on the backside.George Kliavkoff — FHe trusted the Big Ten. Bad idea. He stood pat when the southern half of the Big 12 was looking for a lifeline in 2021. Also bad. He let the Big 12 jump him in the line last fall to grab the money from ESPN and FOX. Hell...

Deion Sanders, Big 12 switch have CU Buffs fans, administrators singing from same hymnal again. Loudly. “They’ve jumped on board like never before.”

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

BOULDER — Faculty zigged. The fans zagged. At times, getting the pieces of the CU Buffs football ecosystem together on the same page felt like herding cats in a hailstorm.“I think people have wanted to get it back so bad, and this is the biggest ray of hope that they’ve had,” CU radio analyst and former coach Gary Barnett told The Post. “And they just look at what (has been) done — every season ticket’s gone, there was 5 inches of snow and 47,000 people at the spring game.“They’ve jumped on board like never before. That’s an indication of just how hungry everybody is to have a major change here. And I think for the most part, everybody’s feeling the same way about the Big 12 (move).”For the first time since Mel Tucker was hired in December 2018, the many subsets within Buffs Nation — fans, boosters, alums, students, administrators — appear to be pulling on the same rope. All while pulling in the same direction.Joining the Big 12? So far, it’s been a unifying, publi...

Opinion: Don’t let Saudi Arabia sportswash its many failures

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

The 151st British Open golf tournament is the sport’s fourth and final major event of the year, which ended last Sunday at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England.It was a jolly good show for those who respect the game.But thanks to the actions taken by Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf Series as it seeks to buy its way into the game, there are angry golfers from the PGA and LIV, Professional Golf Association Tour officials and others seething underneath like a Yellowstone Park fumarole.All this started when American golfers sued the PGA Tour, calling it a monopoly. The Saudi Arabia government — which has a $700 billion Public Investment Fund to back its golf ambitions — joined the lawsuit against the PGA, which is a $1.5 billion business, according to Forbes magazine. This explains why the PGA is caving into the Saudi demands – they can’t afford the litigation fees.It’s “sportswashing” at its worst, designed to buy respectability rather than earn it. Sportswashing is th...

Mathews: The life of a California aunt whose existence was a family secret

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

Is there a family trait more common than keeping secrets?Family secrets have hidden costs. When we leave a place or person behind, we don’t know what becomes of them. We can even miss the entire life of a loved one.That’s one lesson of a compelling California story told by David Mas Masumoto, the Central Valley writer and farmer, in his recent memoir Secret Harvest.At the book’s center is Shizuko Sugimoto, aunt of Masumoto’s mother.But he didn’t know she even existed until about a decade ago, when a Fresno funeral home called to ask if Sugimoto, who appeared near death, was related. Eventually though, he pieced together some elements of the life of a Californian whose very existence had been a family secret.Sugimoto was born in Fowler in 1919, daughter of a family of farmworkers of Japanese heritage. At age 5, she contracted meningitis, which attacked her brain and left her with an intellectual disability. She would never again complete a full sentence or thought.She was 23 in 1942,...

Opinion: Why are so many college presidents resigning? Follow the money

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

It’s hardly news by now that college presidencies are not what they used to be. The change is the result of factors as diverse as the institutions they lead. Yet despite the differences, certain similarities emerge among all college presidents.First and foremost is their need to keep money flowing into their institutions’ coffers. As long as they do, they’ll hold onto their jobs. A series of recent resignations confirms that the truth is almost always found by following the money trail.When an independent review of his research found that it fell below the standards of scientific rigor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne promptly announced that he would resign as president of Stanford University, a post he has held since 2016.Even his defenders mostly don’t question the work done by a panel that reviewed more than 50,000 documents, leading to an 89-page report. It was thorough and unbiased. But what is hard to swallow is the reason that Tessier-Lavigne gave for his decision.He said the report cal...

Opinion: Republican racism has finally weaponized Kamala Harris

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:01:59 GMT

Republicans are doing their damnedest to make Vice President Kamala Harris a liability for President Joe Biden’s reelection, not without plenty of help from her over time.But as they keep doing stupid stuff underscoring their racial insensitivity — the latest being Florida’s and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ claim of a silver lining to slavery — Republicans have handed Harris an apt role: The Democrats’ weapon for calling them on their callousness, and for shoring up the Democratic base while she’s at it.Harris — the first woman, Black American and person of South Asian descent to be vice president — has had a pretty good week, turning the Republicans’ charge that Democrats are trying to politically indoctrinate America’s youth back onto the Republican Party itself. And she’s put the lie to the claim that the left is forcing a guilt trip on white children simply by fully teaching them about the nation’s sins as well as its triumphs.It helps...