Media quiz

1. Kentucky fire cheerleading staff after hazing investigation 

Kentucky has fired its cheerleading coaches after an internal investigation determined they failed to oversee off-campus events that included hazing, alcohol use and public nudity by the championship squad. The school announced that head coach Jomo Thompson and assistants Ben Head , Spencer Clan and Kelsey LaCroix were fired from the program, which has won 24 national titles the past 35 years. Coaches also didn’t confiscate alcohol brought to the retreat by some team members. Some members required medical treatment for intoxication. The review , which involved interviews with more than 60 squad members, coaches and administrators , found that the activities occurred last summer during a retreat at Kentucky Lake and cheerleading camps in Tennessee. It stated that some cheerleaders at the retreat performed gymnastics routines that included hurling teammates into the, known as “basket tosses”, while either topless or bottomless within view of some of the coaches. Kentucky’s investigation also uncovered potential conflicts of interest by two coaches who ran gymnastics businesses and employed squad members. 

2. Netflix’s “Cheer” returns after teams’s major highs and lows 

When we last saw the cheerleading team from Navarro Community College on Netflix, it was in the final episode of the docuseries “ Cheer. ” They had just won the NCA National Championships in the junior college division and celebrated with a tradition where the champions ran into the ocean. Little did we know at the time but cameras were rolling in the navarro cheer squad since shortly after season one was released. They captured the sudden bursts of notoriety, to the annoyance of teammates who were only visible essentially as background players. A surprise in season two, the show doesn't just follow Navarro but their main rival— the cheer squad at Trinity Valley Community College, less than one hour away. At this point Trinity Valley’s head coach was Vontae Johnson, a former cheerleader at the valley. His assistant coach was Kris Franklin, who was once Johnson’s coach. The two are yin and yang and it's best captured in their outlook towards navarro. Johnson says Trinity valley was approached to film before season one but they weren't interested because they worried it would be a distraction to the team. After “Cheer” debuted on netflix, they reconsidered for season two. “We thought it would be a good opportunity because they way they portrayed the athletes in the first season, capturing the athleticism and the things that are great about our sport”

 3. Ex- ‘Cheer’ star Harris gets 12 years for seeking photos

 A federal judge sentenced Jerry Harris, a former star of the netflix documentary series “Cheer” to 12 years in prison for coercing teenage boys to send him odsecne photos and videos of themselves and soliciting sex from minors ar cheerleading competitions. Harris was arrested in September 2020 on a charge of production of child porngraghy . prosecutors alleged at the time that he solicited images between December 2018 and March 2020. Harris admitted to FBI agents to asking a teenage boy at send him lewd photographs of himself and requesting child pornograghy on snapchat from a least 10 to 15 others he knew to be minors , according to the indictment. 

4.Three doctors charged in the death of a pregnant woman in Poland. 

Prosecutors in southern poland said Thursday that they have charged three doctors in relation to the death last year of a 30-year-old pregnant woman. The death from sepsis last september of the woman know as lza at the hospital in pszczyna in her 22nd week of pregnancy led to massive protests against poland's restrictive anit-abortion law. Activits blamed the dorctors choice to “wait and see” rather than immediately carry out an abortion on the country’s near-ban on aboriton and said she was the frist to die from the further tighttening of the restrivtive law. The woman left behind a husband and a daughter. 

5. US may expand monkeypox vaccine eligibility to men with HIV

U.S. officials are considering broadening recommendations for who gets vaccinated against monypox, possibly include many with HIV or those recently diagnosed with other sexually transmited diseease. Currently, the CDC recommends the vaccine to people who are a close contact of someone who has monkeypox; people who know a sexual partner was diagnosed in the past two weeks; and gay or bisexual men who had multiple sexual partners in the last two weeks in an area with known virus spread.

6. 3 reduced dolphins swim free from Indonesia sanctuary 

 

Three bottlenose dolphins were released into the open sea in Indonesia Saturday after years of being confined for the amusement of tourists who would touch and swim with them.The trio were rescued three years ago from their tiny pool in a resort hotel to which they had been sold after spending years performing in a traveling circus.They regained their health and strength at the Bali sanctuary , a floating pen in a bay that provided a gentler, more natural environment. The freed dolphins will be monitored out at sea with GPS tracking for a year. They can return for visits to the sanctuary, although it’s unclear what they will do. They may join another pod, stay together, or go their separate ways  

7. California weathers heat waves without rolling blackouts.

A brutal Western heat wave brought California to the verge of ordering rolling blackouts but the state’s electrical grid managed to handle record-breaking demand.Demand swelled in the late afternoon and into the evening, with everyone from Gov. Gavin Newsom to the state’s legal marijuana business control agency urging people to turn off lights and reduce power or use backup generators.While there were no rolling blackouts over large areas, two outages were reported in the San Francisco Bay Area cities of Palo Alto and Alameda, affecting several thousand customers for about an hour.Some 35,700 people lost electricity in Silicon Valley and southern and inland areas of the San Francisco Bay Area and most of the outages were heat-related, said Jason King of Pacific Gas & Electric said Tuesday evening. There was no word on when power would resume.

8. Summers of ‘22 brought record heat, solar power to europe 

Europe smashed previous temperature records this summer, with long periods of sunshine causing sweltering conditions and droughts across much of the continent but also helping boost much-needed solar power, according to data published Thursday.“European temperatures were most above average in the east of the continent in August, but were still well above average in the southwest, where they had been high also in June and July,” the commission said, citing data gathered by its Copernicus climate program, which has used satellites to monitor surface air temperatures since 1991.The group said the 27-nation bloc generated 12% of its electricity from solar power from May to August, up from 9% during the same period last year. Solar energy narrowly topped the share provided from wind or hydropower, while coming in just below that produced from burning coal.

9. Apple maintains price on new i phones despite inflation

 Apple’s latest line-up of iPhones will boast better cameras, faster processors, and a longer lasting battery — all at the same prices as last year’s models, despite inflationary pressure that has driven up the cost of many other everyday items.That pricing decision, revealed Wednesday during Apple’s first in-person product event in three years, came as a mild surprise. Many analysts predicted Apple would ask its devout fans to pay as much as 15% more to help offset rising costs for many components.The hoopla surrounding Apple’s new iPhone 14 models is part of a post-Labor Day ritual the company has staged annually for more than a decade. Wednesday’s event was held on the company’s Cupertino, California, campus at a theater named after company co-founder Steve Jobs. After Apple CEO Tim Cook strolled out on stage, most of the event consisted of pre-recorded video presentations that the company honed during previous events staged during the pandemic. 

10.Chinese man trapped aloft in hydrogen balloon for 2 days 

Chinese state media say a man has been found safe after he spent two days aloft in a hydrogen balloon, traveling about 320 kilometers (200 miles), after it became untethered and flew away while he was using it to harvest pine nuts from a tree.The man, identified only by his surname, Hu, and a partner were collecting pine nuts on Sunday in a forest park in Heilongjiang province in northeastern China when they lost control and the balloon sailed off.  State broadcaster CCTV said rescuers were able to contact the man by cellphone the following morning and instructed him to slowly deflate the balloon to land safely. It took another day before he reached the ground about 320 kilometers (200 miles) to the northeast in Fangzheng region, close to the border with Russia.

11. Dog sniffs out cocaine hidden in wheelchair at milan airport 

A drug-sniffing dog led frontier police Friday at a Milan airport to some 13 kilograms (nearly 30 pounds) of cocaine stuffed into the leather upholstery of a motorized wheelchair, whose user immediately stood up and was arrested, authorities said.The specialized canine unit was being deployed at Malpensa airport to check arriving passengers and their luggage from a flight from the Dominican Republic, since previously drug couriers had used that route, the Financial Guard police said in a statement. When a dog drew officers’ attention to the traveler, police first checked his luggage, which yielded nothing, then slashed the wheelchair’s upholstery, discovering the cocaine.Police said that when the cocaine was found, the chair user — a Spaniard who had requested airport personnel to help guide the wheelchair — got up, walked without assistance and was taken into custody.

12. Paddle border loses their phone and a scuba diver finds it the next day. 

When Laura Hernandez fell into the water and lost her iPhone while paddleboarding off Massachusetts earlier this month, she figured it was probably gone for good. But the next day the New York woman returned to the Rockport beach and approached the instructor of a novice scuba diving class and told him her situation. Instructor Larry Bettencourt told her the odds of finding it, even with its distinctive pink case, were not good, but he told the class to keep an eye out for it, The Boston Globe reported Thursday. Amazingly, Vanessa Kahn, 26, of Peabody, making her first open-water ocean dive spotted the phone in water about 25 feet deep. “The bright pink waterproof case stuck out like a sore thumb ... it was almost neatly placed into a bed of green seaweed,” Kahn said. She waved the phone around in the water and the screen glowed. She returned to the surface, turned on the camera and snapped a selfie, then waved the phone in triumph to Hernandez standing on the beach. 

 

13. San diego zoo penguin fitted with orthopedic footwear

A member of the San Diego Zoo’s African penguin colony has been fitted with orthopedic footwear to help it deal with a degenerative foot condition. The 4-year-old penguin named Lucas has lesions on his feet due to a chronic condition known as bumblefoot, which covers a range of avian foot problems, the San Diego Wildlife Alliance said Monday in a press release. If left untreated, bumble-foot could lead to sepsis and death by infection.The zoo’s wildlife care specialists turned to an organization called Thera-Paw, which creates rehabilitative and assistive products for animals with special needs.Thera-Paw created custom shoes made of neoprene and rubber to prevent pressure sores from developing when Lucas stands and walks. 

14. California man plead guilty to smuggling 1700 animals 

 

A California man who smuggled more than 1,700 wild animals into the United States, including 60 reptiles hidden in his clothing, pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges.Jose Manuel Perez, 30, of Oxnard, entered pleas to two counts of smuggling and a charge of wildlife trafficking.Prosecutors said that from 2016 to this February, Perez and his accomplices used social media to arrange to smuggle animals from Mexico and Hong Kong. Most were reptiles and included Yucatan box turtles, Mexican box turtles, baby crocodiles and Mexican beaded lizards, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.It is illegal to import the animals without permits under an international treaty on the trade of endangered species, the DOJ said. The smuggled reptiles were worth about $739,000, authorities estimated.

15. Dog went missing for 2 months and was found alive inside Missouri cave. 

Jeff Bohnert had all but given up on seeing his poodle-hound mix again after she went missing in early June. Two months later, he got a text from a neighbor: People exploring a nearby cave found a dog. Could it be Abby?Bohnert doubted it, but still curious, he went to the cave site near his rural Missouri home. That’s when he saw the picture one of the rescuers took.Making Abby’s tale even more amazing is the fact that she’s just weeks shy of turning 14. Yet somehow, she managed to survive nearly 60 days out on her own, apparently much or all of it in a barren, pitch-dark, 58-degree Fahrenheit (14-degree Celsius) cave.On June 9, the pair ran away from home, Bohnert recalled. It had happened before, and in the rural area near Perryville in eastern Missouri, it was generally no big deal. The dogs would scamper through the fields, maybe chase something, then head home.

https://www.nytimes.com