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This Florida school district banned cellphones. Here’s what happened.

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla. — One afternoon in late September, hundreds of students at Timber Creek High School in Orlando poured into the campus’s sprawling central courtyard to hang out and eat lunch. For members of an extremely online generation, their activities were decidedly analog.Dozens sat in small groups, animatedly talking with one another. Others played pickleball on makeshift lunchtime courts. There was not a cellphone in sight — and that was no accident.In May, Florida passed a law requiring public school districts to impose rules barring student cellphone use during class time. This fall, Orange County Public Schools — which includes Timber Creek High — went even further, barring students from using cellphones during the entire school day.In interviews, a dozen Orange County parents and students all said they supported the no-phone rules during class. But they objected to their district’s stricter, daylong ban.Parents said their children should be able to contact ...

Main arguments in 14th Amendment case against Donald Trump wrap, with decision likely weeks away

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

The trial examining whether former President Donald Trump is qualified for Colorado’s 2024 ballot has ended — sort of.The primary arguments wrapped up late Friday afternoon, with each side having spent the week trotting out dueling experts, congressmen and witnesses to the storming of the U.S. Capitol. At issue: Did the Jan. 6, 2021, attack rise to the level of an insurrection, and was Trump culpable enough that he’s disqualified from the ballot under the 14th Amendment?Denver District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace’s answer to that question is still likely weeks away. The judge has scheduled formal closing remarks for Nov. 15, with her decision to come after that. And with such high stakes, the case may work its way to the Colorado and U.S. supreme courts.The weeklong hearing was nonetheless the first of its kind, though parallel well-backed efforts are underway elsewhere. The Colorado lawsuit was brought by a group of unaffiliated and Republican voters in the state backed by t...

CSU Rams coach Jay Norvell doubles down on QB Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi despite rough night at Wyoming: “He’s our quarterback.”

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

LARAMIE, Wyo. — A half-hour after Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi tripled his turnovers, CSU coach Jay Norvell doubled down on his young quarterback.“He feels like he let his teammates down, and I just don’t think that’s the case,” Norvell said of Fowler-Nicolosi, whose two second-half interceptions and a bizarre fumbled snap sealed a 24-15 loss at Wyoming in the annual Battle for the Bronze Boot at War Memorial Stadium on Friday night.“I think we’ve got to find ways to play better and as coaches, we’ve got to help him.“And he’s our quarterback. And it doesn’t matter if he’s a freshman, you know, we’ve got to find ways to help him. And nobody really cares if we’re playing a freshman quarterback or if we got guys hurt. Nobody cares.”The Border War was the fourth game this season in which Fowler-Nicolosi, a redshirt freshman from Aledo, Texas, has thrown at least two interceptions. CSU is 1-3 in those games, 3...

Grading The Week: Wiggins native Dalton Risner is slated to return to Broncos Country Nov. 19. Why do we get the feeling that reunion may not be a universally happy one?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

Dalton Risner is slated for a homecoming on Nov. 19. Why do we get the feeling it may not necessarily be a universally happy one?Full disclosure: The new gang of idiots up in the Grading The Week offices are Risner fans. More fans of the person than fans of the former Broncos guard as a lineman, but still.So it kinda threw the idiots for a loop when Risner, pride of Wiggins and a lifetime fan of the Orange & Blue, said this to Minneapolis reporter Darren Wolfson after making his Vikings debut a few weeks back:“For four years I’ve been a part of a team (where) we didn’t have success. There’s just something different about this place. It starts with the top-down and (coach Kevin) O’Connell, and the way this team is ran, and the locker room, and how we block out the noise, and how we go to work at practice. This team knows how to celebrate too, man. There’s just so many things that are different about here…”The Purple People Eaters ar...

NFL Picks: Daylight saving time ends on perfect weekend for marquee NFL matchup in Germany

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

Around the AFCSo long, Josh. Congratulations to those who had Josh McDaniels as the first NFL coach fired this fall. No doubt the news produced a few snickers in Broncos Country, where the Bill Belichick protégé also crashed and burned back in 2010. We’re not sure what’s more surprising: That McDaniels’ 25-game tenure as Raiders head coach was three games shorter than his time leading the Broncos (28); or that he managed to be even worse in Las Vegas (9-16, .360) than he was in Denver (11-17, .393). Raiders owner Mark Davis, who also fired general manager Dave Ziegler this week, expressed dismay that his team “regressed” in Year 2 under McDaniel. To which we reply: That’s what you get for signing off on Jimmy Garoppolo as your David Carr replacement at quarterback.Will the Thrill. Should the Tennessee Titans run full bore into the Will Levis era? The answer here would’ve been an emphatic “Yes!” had this question been posed immedi...

Live Oak completes incredible rally at Christopher: ‘This was our Super Bowl’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

GILROY — Unfazed by a 21-point deficit just seven minutes into the game, the Live Oak football team came all the way back to beat Christopher 28-24 in a matchup between undefeated teams from neighboring towns in front of a packed house at Christopher.“Unbelievable game,” Live Oak coach Mike Gemo said. “This is a great rivalry, Christopher and Live Oak, has been for years. It comes down to games like this, two teams and two groups of kids that know each other and like to battle against each other.”With the win Live Oak (9-0, 5-0) captures the Blossom Valley Athletic League Mt. Hamilton Division championship, the top division in the 24-team BVAL. Christopher (9-1, 4-1) fell just short.“If Live Oak and Christopher played 10 times in a year it would probably end up 5-5,” Christopher coach Darren Yafai said. “They got us this time. We’re proud of our kids. They played their hearts out to the very end.”Live Oak’s Josh Gagni...

Schmemann: Why Oslo peace accords still have relevance

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

A few days after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, I remember an Israeli acquaintance telling me that however terrible the circumstances of his death, it had established Rabin as a martyr for peace. As a result, the Oslo peace process he had begun, named after the city where it was secretly hatched, had become irreversible.It certainly seemed that way at the time. I had just arrived as a correspondent in Israel, and an aura of hope still hung over the pair of agreements signed in 1993 and 1995, which granted the Palestinians a degree of self-government and, more important, started a peace process meant to reach a permanent settlement within five years. The handshake on the White House lawn in 1993 between Rabin, a gruff, chain-smoking warrior-politician who had led Israel in great military victories, and his archenemy, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization who had dedicated much of his previous life to “uprooting the Zionist ...

Krugman: Holding national security hostage to help tax cheats

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

Historians of propaganda are familiar with the concept of the Big Lie, a claim so extreme that many people end up accepting it because they can’t believe that authority figures would make up something so at odds with reality.It often seems to me that we need a term to describe a somewhat similar phenomenon in policy debates, which we might call the Big Grift. What I mean are policy proposals so corrupt, so obviously designed to benefit an undeserving few at everyone else’s expense, that many voters balk at the notion that seemingly respectable politicians actually advocate such things.A case in point is the current demand by House Republicans that funding for Israel in this moment of crisis be tied to budget cuts that would undermine the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on wealthy tax cheats. This should be a major scandal, but my suspicion is that many voters just won’t accept the idea that GOP leaders would do something so cartoonishly villainous.Some history:...

Kremlin sacked TASS chief over coverage of Wagner mutiny: Report

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

The Kremlin fired the head of TASS last summer in punishment for the Russian state-run news agency’s coverage of the Wagner mercenary group’s aborted mutiny, the Moscow Times reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation.Sergei Mikhailov was dismissed as general director of TASS in early July, 10 days after Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin staged an attempted coup against Russian military leaders. Mikhailov was fired by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who called it a voluntary resignation, the newspaper said. Chernyshenko announced the appointment of a new general director chosen by the Kremlin: Andrei Kondrashov from state-run VGTRK and a former election spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.The Kremlin, which keeps tight control on state and private media, was unhappy with what it saw as an insufficient level of pro-Kremlin coverage by TASS, the Moscow Times reported, citing sources at TASS and in the Russian government. TASS was the fi...

Von der Leyen applauds Kyiv’s ‘excellent progress’ ahead of EU enlargement decision

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:30:50 GMT

KYIV — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Ukraine has made “excellent progress” on the conditions for future EU accession, days ahead of a key report on Kyiv’s aspirations.“I must say, you have made excellent progress, it is impressive to see,” von der Leyen said in Kyiv on Saturday, standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “We will testify to this next when the Commission will present its report on enlargement.”Ukraine has “reached many milestones,” Von der Leyen added. “This is the result of hard work.”Von der Leyen also said Ukraine is in the process of completing even more reforms. “If this happens, and I am confident, [then] Ukraine can reach its ambitious goal of moving to the next stage of the accession process,” she said.The Commission on Wednesday is set to publish its progress report on how well Ukraine and other aspiring countries are doing in meeting the bloc’s economic, legal and other condi...