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Ravens free agency tracker 2023: LB Kristian Welch, a special teams staple, reportedly re-signs

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

Welcome to the Ravens’ free-agency tracker, which will be updated throughout the offseason.With the NFL’s new league year beginning Wednesday at 4 p.m., teams can officially announce signings and trades. Here’s a rundown of who the Ravens have agreed to sign, who they’ve lost and who’s still on the open market:Free agent additionsLinebacker Kristian Welch: A 24-year-old linebacker who played almost entirely on special teams last season, Welch re-signed with Baltimore on Friday, according to ESPN’s Field Yates. He was an unrestricted free agent who wasn’t tendered by the Ravens.Welch, who signed with Baltimore as an undrafted free agent out of Iowa in 2020, played in all 17 games last season and had three total tackles. The 6-foot-3, 242-pound linebacker played just four snaps on defense last season and will likely serve in a similar special teams role in 2023.Last season, the Ravens ranked third in the NFL in special teams efficiency, accord...

Marcus Stroman dominates for the Chicago Cubs in a 2-0 win over the Texas Rangers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

David Ross talked about what he called “the Twitter machine” before Friday’s game against the Texas Rangers at Wrigley Field, noting he’s not a frequent visitor to the app.“I go on Twitter every once in a while,” the Chicago Cubs manager said. “Just not on me. I try to stay out of (things). I’m not Googling myself and seeing all the awesome things people are saying about me.”The 2023 season marks a turning point in Ross’s career as Cubs manager. He’s being judged by a higher standard and saw the first real volley of criticism aimed in his direction last week after a failed bunt attempt by Patrick Wisdom in a loss to the Cincinnati Reds. It was mild but jarring coming so early in the season.Ross said he welcomes the criticism, and as a former analyst with ESPN he understands the game relies on fan debate, much of which the media fuels. He’s not averse to taking risks, no matter the potential for Twitter abuse.Ros...

This Anza-Borrego hike takes people out to see a 'geological oddity'

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

SAN DIEGO – Southern California is home to many natural wonders, from the vast desert landscape to coastal bluffs. Among those destinations is a one-of-a-kind spot in Anza-Borrego State Park that has scientists still scratching their heads.Called the “Wind Caves,” the extraordinary formations in the Anza-Borrego badlands have brought out many visitors to the park looking to catch a glimpse of the unique tunnels and holes that have been carved out over thousands of years.“(They) are an Interesting and fun geologic outcropping,” Dan McCamish, a senior environmental scientist with the California State Parks Colorado Desert District, told FOX5SanDiego.com. “(It’s) certainly unique to the area given that we don’t see a lot of other wind caves surrounding it.” 7 quiet and easy San Diego trails for non-hikers According to McCamish, there are a couple of things about the Wind Caves that make them particularly distinctive formations in Anza-Borrego.For one, the soil and stone is much harde...

US judge orders man held in case of missing Navajo woman

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The family of a Native American woman who went missing from her home on the Navajo Nation pleaded with the man accused of assaulting her and taking her pickup truck, asking during a court hearing Friday that he tell them where he left Ella Mae Begay so they could bring her home and find closure. The tearful messages of family members resonated through a courtroom in Flagstaff, Arizona, as they told the judge about what they have endured since Begay disappeared nearly two years ago. “There’s nothing that’s coming out of this whole situation except all the pain that he’s caused, the anger, the frustration,” her son Gerald Begay said. “I mean, this is a mother, an aunt, a grandma, a sister, you know, that doesn’t deserve this type of assault.”A soft-spoken woman who was known as a master weaver, Begay was always cautious and never drove around at night. So her family knew immediately that something was wrong when they saw her gray pickup truck leaving her home in the...

Storms bring down trees at Masters, play halted in 2nd round

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

Three towering pine trees fell near patrons as storms rolled through Augusta National on Friday, though nobody was hurt, and the second round of the Masters ground to a halt as heavy wind and rain rolled through the area.The course was cleared once for 21 minutes by an earlier band of storms. The air horns sounded again at 4:22 p.m. as another set of arrived, forcing the evacuation of patrons and sending players and officials searching for cover.Just before the second horn sounded, two enormous pines fell next to each other near the 17th tee, sending those in the area scattering. On the nearby 16th green, Sergio Garcia stopped and stared at what seemed to be happening in slow motion, and his playing partners Kazuki Higa and Keith Mitchell watched anxiously to see if anyone was hurt.“We were cresting the fairway on 15. We thought it was a scoreboard or a grandstand,” said Sahith Theegala, who is playing in his first Masters. “We were hoping it wasn’t something that hit anybody....

Ex-convict’s letters to shooter foretold Las Vegas massacre

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Letters addressing the gunman who in October 2017 unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history in Las Vegas, apparently written by an ex-convict who lived in Texas, foretold the carnage to come, according to documents obtained Friday.“My friend it sound like you are going to kill or murder someone or some people,” said a handwritten letter to Stephen Paddock dated June 1, 2017, and signed Jim Nixon. Addressed “Dear Steve,” it said, “Please don’t go on any shooting rampage like some fool.”“I am concern about the way you are talking and believe you are going to do something very bad,” said another letter, dated May 27, 2017, that was among 10 unredacted documents released by Las Vegas police. Letters dating to 2013 and 2014 described the men doing business together.“Please don’t go out shooting or hurting people who did nothing to you,” the May 27 letter pleaded. “Steve please please don’t do what I think you are going to do.”Police did not recei...

Moose feasts on lobby plants in Alaska hospital building

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — So this moose walks into a medical building…While that could be a setup to a bad joke, it actually happened in Anchorage on Thursday.A young moose trudging through the snow looking for a meal spotted green plants in the lobby of a medical building in the Providence Alaska Health Park and decided to drop in for a dose of greenery.The ingenious — or lucky — moose triggered the sensors on the automatic doors to the building that houses the hospital’s cancer center and other medical offices, said Randy Hughes, the hospital’s director of security.“We received a call from one of our tenants advising that a moose had just walked into the building,” Hughes said.Hughes believes it’s the same moose that has been hanging around campus. And even though moose are commonplace in Alaska, they made an announcement over the intercom of the moose’s presence out of safety concerns.“But it seemed like it was a magnet for people to come and see it,” he said. “It’s not ever...

Minnesota man gets 2 years in prison for laser strike on jet

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge in Wisconsin sentenced a Minnesota man on Friday to two years in prison for aiming a laser at a Delta Air Lines jet in 2021, an act that prosecutors said disrupted the pilots’ efforts to land and putting passengers in “incredible danger.”James Link, 43, of Rochester, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in January.Laser strikes on planes and helicopters hit a record in the U.S. in 2021. Pilots reported 9,723 incidents, a 41% jump over the year before, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures. The FAA said it handed out $120,000 in fines in 2021. Violators like Link can also face up to five years in prison.According to the U.S. attorney’s office in Madison, the pilots of the Delta flight from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, to Minneapolis on Oct. 29, 2021, reported that their cockpit was lit up three times by a bright blue laser while they were at an altitude of 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) just west of River Falls, Wisconsin. At the time, air...

Officer Cottontail? Bunny joins police force. Fur real.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

YUBA CITY, Calif. (AP) — Meet Percy, the police rabbit. Yes, that’s fur real.Some bunny — also known as Officer Ashley Carson — found a lost rabbit last year in the middle of Percy Avenue in Yuba City, California.Carson scurried back to the police station and handed the rabbit over to animal control, who could find neither hide nor hare of the bunny’s family.In a hoppy ending, a police services analyst adopted the allegedly “docile and friendly” animal and named him Percy. The Yuba City Police Department — about 40 hopping miles (64.37 kilometers) north of Sacramento — announced the rabbit’s promotion to the rank of “wellness officer” just days before Easter Sunday.“Officer Percy lounges at the police department during the day and is a support animal for all,” the department wrote on Facebook Wednesday.The Easter Bunny could not be reached for comment. Case closed.The Associated Press

Regulators say railroads must examine how they build trains

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:11:50 GMT

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Federal regulators said Friday that railroads need to re-examine how they assemble their trains after a string of derailments in recent years that were at least partly caused by the way empty and loaded cars were mixed together with locomotives. Heavy cars at the back of a train can push and pull against empty cars in the middle of a train as it goes over hills and around corners. Those forces have become more of a problem as the industry increasingly relies on longer trains with a wide variety of freight aboard. Another factor complicating the issue is the industry’s practice of placing locomotives throughout trains. The locomotives can amplify the forces if they’re not used correctly.The Federal Railroad Administration’s advisory cites six derailments since 2021 where those forces were a factor. They include a Norfolk Southern derailment near Springfield, Ohio, last month and a 2021 Union Pacific derailment that forced the evacuation of Sibley,...