PLAYER OF THE YEAR: BASEBALL Zach Kokoska * Latrobe Outfielder-pitcher * Senior It was a special season for Latrobe -- and Special K was one of the main reasons. Kokoska hit .538 for a team that won both WPIAL and PIAA championships for the first time in school history. Kokoska is a sweet-swinging left-handed hitter who hit .538 with five home runs and 29 RBIs. He also scored 30 runs. Kokoska was also excellent defensively. He hit close to .400 as a sophomore and .456 as a junior. As a pitcher this season, he was 4-0 with a 1.73 ERA and struck out 35 in 24 innings. Was also selected Gatorade Pennsylvania Player of the Year. Will play next season at Virginia Tech.   THE REST OF THE ALL-AREA BASEBALL TEAM   Ryan Okuda Pine-Richland P * Senior Okuda led Pine-Richland to the WPIAL Class 6A title. A left-hander, Okuda was 8-0 with a 0.38 ERA. He gave up only five runs all year, three earned. He also allowed only 25 hits and struck out 63. Was 12-0 in two seasons with … [Read more...]

Transmitter being moved to Tiverton from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth to allow wider reach for RIPR. WUMB will still maintain an online presence Andy Smith Journal Arts Writer asmith651 DARTMOUTH, Mass. — Radio station WUMD, previously owned by University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, will go off the air Monday at noon.The station, which broadcasts at 89.3 FM, has been purchased by Rhode Island Public Radio for $1.5 million. RIPR plans to move the transmitter to Tiverton, R.I. Starting at 12:01 p.m., WUMD will exist solely as an online station at http://wumd.rocks.Starting at 8 a.m. Monday, WUMD's current DJ and some "surprise guests" will play tribute to the station's staff and listeners. A live video feed is planned at http://wumd.rocks and on the station's Facebook page."I am heartbroken," said Jennifer Mulcare-Sullivan, WUMD's general manager. She said the station broadcast an eclectic mix of music and public … [Read more...]

An out-of-town investor paid $2.14 million cash for 1.3 acres of gulf-front property at 605 West Beach Blvd., in Gulf Shores, according to Tucker Shaver of REMAX Paradise, who represented the sellers. The beachfront property has 130 front feet on the Gulf and is next to Bahama Bob's Beachside Cafe. Daniel Prickett of Prickett Properties worked for the buyers. The new owners plan to build 10 large condominium units on the property. A local investor paid $1 million for Ellis Storage on Ala. 59 in Foley, and will be renovated and reopen as American Storage, according to Realtors. Deborah Hood of REMAX Orange Beach represented the buyer, and Coastal Real Estate worked for the seller. Out-of-state investors paid $1.775 million for a 21,800-square-foot industrial building at 5640 Commerce Blvd., E., in Mobile Commerce Park in Theodore, according to Pete Riehm of NAI Mobile, who represented the buyers. Gavin Bender Jr. of Bender Real Estate Group worked for the sellers. Taylor Power Systems … [Read more...]

Contemplating the current economic and entrepreneurial conditions out here in Main Street America, I keep thinking about this perfectly paradoxical passage from one of the great literary masterpieces:“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”Perhaps you recognize the opening paragraph from, “A Tale of Two Cities,” by the immortal Charles Dickens. He was providing analysis of the disruptive state of affairs in 18th century England, as well as across the Channel, in France. If you know about the disruptive state of affairs in the 21st century marketplace, perhaps … [Read more...]

ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Lynn Moore Headley, age 72, of Albuquerque, New Mexico died June 18, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Her husband and two children were with her. She was being treated at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and passed away from complications of her disease.Lynn was born on March 6, 1945, in Roanoke, Virginia and grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia. She attended Blacksburg High School where she was a cheerleader, Homecoming Queen, and Spring Festival Queen. She attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI, now Virginia Tech), in Blacksburg, and graduated in 1967 with a BS Degree in Human Nutrition and Foods. While at VPI, she was a cheerleader and was crowned Miss VPI in 1966. Also at VPI, she met her future husband Thomas Headley, of Florence, Alabama. They were married in … [Read more...]

Rachel Zara Greenburg and Matthew Ashley Geller are to be married June 25 at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx. Rabbi Jeffrey J. Sirkman is to officiate.The bride, 29, is a program manager at Cities of Service, an organization in Manhattan that provides grants and technical support to cities. She is also a director of Safer, an organization in Manhattan that helps college students address sexual violence, and is an instructor for Figure Skating in Harlem, a Manhattan leadership development organization for girls. She graduated from Colgate and received a master’s degree in social work from Columbia.She is the daughter of Michele L. Greenburg and Ross Z. Greenburg of Larchmont, N.Y. The bride’s father is the president of Ross Greenburg Productions, a company in Rye, N.Y., that produces sports programming. Her mother, a social worker, trains people in her field to conduct child-abuse forensic interviews.The groom, 30, is a designer at Boschen Design … [Read more...]

Photo Credit Pia Carusone Pia Dowd Carusone and Leanne Nicole Pittsford were married June 20 in Washington. Muriel E. Bowser, the mayor of the District of Columbia, officiated at the John A. Wilson District Building. Next month, the couple will have a ceremony that will include an exchange of rings and vows, in the mirror hall at Clärchens Ballhaus in Berlin.Ms. Carusone, 37, is a political consultant and a senior adviser to Americans for Responsible Solutions, a Washington-based gun violence prevention organization, founded by Gabrielle Gifford and Mark Kelly. Ms. Carusone was until June 2012 the chief of staff to Ms. Giffords, then an Arizona congresswoman. Ms. Carusone is also a founder of Republic Restoratives Distillery, which is also in Washington and makes vodka, bourbon and rye whiskey. She graduated from Bard College and is now a governor of … [Read more...]

Adam Jeffery | CNBC Ariana Huffington A new court filing details which individuals have viewed a key document that Alphabet argues will prove Uber knew it was inheriting Alphabet's technology when it acquired Otto. Current Uber board member Arianna Huffington and former board member Bill Gurley are among those who have seen the report, according to Friday's filing. Uber came under scrutiny after it acquired self-driving trucking startup Otto, a business founded by Anthony Levandowski, who previously led Alphabet's autonomous vehicle efforts. Alphabet claims Levandowski stole 14,000 proprietary files before leaving to start Otto and is suing Uber over allegations the ride-hailing startup misappropriated that technology. The lawsuit coincides with … [Read more...]

Adam Jeffery | CNBC Denarium Bitcoins. You've seen all the headlines about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rising in value. Maybe you want to get in on the game. But how do you even start? We'll show you. Before you do this, though, you should note that bitcoin isn't universally accepted like regular currency. My colleague Seema Mody published a great video recently where she tried to live a week on the currency, and it wasn't easy. You can use bitcoin online and at some retailers, but for the most part you're still better off just paying with cash or a credit/debit card. You should also be aware that bitcoin is more like a speculative investment than a regular currency, and can fluctuate wildly in value. Although the overall trend has been up in recent months, but crashes of 20 percent or more in a … [Read more...]

Photo An Uber vehicle, right, in San Francisco’s financial district. Credit Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the week’s news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry.Farhad: Hello, Mike! It’s been a long week. You’ve been slammed with the barrage of news coming out of Uber. From what I can tell, you’ve written 300 stories in the last week, and a few of them were surprisingly good.I have been very busy preparing for my coming vacation. So, tough times for both of us.Mike: I hope you’re going somewhere cool, like your trip to Africa that one time. I, too, need a vacation after the unremitting hellscape of Uber news that was my last week. But … [Read more...]

William Morva listens as the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison is discussed by Judge Ray Grubbs and attorneys on the first day of jury selection in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Christiansburg, Va., in 2007. (Matt Gentry/Associated Press) Someone was trying to kill him. William C. Morva was certain of it. He couldn’t breathe and he was withering away, he told his mother in a jailhouse call. “Somebody wants me to die and I don’t know who it is,” he said. “They know my health is dwindling, okay?” He sounded paranoid. His voice grew more frantic with each call over several months on the recorded lines. “How much more time do you think my body has before it gives out?” he asked just months before he escaped from custody, killing an unarmed guard and later a sheriff’s deputy before his capture in woods near Virginia Tech’s campus. Morva faces execution July 6 for the 2006 killings. With the date looming, … [Read more...]

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - On Father’s Day, many in Forsyth County will celebrate the men who influenced them, taught them right and wrong and cared for them. For 11-year-old Shawn Payne, he gets that all from his “big brother.” Since February 2014, Shawn has been paired with Steve Halliday through Mentor Me North Georgia, a local program that partners kids with positive role models through one-on-one mentoring. Shawn’s mother, Amanda Jones, said she has seen a big change. “The program is really amazing,” Jones said. “Steve has literally lifted him up, and the second we started out with Steve, everything started changing little by little, day by day, more and more and was a huge, huge blessing for us. “No sooner than we got Steve, something happened and they built this huge bond.” Jones said Shawn and his younger brother do not have contact with their biological father and that the bond with Halliday is like family. … [Read more...]

Oregon football players used three helmets last season — green, black and white — that were mixed and matched with myriad uniform combinations. The Ducks were pioneers in football fashion and other schools have followed, using helmets to make a statement. Now, the NCAA wants to determine whether style is coming at the expense of safety. The governing body’s football oversight committee will meet this week in Indianapolis and is to begin studying whether multiple helmets could lead to more concussions and serious head and neck injuries. “The notion is that let’s do as much research and data collection as we can to be able to start answering those questions as to whether one helmet or more helmets is the best way to go in terms of short and long-term safety,” said Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, who leads the NCAA football competition committee that reports to oversight. “We just want to know what is the best way to go about … [Read more...]

Story highlights F-16 overturns at airport in Dayton, Ohio Air Force Thunderbirds were scheduled to appear at air show (CNN)An F-16D used by the famous Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic team on Friday ran off the runway and overturned while preparing for an Ohio air show, sending two airmen to the hospital. The pilot, Capt. Erik Gonsalves, and Technical Sgt. Kenneth Cordova were conducting a familiarization flight for the Dayton Air Show, said Thunderbirds commander Lt. Col. Jason Heard. The mishap occurred after the plane landed at Dayton International Airport, Heard said. Both men are receiving medical care at a local hospital but are in good condition, according to Heard. Capt. Erik Gonsalves, left, and Tech Sgt. Kenneth Cordova. It took the crash recovery team from … [Read more...]

Surrounded by a violet glow and Corinthian columns, Tony Award winning actor and host for the evening, Alan Cumming, closed the first ever Village Voice Pride Awards with a promise: “I will see you in Mike Pence’s nightmares!” The Pride Awards was a celebration of local and global figures in the LGBTQ community. The event, held at the former Bowery Savings Bank, Capitale, was dedicated to eight honorees, and featured a musical set by Tegan and Sara. The first award of the night, the Catalyst Award was presented to Tyler Ford. A writer and media personality, Ford advocates for queer and trans youth to express themselves with confidence. The Vanguard Award was presented to Leanne Pittsford, founder of Lesbians Who Tech, a community of queer women and their allies in technology. Unable to accept, Cumming said, “Isn’t it great that we live in a world where someone can’t come to accept a big fat LGBT award because they’re getting legally … [Read more...]

Some of the authors whose works were on a reading list pulled from an Alabama classroom are firing back. The author's comments come after copies of a reading list for Spanish Fort High School's advanced placement government and economics class began circulating on social media earlier this week. The list, created by teacher Gene Ponder, directed students to choose one book as a summer reading assignment. The entries included such works as "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions," by Michael Savage; '"End the Fed," by Ron Paul; "Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America," by Ann Coulter; "Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation," by former President Ronald Reagan; and "48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School)," by Larry Schweikart. The list was posted on social media, drawing outrage from some parents. Elizabeth Denham, whose son was in the AP class, wrote on her blog she contacted Ponder and then the school to question the … [Read more...]

Ever wish you could peek inside the halls of Facebook to find out what it's like to work for Mark Zuckerberg and his tech behemoth? Interns get that opportunity. They are also well-paid for their time: At $8,000 per month, Facebook summer interns make more than the average American. Those with the coveted internships report back that there's lots of free food, the work is intense but rewarding and "Mark Zuck, the CEO, is also a relatively cool guy," according to one software engineer intern in Menlo, Ga. Here are anonymous firsthand accounts of what it's like to be an intern at Facebook. The comments were submitted to jobs website Glassdoor and have been edited for length and clarity. … [Read more...]

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images Travis Kalanick, chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc. Americans love a great comeback, so don't discount the possibility that Uber's Travis Kalanick may return in the future to once again lead the company he helped start, Walter Isaacson told CNBC on Friday. "It's very hard right now to put Travis back in position. Then again, I've seen this movie before, which is what happened at Apple," said Isaacson, author of the best-selling biography "Steve Jobs" about the late co-founder of Apple. Isaacson is CEO of the Aspen Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. In 1985, Jobs was ousted as chairman of Apple; only to return years later and change the world with the introduction of the iPod and then the iPhone. Like Jobs, "Travis is not someone to be underestimated," Isaacson said on "Squawk on the Street." "This is the wonderful thing about America, especially in the age … [Read more...]

Cats in a private shelter. (Mariana Bazo/Reuters) The recent DNA study making headlines about the “worldwide conquest” of cats — a migration that included cruising on Viking ships, probably without an all-inclusive drinks package — was exhaustive and fascinating, but ultimately insulting to cats. They were not given props for conquering the world despite enduring some of the most brutal cruelty ever directed at any animal, like the time in 1730s Paris when apprentice printers revolted against their bosses by holding a mock trial for dozens of neighborhood cats. The felines were quickly declared guilty and hung, beaten and tortured. The apprentices started with the great love of their master’s wife, smashing her gray cat with an iron bar, a disturbing story told in the “The Great Cat Massacre” by historian Robert Darnton: Then they stashed it in a gutter while the journeymen drove the other cats across the rooftops, bludgeoning every one within … [Read more...]

Photo Golan Ben-Oni, of the IDT Corporation, which was attacked in April with two cyberweapons stolen from the National Security Agency. Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times Just when you think that cybersecurity hacking cannot grow worse, it does.Golan Ben-Oni found this out firsthand. Mr. Ben-Oni is the global chief information officer of IDT Corporation, a conglomerate in Newark, that was subjected in April to an attack using cyberweapons that had been stolen from the National Security Agency. It was like nothing he had ever seen.The hackers locked up IDT data and demanded a ransom. That’s similar to WannaCry, a ransomware attack that struck hospitals and other organizations across the world in May. But the hacking that Mr. Ben-Oni experienced went a step further: The ransom demand was a smoke screen for a more … [Read more...]