Dallas GOP dinner featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis closed to media
DALLAS — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “fireside chat” at Saturday’s Dallas County Republican Party’s Reagan Day Dinner will occur behind closed doors.
“We are not able to invite the media,” said Dallas County Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu. “That was the decision of Governor DeSantis’ team.” Stoddard-Hajdu directed questions to a DeSantis press aide, who did not return a text message, email or telephone call.
On Friday, DeSantis will speak at the Harris County Republican Party’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner, which is also closed to the media. Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said that DeSantis has an uneasy relationship with the media and doesn’t want to risk making a mistake before his expected entry into the Republican presidential sweepstakes.
“DeSantis has a frayed relationship with the media and a desire to effectively keep himself walled off from the media,” Jones said. “There also a belief among many Republicans, especially for the primary, that traditional media simply isn’t much use to them and that they have little to gain and too much to lose by being exposed to the media.”
—The Dallas Morning News
Mayor Adams wants ‘some form of spirituality’ for NYC kids to cope with the world
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday said New York kids desperately need “some form of spirituality” to cope with the world they’re facing. His remarks came two days after he created a sensation by saying he dismissed the separation of church and state, a right enshrined in the First Amendment.
“We need to find a way to introduce some form of spirituality in our children because they’re not fighting against the seen, they’re fighting against the unseen,” he said during a news conference in the City Hall rotunda. “These poor children are growing up in an environment that is — it is just so painful for them.”
The mayor was responding to a question about whether city public school teachers should lead children in prayer. Days earlier, at an interfaith breakfast, Adams had remarked that “when we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools.”
On Thursday, he categorically denied bringing up school prayer at the breakfast and said he was talking about having children find spirituality outside a school setting.
—New York Daily News
Shipping firms to pay pipeline company nearly $100 million in Calif. oil spill
LOS ANGELES — A year and a half after a ruptured oil pipeline sent thousands of gallons of crude gushing into the waters off Southern California, the legal blame game is starting to wind down.
A group of international shipping companies and their subsidiaries tentatively agreed Wednesday to pay $96.5 million to Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp. to dismiss one of the last remaining lawsuits over the oil spill, which sent at least 25,000 gallons of crude into the waters off Huntington Beach in October 2021.
Amplify’s lawsuit, filed last year, accused the shipping companies of improperly allowing their container ships, the MSC Danit and Cosco Beijing, to drag their anchors across the sea floor near the pipeline.
The ships were anchored near the San Pedro Bay pipeline during a storm in January 2021, about nine months before the oil spill. Movement data transmitted by the vessels showed that the vessels crossed over the pipeline repeatedly during the storm, driven by winds of up to 63 mph and waves of up to 17 feet, Amplify’s lawyers said.
—Los Angeles Times
At least 46 dead after Greek train accident, railway company blasted
ATHENS, Greece — The death toll after a head-on train collision in Greece rose to 46, with dozens injured and numerous people still missing, the fire brigade said on Thursday.
The emergency services are continuing to search the wreckage. However, they are only finding charred body parts, state television (ERT) reported.
Serious accusations have been leveled against Greek state railway company OSE. According to media reports, railway trade union members had long warned of accidents because the electronic control system on the Athens-Thessaloniki line was barely functioning.
The latest expression of concern came three weeks ago, according to the business newspaper Naftemporiki, which reported that there have been repeated minor accidents or close calls along the route.
—dpa
