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Chicago businessman convicted in $4M bank fraud scheme

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

CHICAGO — After a week-long trial, a Chicago businessman has been convicted of defrauding several financial institutions out of $4 million.A jury convicted 48-year-old David Izsak on ten counts of financial institution fraud on Friday. Car crashes into building, catches fire in Northbrook According to the U.S. attorney's office, Izsak, a licensed real estate professional and the sole proprietor of Premier Assets Inc. and Premier Properties Enterprises, both based in Skokie, engaged in a scheme to defraud financial institutions by "obtaining residential loans through false statements, concealing the existence of unpaid loans, and falsely obtaining credit," between 2005 and 2018.The U.S. attorney's office said Izsak submitted, or caused to be submitted, fictitious lien releases to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, but the releases were not from the lender and the loans were not paid in full.According to the U.S. attorney's office, in one instance, Izsak sold a property to an unsusp...

Blackhawks D Kevin Korchinski rejoins team after father's death

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — Kevin Korchinski has rejoined the Chicago Blackhawks following the death of his father, Larry.The 19-year-old Korchinski was on the ice for Chicago's morning skate ahead of Tuesday night's game against the Colorado Avalanche. Coach Luke Richardson said the rookie defenseman is going to need some time before he is ready for games again.“It was great to see him,” Richardson said. “The guys really responded well having him back in the dressing room and he had a big smile in there this morning. So it was good to see him out on the ice. Suburban high school wrestler ineligible for senior year after transfer "He hasn’t skated much, I think once when he was at home, so we’re just going to just let him have a couple of practices and see where he’s at and let him tell us when he’s ready to go.”Korchinski has two goals and five assists in 25 games in his first NHL season. The No. 7 overall pick in the 2022 draft hasn't played since he skated for more than 18 minutes during a ...

Alec Baldwin gets into heated exchange with protester at pro-Palestinian rally in NYC

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

(The Hill) — Actor Alec Baldwin got into a heated argument with a demonstrator at a Pro-Palestinian rally in New York City on Monday. NBC News reported on Tuesday that New York police escorted the 65-year-old actor away from the rally after his confrontation with several protesters. According to a video of the incident, Baldwin is seen having a stern conversation with two or three protesters at the rally, telling one protester, “That’s my business. That’s my business.”"You work for Hollywood, do you condemn Israel?" a protester is heard asking Baldwin, according to NBC News. “You’ve already made up your mind … every question you’ve got, right?” Baldwin replied. “I’m in Hollywood’s pockets, you said? You ask stupid questions. Ask me a smart question! Ask a smart question!” the actor added as he was seen shoving his body into the protester.As several police officers started to escort Baldwin away from the rally, one protester screamed back, “Go f--- yourself” and “Why d...

Colorado Supreme Court, in landmark ruling, bans Trump from state’s ballot under insurrection clause

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

DENVER (AP) — A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.The decision from a court whose justices were all appointed by Democratic governors marks the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.“A majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” the court wrote in its 4-3 decision.Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was un...

Fentanyl overdoses, deaths among young people continue to rise in Hays County

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

HAYS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) -- More young people continue to overdose and die from fentanyl in Hays County, according to the Hays County Sheriff's Office.HCSO sent KXAN new data tracking fentanyl overdoses since January 2022. According to the data, there's been 67 total fentanyl overdoses since last January. Of those overdoses, 14 people died. HCSO Fentanyl overdoses: Juvenile - 26Adult - 27 Hays County approves additional mental health counselor for Hays CISD HCSO Fentanyl overdose deaths: Juvenile - 5Adult - 9 "Fentanyl ODs and OD deaths are continuing to trend up," the report noted. The report tracked the overdoses by every month this year: January - 5 February - 3March - 3April - 4May - 5June - 1July - 2August - 1September - 4October - 2November - 0When it comes to young people, the report said "juvenile OD and OD deaths have increased by 13% since 2022."The sheriff's office said Narcan was administered to save a life in about 40 different situations. In total, more than 80 dose...

Man sentenced to 27 years for wife's murder in Austin

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A man was sentenced to 27 years in state prison for the 2022 murder of his wife, according to court documents. Jose Villa-Denova, 49, was sentenced after pleading guilty to murder on Dec. 14. A charge of tampering with evidence was dismissed for the murder conviction. PREVIOUS: Woman at center of CLEAR Alert found dead, police say In June 2022, Austin police responded to a missing person report for Yolanda Jaimes in east Austin. Officers suspected foul play and issued a CLEAR alert for Jaimes, according to APD. After interviewing her family members, Villa-Denova was arrested and charged with tampering with evidence. Later in June, police found unidentified human remains, which were identified as Jaimes in July.

Other voices: Human intelligence must rule: AI needs limits impose by people

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

Days before Sam Altman was fired — and then rehired — as CEO of OpenAI, researchers at the company wrote a letter to its board of directors warning that a major new discovery could threaten humanity. We don’t know more about the details of that breakthrough or its precise role in the soap opera that’s consumed the tech world in recent weeks, but we do know that artificial intelligence is advancing at a rapid pace, and our public policy to regulate it is moving at the speed of Washington.We’re sorry, Dave. We’re afraid we can’t have that.What can AI already do? As anyone who’s fiddled with ChatGPT knows, it can write reasonably credible, fact-based essays about fairly complicated questions, and fiction and poetry to boot. It can write computer code. It can transcribe speech and summarize long texts with remarkable accuracy. It can generate photorealistic or stylized images of just about anything. It can aid in the discovery of new medic...

Josh Paul: How can the U.S. renew Mideast peace talks? Recognize Palestinian statehood

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

On Sept. 13, 1993, with a famous handshake on the White House lawn, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat sealed the Oslo accords, which have, in theory, provided the theoretical and practical basis for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ever since: a set of measures and confidence-building steps that would ultimately lead to a two-state solution.Thirty years later, it is time to acknowledge that Oslo has failed. One can assign plenty of blame for this to all parties involved. Israel’s vast expansion of settlements in the West Bank violated its pledge that the “integrity and status” of the occupied territories would be preserved. Palestinian leadership fell into a pattern of corruption and mismanagement. And the U.S. and the international community didn’t hold both sides accountable.As Israel’s bombardment on the Gaza Strip continues, it’s hard to think of what comes next. But we shoul...

David French: Behold, MAGA Man

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

Last Wednesday, an election worker named Ruby Freeman took the stand in a Georgia courtroom and told the story of how her world was turned upside down by Rudy Giuliani. Three Decembers earlier, Giuliani shared a routine surveillance video of Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, doing the routine yet vital work of counting 2020 presidential ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.But Giuliani’s description of the video was anything but routine. He falsely claimed that the footage was evidence of vote fraud. In that moment, everything changed for Freeman. As she said in her testimony, “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.” That’s a polite way of describing the horrors that followed. She faced an avalanche of threats, racist attacks and harassment at work and home. She had to leave her house — and then, after law enforcement officials found her name on a death list, the house of the friend she’d been staying with. Even now she’s afraid to walk in public without a mask.The purpose of F...

Maureen Dowd: Supreme contempt for women

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:48:50 GMT

WASHINGTON — The Irish expect the worst to happen at any moment. And they have what my colleague Dan Barry calls “a wry acceptance of mortality.”Still, Ireland was shaken to its core in 2012 by the death of Savita Halappanavar, a beautiful, sparkling 31-year-old Indian immigrant, a dentist married to an Indian engineer. Savita was expecting her first child. She wore a new dress for the baby shower and prayed for the future. But that night she got sick. She went to a Galway hospital, where she was crushed to learn that her fetal membranes were bulging and her 17-week-old fetus would not survive.Knowing her life was at stake, she begged the medical staff to remove the fetus. As Kitty Holland wrote in “Savita: The Tragedy That Shook a Nation,” a midwife explained to her, “It’s a Catholic thing. We don’t do it here.” Ireland had a long history of punishing women, sending them to religious asylums if they were pregnant out of wedlock or deemed “fallen.” Savita developed septic shock and ...