The climax of an offseason spent contemplating and debating the value of some of baseball’s biggest stars, as it turns out, was not the record-setting free agent contracts agreed to last month by Manny Machado and Bryce Harper but what came Tuesday: a massive extension in its final stages for Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout that zoomed past those other deals like a 600-foot home run.
Trout’s extension is worth “roughly” $430 million over 12 years, according to two people familiar with the negotiation — $100 million more than the 13-year, $330 million deal Harper signed weeks ago with the Philadelphia Phillies, which previously stood as the largest in North American team sports history. The new deal effectively adds 10 years and roughly $360 million to the $66.5 million Trout was already owed for 2019 and 2020 from the extension he signed in 2014, according to an industry source, but for luxury tax purposes it will be considered a 12-year contract.
.
Mike Trout, left, is getting an extension $100 million richer than Bryce Harper’s recent contract with the Phillies. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
A mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday left at least 49 people dead and the city on lockdown for hours.
“It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at a news conference. “From what we know, it does appear to have been well planned. …These are people who I would describe as having extremist views that have absolutely no place in New Zealand and in fact have no place in the world.”
Ardern said 20 other people were seriously injured in the attack, which began just before 3 p.m. local time, and that the country had raised its threat level to high following the incident.
Cali was arrested in 2008 as part of a sweeping indictment by the Justice Department against organized crime. According to The Associated Press, he pleaded guilty in an extortion conspiracy involving a failed attempt to build a NASCAR track on Staten Island. He was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and released in 2009.
Six years later, Cali took over the Gambino crime family, replacing 68-year-old Domenico Cefalu, Gang Land News reported.
The Gambinos were once one of the most notorious and powerful crime syndicates in America and one of New York’s five major Mafia families. Then, in the 1980s, the federal government unleashed a sweeping crackdown on the mob. Former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani won a highly-publicized criminal trial in 1986 that saw the heads of all five families indicted on charges of racketeering, murder and extortion. That victory would help Giuliani win the New York City mayoral race in 1993.
.
New York Daily News via Getty Images
Cali and 61 other Costa Nostra associates were arrested and charged with federal racketeering charges as part of a major Justice Department crackdown on organized crime in 2008.
This is what happens when anti-racism is no longer a major goal of educational policy.
America has largely given up trying to desegregate its schools. Politicians have capitulated to reactionary white parents and activists who have successfully fought for decades against the government’s hesitant efforts to provide equal resources and opportunities for students of color. The result has been a disaster for non-white students, for public education and for the U.S. as a whole.
In the 1950s and 1960s, educational segregation, along with voting rights, was the iconic issue of the civil rights movement. Today, criminal justice and mass incarceration have largely overtaken school segregation in high-profile discussions about racism.
Obviously, not everyone has moved on: Black Lives Matter has managed to raise public awareness of systemic racism and local activists have continued to fight against segregation. For example, black Chicago students have repeatedly protested the way the city robs them of resources and closes schools in their neighborhoods. But focused, national attention, much less change, has proved elusive.
.
The dream of desegregation is dying. Jackson Joyce / for NBC News
Air pollution, the leading environmental cause of death worldwide, reflects the stark racial inequalities of American life. In the United States, the problem is disproportionately caused by the white majority, but its consequences are suffered mainly by blacks and Hispanics.
That is the finding of a new study, about five years in the making, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The results illuminate the fault lines of the lethal environmental danger, which is inseparable from the threat of climate change and responsible for more deaths globally each year than automobile accidents.
The research confirms with new statistical certainty the determination that racial and ethnic minorities are acutely vulnerable to air pollution because of the neighborhoods in which they live. But it also introduces a largely unstudied element into the analysis, examining who is responsible for the pollutants inhaled disproportionately by blacks and Hispanics. The answer, according to a nationwide team of engineers and economists, is white people.
.
Smokestacks near an oil refinery are seen in front of the Utah State Capitol on Dec. 10, 2018. A new study released March 11 says African-Americans and Hispanics breathe in far more deadly air pollution than they are responsible for making. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Mike Trout, left, is getting an extension $100 million richer than Bryce Harper’s recent contract with the Phillies. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
.
.
.
James' World 2 