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SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Spencer Knight made 20 saves, Mackie Samoskevich scored with less than a second left in the second period, and the Florida Panthers got four goals in the third to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 6-0 on Saturday and complete a two-day sweep. Aleksander Barkov, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, Evan Rodrigues and Adam Boqvist also scored for Florida, which won 6-3 at Carolina on Friday. The Panthers have won three straight — that streak following a stretch of six losses in seven games for the Stanley Cup champions. It was Knight's fourth career shutout, his first since Nov. 9, 2022 — also at home against Carolina. Spencer Martin made 23 saves on 28 shots for the Hurricanes, who have dropped four of their last six games (2-3-1). It was Martin's fourth consecutive start for Carolina. Takeaways Hurricanes: This was the first time all season that the Hurricanes failed to get a point in the game immediately following a loss. Carolina was 4-0-1 after a defeat entering Saturday. Panthers: A big day for Samoskevich — his alma mater on Saturday, that game ending just before the Florida-Carolina game started. The Panthers are 5-0-0 when he scores this season. Sam Reinhart had each of the four most recent Florida goals at 19:59, before Samoskevich got his Saturday. Key moment The Panthers scored two goals 11 seconds apart in the third to make it 5-0, and Yaniv Perets replaced Martin in the Hurricanes' net with 8:12 remaining. It was the second NHL appearance for Perets, who came on once in relief for Carolina last season. Key stat Ekblad's goal was his first in a span of 1,045 regular-season shifts since Feb. 20. Up next Carolina starts a two-game homestand Tuesday against Seattle. Florida goes to Pittsburgh to start a two-game trip on Tuesday. ___ AP NHL: Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction on charges of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and lying to Chicago police, saying he should not have been charged a second time after reaching a deal with prosecutors. The ruling, which did not address Smollett’s continued claims of innocence, marked a stunning reversal in a case that became part of a polarized political landscape. Smollett, who is Black and gay, told police in January 2019 that two men assaulted him in his downtown Chicago neighborhood, spouting slurs, tossing a noose around his neck, and yelling that he was in “MAGA country,” an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign slogan. The report, which made headlines around the world, prompted a massive search for suspects by Chicago police before investigators announced that they believed the attack was a hoax. The state’s highest court found that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after Smollett reached a deal with the Cook County state’s attorney in which charges against him were dropped in exchange for him forfeiting his $10,000 bond and performing community service. The deal prompted outrage in part because it did not include any condition that Smollett apologize or admit he staged the attack. “We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust,” Justice Elizabeth Rochford wrote in the court’s 5-0 opinion. “Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the state was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.” Smollett was on the television drama “Empire,” which filmed in Chicago, and prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio’s response to hate mail he received. Testimony at trial indicated he paid $3,500 to two men whom he knew from “Empire” to carry it out. Smollett testified that “there was no hoax” and that he was the victim of a hate crime. Smollett declined to comment Thursday through a publicist. His attorney Nenye Uche thanked the court for “restoring order to Illinois’ criminal law jurisprudence.” “This was not a prosecution based on facts, rather it was a vindictive persecution and such a proceeding has no place in our criminal justice system,” Uche said. The special prosecutor, former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, said he disagreed with the court’s ruling while noting that it “has nothing to do with Mr. Smollett’s innocence.” “The Illinois Supreme Court did not find any error with the overwhelming evidence presented at trial that Mr. Smollett orchestrated a fake hate crime and reported it to the Chicago Police Department as a real hate crime, or the jury’s unanimous verdict that Mr. Smollett was guilty of five counts of felony disorderly conduct,” Webb said. After Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office dropped the initial 16 counts of disorderly conduct, the backlash was swift, with then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel calling it “a whitewash of justice.” Webb was appointed special prosecutor and a grand jury restored charges, leading to Smollett’s 2021 conviction on five counts of disorderly conduct . Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail — six of which he served before he was freed pending appeal — and was ordered to pay about $130,000 in restitution. Chicago officials are pursuing reimbursement for that amount in police overtime through a civil case. Foxx told The Associated Press that she was not surprised that the high court found her handling of the case “proper — if unpopular, proper.” She criticized Webb’s ensuing “legal machinations,” which she said ignored the tenet of prosecutorial discretion and landed the issue in the “same position we were in in March 2019.” “What they were doing in going to the court to re-prosecute someone because you didn’t like the outcome would have set a horrendous precedent, in which anyone could come in and undermine the work of a prosecutor’s office,” said Foxx, who did not seek a third term this year. Eileen O’Neill Burke, the incoming Cook County state’s attorney , declined to comment. Smollett, a child actor who appeared in 1992 movie “The Mighty Ducks,” has credited his role as a singer on the hip-hop drama “Empire” for turbocharging his career . This year, he starred in the movie “The Lost Holliday” with Vivica A. Fox. Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis and Justice Joy Cunningham took no part in Thursday’s decision. Tareen reported from Chicago.
An inflatable gastric balloon could help people lose weight December 3, 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Engineers designed a new type of gastric balloon that can be inflated and deflated as needed. It could offer an alternative for people who don't want to undergo more invasive treatments such as gastric bypass surgery, or people who don't respond well to weight-loss drugs. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIN Email Gastric balloons -- silicone balloons filled with air or saline and placed in the stomach -- can help people lose weight by making them feel too full to overeat. However, this effect eventually can wear off as the stomach becomes used to the sensation of fullness. To overcome that limitation, MIT engineers have designed a new type of gastric balloon that can be inflated and deflated as needed. In an animal study, they showed that inflating the balloon before a meal caused the animals to reduce their food intake by 60 percent. This type of intervention could offer an alternative for people who don't want to undergo more invasive treatments such as gastric bypass surgery, or people who don't respond well to weight-loss drugs, the researchers say. "The basic concept is we can have this balloon that is dynamic, so it would be inflated right before a meal and then you wouldn't feel hungry. Then it would be deflated in between meals," says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the senior author of the study. Neil Zixun Jia, who received a PhD from MIT in 2023, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in the journal Device . An inflatable balloon Gastric balloons filled with saline are currently approved for use in the United States. These balloons stimulate a sense of fullness in the stomach, and studies have shown that they work well, but the benefits are often temporary. "Gastric balloons do work initially. Historically, what has been seen is that the balloon is associated with weight loss. But then in general, the weight gain resumes the same trajectory," Traverso says. "What we reasoned was perhaps if we had a system that simulates that fullness in a transient way, meaning right before a meal, that could be a way of inducing weight loss." To achieve a longer-lasting effect in patients, the researchers set out to design a device that could expand and contract on demand. They created two prototypes: One is a traditional balloon that inflates and deflates, and the other is a mechanical device with four arms that expand outward, pushing out an elastic polymer shell that presses on the stomach wall. In animal tests, the researchers found that the mechanical-arm device could effectively expand to fill the stomach, but they ended up deciding to pursue the balloon option instead. "Our sense was that the balloon probably distributed the force better, and down the line, if you have balloon that is applying the pressure, that is probably a safer approach in the long run," Traverso says. The researchers' new balloon is similar to a traditional gastric balloon, but it is inserted into the stomach through an incision in the abdominal wall. The balloon is connected to an external controller that can be attached to the skin and contains a pump that inflates and deflates the balloon when needed. Inserting this device would be similar to the procedure used to place a feeding tube into a patient's stomach, which is commonly done for people who are unable to eat or drink. "If people, for example, are unable to swallow, they receive food through a tube like this. We know that we can keep tubes in for years, so there is already precedent for other systems that can stay in the body for a very long time. That gives us some confidence in the longer-term compatibility of this system," Traverso says. Reduced food intake In tests in animals, the researchers found that inflating the balloon before meals led to a 60 percent reduction in the amount of food consumed. These studies were done over the course of a month, but the researchers now plan to do longer-term studies to see if this reduction leads to weight loss. "The deployment for traditional gastric balloons is usually six months, if not more, and only then you will see good amount of weight loss. We will have to evaluate our device in a similar or longer time span to prove it really works better," Jia says. If developed for use in humans, the new gastric balloon could offer an alternative to existing obesity treatments. Other treatments for obesity include gastric bypass surgery, "stomach stapling" (a surgical procedure in which the stomach capacity is reduced), and drugs including GLP-1 receptor agonists such as semaglutide. The gastric balloon could be a good option for patients who are not good candidates for surgery or don't respond well to weight-loss drugs, Traverso says. "For certain patients who are higher-risk, who cannot undergo surgery, or did not tolerate the medication or had some other contraindication, there are limited options," he says. "Traditional gastric balloons are still being used, but they come with a caveat that eventually the weight loss can plateau, so this is a way of trying to address that fundamental limitation." The research was funded by MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Karl van Tassel Career Development Professorship, the Whitaker Health Sciences Fund Fellowship, the T.S. Lin Fellowship, the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, and the Boston University Yawkey Funded Internship Program. Story Source: Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Original written by Anne Trafton. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. 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Virgo – (23rd August to 22nd September) Daily Horoscope Prediction says, Always have a smile Be cool in love life to explore its multiple phases today. Overcome the challenges at work with confidence. Your attitude is crucial in financial decisions. Tackle the relationship issues to keep your love affair intact. Overcome the challenges at work with a positive attitude. Both health and money will also be positive. Virgo Love Horoscope Today Do not let minor egos hamper the love affair. Spend more time together but ensure you avoid unpleasant conversations. Some Virgos will find the relationship toxic and may come out of it. Your love life will see minor twists and you may also introduce the lover to the parents to get the approval. The second half of the day is good to propose and you may open up the mind to the crush without inhibition. Virgo Career Horoscope Today Be professional in attitude. The seniors within the organization will appreciate your commitment and this will help you professionally deliver good results. Always maintain your patience on the office floor and stay away from gossip, office politics, and ego clashes. Some entrepreneurs may have a tiff with authorities and this must be resolved before the day ends. Put in efforts to raise funds that will also ensure you expand the trade to new territories without much difficulty. Virgo Money Horoscope Today Prosperity will permit you to purchase a new vehicle. You should keep an eye on the property as some minor disputes will arise within the family. The stock market is a good investment option. However, you need to learn about the industry before making vital financial decisions. Some females invest in property that will bring in good returns in the future. You may also contribute to a celebration at the office or within the family. Entrepreneurs will also see good returns from even foreign markets. Virgo Health Horoscope Today Minor medical issues will be there. Seniors may have breathing issues while children may complain about skin or oral health issues. You must skip alcohol today and should also be careful to fill the plate with more proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Pregnant girls must take care while taking part in adventure sports. Females may have gynecological issues. Those who drive must be careful, especially in the evening hours. Virgo Sign Attributes Strength: Kind, Elegant, Perfectionist, Modest, Strong-willed Weakness: Picky, Over-possessive Symbol: Virgin maiden Element: Earth Body Part: Intestine Sign Ruler : Mercury Lucky Day: Wednesday Lucky Color: Gray Lucky Number: 7 Lucky Stone : Sapphire Virgo Sign Compatibility Chart Natural affinity: Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio, Capricorn Good compatibility: Virgo, Pisces Fair compatibility: Aries, Leo, Libra, Aquarius Less compatibility: Gemini, Sagittarius By: Dr. J. N. Pandey Vedic Astrology & Vastu Expert Website: www.astrologerjnpandey.com E-mail: djnpandey@gmail.com Phone: 91-9811107060 (WhatsApp Only)
Join Alliance Entertainment's Exclusive Live Investor Webinar and Q&A Session on December 10LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers’ signing of Blake Snell became official Saturday, adding the two-time Cy Young Award winner to front a starting rotation stocked with question marks. Snell, who will turn 32 next week, agreed to a five-year, $182 million contract that includes a $52 million signing bonus and $65 million in deferred salary. That deal was pending a physical which Snell passed. The 2018 American League Cy Young Award winner with the Tampa Bay Rays, Snell won the National League Cy Young in 2023 after going 14-9 with a 2.25 ERA for the San Diego Padres. He became a free agent last winter but stayed on the market well into March looking for a long-term deal that never materialized despite his Cy Young history. The Dodgers were involved with Snell at one point before he signed a two-year, $62 million contract with the San Francisco Giants that included an opt-out clause. He exercised that opt-out after going 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA in an injury-interrupted season with the Giants. He had 145 strikeouts and just 44 walks in 104 innings. But he made just 20 starts due to two trips to the injured list with a groin injury (likely related to his late signing affecting his preparation for the season). The 20 starts were his fewest in a full season since his rookie year in 2016 (19 starts). Snell goes to the front of a rotation that includes a number of players returning from injury and/or surgery. Shohei Ohtani is expected to return to pitching after undergoing his second Tommy John surgery in September 2023. But his return to the mound will be delayed by surgery on his non-throwing shoulder following the World Series. Yoshinobu Yamamoto finished the 2024 season healthy but missed three months with a rotator cuff strain. Neither he nor Ohtani will be asked to pitch on less than five days of rest and the Dodgers are planning to go with a six-man rotation in 2025. Related Articles Tyler Glasnow’s 2024 season ended early with an elbow injury and his status for 2025 is uncertain. Tony Gonsolin will be returning from Tommy John surgery. Dustin May did not pitch in 2024 while recovering from his own elbow surgery and a torn esophagus. Emmet Sheehan is expected back at some point in 2025 after his Tommy John surgery. Clayton Kershaw is expected to re-sign at some point. But he underwent foot and knee surgeries in November and is not likely to be available for a full season. Walker Buehler and Jack Flaherty are free agents. The Dodgers will start the 2025 season early again with another trip to Asia. They are scheduled to open the regular season with two games against the Chicago Cubs on March 18 and 19 in Tokyo.