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Jets decline tackle Mekhi Becton fifth-year option: source

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

Gang Green has finally decided on the future of its former first-round pick ahead of the 4 p.m. deadline to pick up his option.According to a league source, the Jets have declined to pick up tackle Mekhi Becton’s fifth-year option for the 2024 season. ESPN was the first to report the news of Gang Green deciding not to pick up Becton’s option.According to the NFL collecting bargaining agreement, teams can exercise an option of a former first-round pick ahead of their fourth season in the league. The salary is determined by a formula by position, playing time, etc.If the Jets had picked up his option, that would have fully guaranteed Becton a salary of $13.5 million for the 2024 season. The 2023 season will be the final year of his contract, which will pay him a based salary of $3.125 million after he was selected 11th overall in the 2020 NFL Draft out of Louisville.The fifth-year option became fully guaranteed with the new CBA in 2020. Before that, the fifth-year option w...

Review: ‘Big George Foreman’ is a tidy, cleaned-up biopic of the boxer

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

Katie Walsh | Tribune News ServiceFor a certain millennial population, the name “George Foreman” is more likely to conjure up an image of a favorite kitchen appliance before it brings to mind “heavyweight champ.” Indeed, the boxer/preacher/entrepreneur might be better known these days for his “Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine,” a gadget renowned in college dorms and bachelor pads across the nation, thanks to Foreman’s affable infomercials and infectious grin. Foreman became a pop cultural icon in the late ‘90s, with a ubiquitous media presence (he competed on “The Masked Singer” in 2022) and likable quirks, such as his five sons also named George Foreman.But in the new biopic directed and co-written by George Tillman Jr., with a title as large as its subject, “Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World,” the grill, and the sons, are relegated to the sidelines. This film seeks to reassert George’s story as an athlete and a...

Guregian: JuJu Smith-Schuster already loves being a Patriot

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

FOXBORO — JuJu Smith-Schuster was coached by offensive genius Andy Reid last year, and had Patrick Mahomes, currently the best quarterback on the planet, throwing him passes.And if that didn’t provide enough of an adrenaline rush, Smith-Schuster won a Super Bowl ring playing for the Chiefs.Listening to him Tuesday during his media availability, the newest Patriots receiver hasn’t traded in a Mercedes for a Volkswagen coming to Foxboro.Smith-Schuster told the crowd he was loving life at Gillette, and already loving his football experience.While the Patriots signed him to a three-year, $33 million deal with the hopes he would add some flash to the offense, it doesn’t hurt that he’s also doubling as a pitchman for what’s good about being on a team that hasn’t made it to the postseason in two of the last three years.What drew him to Foxboro?Along with the money, of course, he chalked it up to the allure of playing for head coach Bill Belichick.“When I was in Pittsburgh for five years, w...

Bear gives West Virginia principal a roaring wake-up call

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

By BEATRICE DUPUY (Associated Press)A black bear gave a West Virginia principal quite the wake-up call when it emerged — growling and roaring — from a dumpster outside an elementary school.Zela Elementary School principal James Marsh was surprised to discover the bear had somehow managed to get inside the dumpster over the weekend even after the school installed a lock bar. As Marsh was unlocking the bin Monday, the bear began pushing open the lid. “That will wake a person up,” Marsh said Tuesday in a phone interview. “That was 7:15 a.m., if you are not already awake that will wake you up.”Marsh darted away once the bear’s head appeared. The bear then jumped out and ran off in an encounter that was recorded by a school security camera and has since being shared widely across social media. “He looked like he was scared, too — as scared as I was,” Marsh said. “He might not be back.”The school in Nicholas County, a...

Oklahoma woman: Sex offender controlled daughter’s family

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

By SEAN MURPHY (Associated Press)HENRYETTA, Okla. (AP) — A registered sex offender found dead on a rural Oklahoma property with his wife, her teenage children and two visiting teens kept the family “under lock and key” and always had to know where they were, the wife’s mother said Tuesday. Janette Mayo, 59, of Westville, said Jesse McFadden’s controlling behavior was concerning, but the family didn’t learn about his criminal history until a few months ago. “He lied to my daughter, and he convinced her it was all just a huge mistake,” Mayo told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday morning. “He was very demure. He was very standoffish, generally very quiet, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically under lock and key. He had to know where they were at all times, which sent red flags up.”Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice said Monday that the bodies found near the town of Henryetta, were believed to includ...

‘Godfather of AI’ leaves Google, warns of tech’s dangers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

By MATT O’BRIEN and WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS (AP Business Reporters)WASHINGTON (AP) — Sounding alarms about artificial intelligence has become a popular pastime in the ChatGPT era, taken up by high-profile figures as varied as industrialist Elon Musk, leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky and the 99-year-old retired statesman Henry Kissinger.But it’s the concerns of insiders in the AI research community that are attracting particular attention. A pioneering researcher and the so-called “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton quit his role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.Over his decades-long career, Hinton’s pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks helped lay the foundation for much of the AI technology we see today.There has been a spasm of AI introductions in recent months. San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, rolled out its latest artificia...

On Illinois highway, blinding dust, then ‘crash after crash’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

By JOHN O’CONNOR (Associated Press)DIVERNON, Ill. (AP) — Winds stirred up a wall of dust from farm fields that engulfed a stretch of busy interstate highway in a matter of minutes. The brown cloud’s intensity caked even the insides of vehicles in dirt. As darkness enveloped them, some cars and trucks hurtling down the road put on their brakes; others didn’t.They slammed into one another, leaving them mangled or in some cases, burned. And when it was over, almost 40 people were injured and six people were dead — two of them still unidentifiable. Monday’s deadly and fiery crashes along a 2-mile stretch of Interstate 55 in central Illinois, 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of St. Louis and just south of the state capital of Springfield, came as high spring winds kicked up dust at a time when farmers are busy tilling or planting their fields, police said.“They were very unusual circumstances. Certainly dust storms happen, but it is not something ...

Boston Pizza teases unofficial name change to honour Leafs, mock Bruins

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

Boston Pizza isn’t messing around when it comes to an Original Six rivalry.After Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs overcame years of playoff failure to advance to the second round, Boston Pizza decided to honour the franchise and, in turn, mock Toronto’s rival.On Monday, a billboard popped up on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway declaring that “Boston’s Out [and] Auston’s In,” accompanied by an unofficial franchise name change from “Boston Pizza” to “Auston Pizza.” This comes after the Boston Bruins, who set an NHL record with 135 points during the regular season, were upset and eliminated by the Florida Panthers in the first round. Boston Pizza, a Canadian multi-national restaurant chain, has no affiliation with the city of Boston despite past lawsuits with Boston Market over the trademark. On Monday, a billboard popped up on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway declaring that “Boston’s Out [and] Aus...

The balloon that flew over Hawaii? US says it’s not China’s

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration have been tracking a balloon that was flying off the coast of Hawaii last week, but a defense official said Tuesday there’s no indication it is connected to China or any other adversary, and it presents no threats to aviation or national security.The balloon was first detected by radar on Friday and “Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said. “We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat.”The defense official said the balloon was floating at about 36,000 feet (11,000 meters), and it did not fly over any critical defense infrastructure or sensitive sites. After determining that the balloon presented no threat to people on the ground or to aviation over Hawaii, the military took no action to bring it down, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss m...

Workers: ‘Rotten egg’ smell before chocolate factory blast

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:14 GMT

Workers at a Pennsylvania chocolate factory smelled “rotten eggs” before a powerful natural gas explosion that leveled one building, heavily damaged another and killed seven people, federal safety officials said Monday in a preliminary report.The National Transportation Safety Board’s five-paragraph account of the fatal explosion confirmed earlier reporting by The Associated Press and other media outlets that employees had detected an odor of natural gas at the R.M. Palmer Co. factory in West Reading, a small town 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia.About 70 Palmer production workers and 35 office staff were working in two adjacent buildings at the time of the March 24 blast, according to the agency’s report, and employees in both buildings told federal investigators they’d smelled gas.“Employees from Building 2 recalled that they were sanitizing equipment in the building when they detected an odor of natural gas. The employees in Building 1 re...