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Today is Wednesday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2026. There are 358 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 7,1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera.”

Also on this date:

In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei observed three of Jupiter’s moons for the first time and a fourth days later.

Related Articles

• These numbers tell the story of the Los Angeles wildfires, one year later
• CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who sold US secrets to the Soviets, dies in prison at 84
• Pamela Smart seeks to overturn conviction for having teenager murder her husband
• Prediction markets could change sports betting nationwide, report says
• Automakers face an ‘EV winter’ in 2026 as sales growth slows

In 1979, Vietnamese forces captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the communist Khmer Rouge government whose brutal policies are blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people, including the killing of thousands of Vietnamese villagers in cross-border raids.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial began on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. The Republican-controlled House voted in October 1998 to start proceedings after months of controversy over Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, with whom he denied having a sexual relationship. The Senate acquitted Clinton on Feb. 12, falling far short of the 67 votes needed to convict on each charge.

In 2015, masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, methodically killing 12 people, including the editor, before escaping. (Two suspects were killed two days later.)

In 2022, three white men convicted of murder after Ahmaud Arbery was chased and killed while jogging in a south Georgia community were sentenced to life in prison. The judge denied any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man in 2020 after spotting him running in their neighborhood in Brunswick.

In 2023, Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in a historic post-midnight 15th ballot, overcoming holdouts from his own ranks after a chaotic week that tested the new GOP majority’s ability to govern.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Musician Kenny Loggins is 78.
• Actor David Caruso is 70.
• TV journalist Katie Couric is 69.
• Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota is 65.
• Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is 63.
• Actor Nicolas Cage is 62.
• Actor Jeremy Renner is 55.
• Country singer-musician John Rich is 52.
• Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton is 41.
• NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson is 29.
• Actor Marcus Scribner is 26.
• Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter is 14.

By TIM WILLERT

STILLWATER, Okla. — Parsa Fallah scored 24 points and Kanye Clary added 18 and nine rebounds to help Oklahoma State defeat No. 25 UCF 87-76 on Tuesday night.

Anthony Roy added 15 points, including four 3-pointers, for Oklahoma State (13-2, 1-1 Big 12).

Oklahoma State was 10 of 19 on 3-pointers and 27 for 35 from the free-throw line to help fuel the win.

Riley Kugel scored 15 points and Jamichael Stillwell added 13 for UCF (12-2, 1-1), which won 11 straight and entered the AP Top 25 men’s basketball poll for the first time since 2019.

Poor shooting plagued the Knights, who shot 38 percent for the game, including just 21 percent from beyond the arc.

Oklahoma State built a 31-23 lead without making a field goal for more than seven minutes. A steal and a layup by Jaylen Curry ended the drought with 3:25 left in the first half and extended the advantage to 10 points.

UCF pulled within 36-32 on a pair of free throws by Devan Cambridge before Clary’s 3-pointer with 9 seconds left gave Oklahoma State a 41-32 lead at halftime.

UCF made a run at the Cowboys early in the second half, scoring seven straight to cut the deficit to 51-50. But that was as close as the Knights got.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by UCF’s George Beale Jr. cut Oklahoma State’s lead to 67-64 before the Cowboys took control with a 13-1 run to make it 80-65 late in the half.

Up next

UCF: Hosts Cincinnati on Sunday.

TORONTO — Matthew Knies scored a goal and set up Auston Matthews to push the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 4-1 win against the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.

Easton Cowan also scored for the Maple Leafs and Bobby McMann added an empty-net goal.

Former Maple Leafs draft pick Carter Verhaeghe broke Joseph Woll’s shutout bid with 8:22 remaining as Toronto won its sixth straight at Scotiabank Arena. The Panthers have been blanked only once this season.

Knies made it 2-0 early in the second period. Then, less than four minutes later, he set up Matthews with a pass in front for the captain’s team-leading 21st.

Former Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin was in attendance. He was part of a pregame ceremony to mark Matthews becoming the all-time franchise leader in goals. Sundin had the mark at 420. Matthews now sits at 422.

Matthews has seven goals and 11 points in five games since the three-day Christmas break and was foiled by Florida netminder Sergei Bobrovsky on an early-game power-play breakaway.

Florida outshot the home side 32-23.

This was the Panthers first visit to Toronto since hammering the Maple Leafs 6-1 in Game 7 of their second-round playoff series on May 18. Toronto has won both meetings this season by a combined score of 7-2.

Leafs defenseman Brandon Carlo (foot surgery) returned to the lineup after a 23-game absence.

Panthers forward Brad Marchand did not play in the third period after a hit late in the second. He revealed earlier in the day that he considered signing as a free agent with the Maple Leafs last summer. “It was between Florida and Toronto where I was going to go. I never thought it was going to be possible to re-sign with Florida. I really didn’t.“

Up next

Panthers visit Montreal on Thursday.

MINNEAPOLIS — The transition offense never has been in question. When fed a steady diet of opposing turnovers, the Miami Heat stand as a formidable force.

The halfcourt offense against locked-in, quality opposition able to secure the defensive end?

Something closer to what Erik Spoelstra’s team endured in Tuesday night’s 122-94 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center, the Heat’s most-lopsided loss of the season.

For the second time in four days, the Timberwolves kept the turnovers down and the defense up in pushing past the Heat, including a 10-point decision Saturday night at Kaseya Center.

“The one on Saturday we had a spirit to fight all the way to the end,” Spoelstra said. “That’s what is most disappointing to me as the head coach, the last six minutes. It just felt like we let it go.”

So even with Tyler Herro back in the Heat mix for the first time since Dec. 9, a step back, on a night when the starting lineup outside of Norman Powell largely was held in check.

Powell closed with 21 points, with Herro scoring 17 after missing 13 games with a toe contusion.

“It felt good to be back healthy, be back on the court,” Herro said. “Obviously, I would like to have won the game, but it just felt good to be healthy.”

And while Bam Adebayo and Kel’el Ware handled their business on the boards, with 11 rebounds apiece, the offensive output was muted, with Adebayo closing 3 of 11 from the field, Ware 3 of 10.

Adebayo said it was more than just the defensive deterrence of Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert.

“Offensively, I’ve been struggling way before that, so I don’t think he has anything to do with that,” Adebayo said. “I feel like for us, we’ve just got to really concentrate on making it. I feel like we got to this weird time in the season where it just feels like shots aren’t falling.”:

Against the 26 points of Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, who shot 5 of 8 on 3-pointers, simply not enough.

Next up for the Heat is the second stop of this four-game trip, on Thursday night against the Chicago Bulls at the United Center.

Five Degrees of Heat from Tuesday night’s game:

1. Game flow: The Heat led 29-27 after the first quarter, with the Timberwolves taking a 61-54 lead into halftime.

The Timberwolves then took off at the start of the third period, with a 10-0 run in a mere 1:54 pushing them to a 73-58 lead.

From there, Minnesota, with a barrage of 3-pointers, carried a 93-77 lead into the fourth, eventually pushing that edge early in the final period into the 20s.

“They just got us into the mud and we couldn’t keep our pace going,” Spoelstra said.

Spoelstra eventually pulled the plug with his primary players with the Heat down 110-82 with 4:40 to play.

2. Off the bench: Sidelined since Dec. 9, having missed 13 games with the toe contusion, Herro returned in reserve, with Spoelstra remaining with his starting lineup of Ware, Adebayo, Powell, Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell.

It was Herro’s first game as a reserve since an April 4, 2024 Heat victory in Indiana. That appearance was the second consecutive game off the bench after returning from nearly two months off with a hyperextended knee. He then moved back into the starting lineup for the close of the regular season and playoffs.

Prior to Tuesday night, those had been Herro’s lone two reserve appearances since being named NBA Sixth Man of the Year for the 2021-22 season.

Of playing Herro off the bench, Spoelstra said. “That’s just a decision. I’m not going to get into any of that right now.”

Herro was similarly reticent when asked about the reserve role.

“It’s cool,” he said. “It’s not really an adjustment, just playing basketball.”

Related Articles

• Winderman’s view: Spoelstra calls Herro ‘a value add’ as guard returns in Heat loss
• Tyler Herro cleared for Heat return: ‘I just had to get healthy’; Jaquez out
• Heat’s Powell lets play do talking in All-Star bid (and then talks it up)
• ASK IRA: Time for the NBA to provide ultimate salary-cap clarity to Heat in regard to Rozier?
• ‘Not a toe-to-toe team,’ so Heat looking to keep opponents off balance by stealing into the night; Herro questionable

3. Herro time: Herro entered in place of Wiggins with 5:33 left in the opening period and the Heat up 19-14. He was part of a dual substitution, with Nikola Jovic entering at the same juncture, in place of Ware.

Herro effectively was cast in the sixth-man role of Jaime Jaquez Jr., who missed his second consecutive game with an ankle sprain, with Herro playing on a second unit that also featured Jovic, Pelle Larsson and Dru Smith, with Wiggins cycling back to play with those four.

Herro then converted his first shot in his return, a corner 3-pointer. With that conversion, Herro joined Duncan Robinson as the lone players with at least 1,000 with the Heat.

Herro closed 7 of 15 from the field in his 29 minutes, with nine rebounds, the Heat outscored by 25 during his action.

“I felt good,” Herro said. “Like I said, just being out there was my biggest thing that I wanted to feel, and that’s how I felt. I felt good.

“I’m healthy. So I just want to be available and be healthy.”

4. Still going: While his minutes largely were staggered from Herro’s, Powell continued as the face of the Heat offense, this time with 13 first-half points.

He closed 9 of 17 from the field, including 3 of 6 on 3-pointers.

With the performance, Powell scored in double figures for a 35th consecutive game dating back to last season with the Clippers, tying the longest such streak of his career, set in 2021.

But Powell said what matters most, now that Herro is back, is finding a way to make it work better against the better teams.

“It’s kind of gone sideways a little bit with guys and uncertainty,” he said. “But we got to kind of get out of our own way and go out there and put on a brand of basketball that is about winning, about togetherness, about toughness and about a style of basketball every single night, no matter who’s in the lineup.”

5. Off night: While NBC featured his defensive work, as he also was featured during the national broadcast with a pregame interview, it hardly was a night to remember for Mitchell, who opened 0 for 7 from the field.

Mitchell closed 2 of 11, missing all four of his 3-point attempts, although he did have nine assists, without a turnover.

While Mitchell continued to thrive as playmaker, a shift to the bench certainly is not out of the question as Herro continues his comeback.

MINNEAPOLIS — Observations and other notes of interest from Tuesday night’s 122-94 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves:

– Now the work begins for Erik Spoelstra.

– The rotation work with Tyler Herro back.

– Because much had changed since Herro last played on Dec. 9.

– “He’s a value add. It’s as simple as that,” Spoelstra said pregame. “We need him back, and it’s good to have him healthy and feeling good about his health.”

– And they do.

– Because the halfcourt offense needs a boost.

– With Herro a booster.

– When the Heat aren’t forcing turnovers, the easy points go away.

– With this one an example.

– Against a quality defense.

– As for mapping out minutes going forward with the rest of the rotation with Herro back, Spoelstra said, “Depends on the context, depends on the player, depends on whatever the injury is coming back.”

– In this case, the toe contusion that had Herro out 13 games.

– An injury that now does not appear to be limiting.

– With a return to the starting lineup assuredly looming.

– The question with Herro back and Jaime Jaquez Jr. close (out for a second consecutive game with an ankle sprain) is whether it could be back to the G League for first-round pick Kasparas Jakucionis.

– Said Spoelstra of that possibility, “All of it’s on the table. We’ll just have to see when we get everybody back, what the rotation will look like.”

– So, for now, Herro as a reserve.

– But for how long?

– Because all sorts of body language indicated that Herro expects otherwise.

– And arguably deserves such.

– Even with Herro back, the Heat again opened with a lineup of Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins, Bam Adebayo, Kel’el Ware and Davion Mitchell.

– The previous time Herro played and did not start was April 4, 2024 in a victory in Indiana. That instance was the second consecutive game off the bench after returning from nearly two months off with a hyperextended knee.

– With all three Heat two-way players now back on the Heat roster, Vlad Goldin and Jahmir Young were inactive.

–  Leaving Myron Gardner as the lone active two-way player.

– Herro entered in the Heat’s first substitution, along with Nikola Jovic.

– Pelle Larsson followed shortly thereafter.

– With Dru Smith making it nine deep for the Heat.

– That shuffled first-round pick Jakucionis out of the mix.

– As well as Simone Fontecchio.

Related Articles

• Herro returns, but Heat fall 122-94 in second loss to Timberwolves in four days
• Tyler Herro cleared for Heat return: ‘I just had to get healthy’; Jaquez out
• Heat’s Powell lets play do talking in All-Star bid (and then talks it up)
• ASK IRA: Time for the NBA to provide ultimate salary-cap clarity to Heat in regard to Rozier?
• ‘Not a toe-to-toe team,’ so Heat looking to keep opponents off balance by stealing into the night; Herro questionable

– Keshad Johnson was back available for the Heat after extended playing time in the G League with the Sioux Falls Skyforce.

– “He’s getting a lot of development here and great mentorship from the vets,” Spoelstra said. “But his continued development on the court is important as well. He played well there and just continues to grow and improve in a lot of different aspects.”

– Powell said going in that the challenge of the Timberwolves was clear, having lost on Saturday to Minnesota in Miami.

– “They do a great job of controlling the paint defensively and offensively, attacking, getting downhill,” he said. “So having the mindset that it’s going to be a physical game, you know, that we’ve got to be ready. They punch first and control the tempo in the paint. And I think that’s one of the biggest adjustments. And whenever we do that, we’re going to be able to get out now and transition and get our offense going.”

– Of which little of that happened.

–  It was back in the time machine for the Heat, back on NBC, which carried the NBA during the Heat’s formative years.

– “I have great memories from the NBC games growing up,” Spoelstra said.

– Adebayo’s first basket moved him past Glen Rice (3,604) for the third-most in franchise history.

– Ware extended his career-best run of games with multiple offensive rebounds to 18.

– Ware and Adebayo entered averaging a combined 20.1 rebounds per game. The franchise record for combined rebounds by two players is 20.2 by Rony Seikaly and Grant Long in 1991-92. They upped that average Tuesday night.

– The Heat have now lost 13 of their past 16 to the Timberwolves.

GAINESVILLE — Coach Todd Golden’s suddenly unranked Gators were desperate for a win.

Avoiding a loss to former coach Mike White’s No. 18 Georgia Bulldogs was critical for a Florida team riding a 13-game winning streak at the O’Connell Center and 0-1 in SEC play.

The Gators found their offensive flow and applied the defensive clamps against the high-scoring Bulldogs during a convincing and pivotal 92-77 win Tuesday night at the O’Connell Center.

“Tonight was a game that we needed,” Golden said.

Florida (10-5, 1-1 SEC) was coming off an SEC-opening loss at Missouri and with more losses than the 2025 national title team.

“Everyone brought the juice from the start,” veteran power forward Alex Condon said. “No one was feeling sorry for themselves. No one was being selfish, just playing really together as a team.”

The Gators faced a new challenge from the Bulldogs, losers of 12 of the past 13 meetings entering Tuesday.

Georgia entered with a nation-leading average of 99.4 points — or 14.9 more per game than a Florida squad struggling mightily with outside shooting and backcourt playmaking.

A reported crowd of 9,563 welcomed White with boos as the Bulldogs arrived as 9.5-point underdogs, but also in the top 25 against an unranked Florida team at home for the first time since 1996.

Yet, the Bulldogs (13-2, 1-1 SEC) tied their season-low in points, including just two by leading scorer Jeremiah Wilkinson on 1-of-9 shooting, and could not contain the Gators’ frontcourt. Veteran forwards Thomas Haugh and Alex Condon each had 21 points and the Gators finished with 56-35 rebounding edge.

“It’s how we’re built and who we are,” Golden said. “We were super physical tonight.”

The Bulldogs were not entirely themselves, either.

Georgia played more than 30 minutes without 6-foot-11, 260-pound sophomore center Somoto Cyril, the Bulldogs’ leading rebounder and shot blocker, to further the Gators’ front-court advantage. Officials ejected Cyril with Florida leading 22-21 with 10:14 remaining in the first half after he elbowed the head of Florida center and fellow Nigerian Rueben Chinyelu after the two players became entangled chasing a rebound.

With Cyril out, the Gators responded with a Condon layup, Chinyelu dunk and Haugh dunk before Wilkinson scored his only points on a falling floater to end an 8-0 UF run.

“That was a big part of the game,” Condon said. “It’s just good Rueben kept his head. The game was upwards from there for us.”

Haugh led the Gators with a brilliant all-around performance, also finishing with 12 rebounds, five assists, four blocked shots and three steals in 39 of 40 minutes.

“He’s turned himself into one of the better players of America,” Golden said. “It’s a testament to work, his belief, his coachability.”

But the Gators’ backcourt and defense came alive during the second half to lift the Gators.

Starting guards Boogie Fland and Xaivian Lee ended the first half 0-of-7 shooting and Florida leading just 41-40, with 26 points by Haugh and Condon on 11-of-14 shooting.

A layup by Lee early in the second half were his first points. Fland missed his first five shots but two free throws put him in the scoring column with 17:08 remaining to push Florida’s lead to 51-45. A Chinyelu dunk made it 53-45.

A pair of driving layups by Fland sandwiched a tip-in by Condon soon followed to give the Gators a 59-47 lead, UF’s biggest lead at the time, before a basket by Georgia guard Blue Cain. Cain’s late 3-pointer keyed the Bulldogs’ 88-83 win Feb. 25, 2025, against Florida, the eventual national champions Gators’ last defeat and the Bulldogs’ only win against Florida since 2019 in Gainesville when White was UF’s coach.

Georgia cut the lead to 59-52 on a 3-pointer by Kanon Catchings, but the Bulldogs missed their next seven of eight shots as Florida’s defense tightened its grip.

Florida hit four of their next six field goals. Following a putback by Chinyelu, Lee hit a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to give Florida a 69-54 advantage.

Georgia was just 34.3% from the field during the second half after shooting 48.6% during the game’s first 20 minutes.

UF, which shot 46.7% on the night, led by as many as 21 points when guard Urban Klavzar hit a corner 3-pointer, one of three 3s during an 11-point night off the bench.

Georgia cut the lead to 10 on a pair of free throws by Cain with 2:01 remaining, but could get no closer as White fell to 1-7 against his team for seven seasons before Golden arrived after the 2022 season.

The decision was Golden’s 19th top-25 win in four seasons, one away from catching White for second all-time behind Hall of Famer Billy Donovan.

“This was an opportunity for us to get a big win,” Golden said. “Our guys delivered.”

Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com

UCF is expected to hire former Oklahoma State coach Cooper Bassett as the Knights’ new tight ends coach.

CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz was the first to report the move, which was later confirmed by a team source.

Bassett, 35, takes over coaching the tight ends from Steve Cooper, who is the team’s offensive coordinator. The move most likely frees up Cooper to spend more time with the offense as a whole.

The Oklahoma native joins AJ Blazek (offensive line) and Will Johnson (defensive back) as new coaches joining Scott Frost’s staff heading into Year 2.

Bassett was a four-year letterwinner as a tight end at Oklahoma State from 2009-12. He transitioned into coaching, first as a graduate assistant at Missouri and Maryland, and then as offensive line coach at West Texas A&M (2017-20).

He coached offensive line at Southeast Missouri, Sam Houston State and Utah State, where he was promoted to co-offensive coordinator in 2024. Bassett returned to his alma mater last season, coaching the offensive line for the Cowboys.

Please find me on X, Bluesky or Instagram @osmattmurschel. Email: mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com. Sign up for the Sentinel’s Knights Weekly newsletter for a roundup of all our UCF coverage.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A year after twin infernos tore across opposite ends of Los Angeles County, the scars are still visible. Thousands of homes were reduced to rubble, with rebuilding slow, and the death toll showed how a wildfire under extreme weather conditions can turn catastrophic.

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The Palisades and Eaton fires exploded in size within hours of each other on Jan. 7, 2025. These figures show how fast the disaster unfolded and the toll it left behind:

90 miles per hour

The speed of predicted wind gusts in mountain areas, equivalent to 145 kilometers per hour. Red Flag warnings were issued Jan. 6 for severe wildfire danger as Southern California was buffeted by the region’s notorious Santa Ana winds. Grass and brush were tinder dry after months with little or no rain. The National Weather Service warned it could be a life-threatening wind event. Firefighting assets were pre-positioned in areas deemed to be at especially high risk for fires.

4 hours FILE – A lone sunbather sits and watches a large plume of smoke from a wildfire rise over the Pacific Palisades, in Santa Monica, Calif., Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

How long it took for a small wildfire to explode in size. At 10:30 a.m. reports began coming in about a small blaze on a ridge in LA’s upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood, in the same area where crews had responded to a fire on New Year’s Day. Before long, a large plume of dark smoke was visible from miles away. Shortly after 11 a.m. on Jan. 7, the revived fire was reported to be about 10 acres (4 hectares), located near Palisades Drive on the coastal neighborhood’s western edge.

Over the next two hours, roads were jammed with motorists trying to flee as flames roared down streets and decimated homes. Officials issued an evacuation order for the Palisades while warning residents of surrounding areas that they should also get ready to leave. Within hours, the blaze had rapidly grown.

FILE – A woman cries as the Palisades Fire advances in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Etienne Laurent, File)

As firefighting resources were focused on the Palisades, another blaze was sparked about 30 miles to the east in Altadena, on the other end of Los Angeles County. The Eaton Fire started at 6:17 p.m. and all firefighting aircraft in the county were soon grounded because of high winds. By 8 p.m. it had doubled in size.

59 square miles FILE – The Palisades Fire burns a Christmas tree inside a residence in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File)

The amount of land charred by the two infernos, equivalent to 155 square kilometers. That’s roughly the size of the entire city of San Francisco.

31 lives

The number of people who died — 19 in the Eaton Fire and 12 in the Palisades Fire.

31 days

How long the Palisades Fire burned before it was extinguished. Investigators determined the 37-square-mile blaze had actually grown out of the earlier fire that started on Jan. 1.

25 days FILE – Melissa Young, center right, gets a hug from a well-wisher at her fire-ravaged home in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, Jan. 9, 2025, in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)

The number of days it took for the Eaton Fire to be extinguished. It burned 22 square miles.

$33.9 billion

The amount of federal disaster aid requested by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Trump administration and Congress have yet to approve it.

45 years in prison

The maximum sentence faced by a 29-year-old man charged with sparking the Palisades Fire. He has pleaded not guilty. The cause of the Eaton Fire remains under investigation.

16,246 structures FILE – A bus sits among burned out homes, Jan. 9, 2025, in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)

The number of structures destroyed in both blazes, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. In Altadena, 9,413 homes, businesses and other buildings were razed. In Pacific Palisades and neighboring areas including Malibu, 6,833 buildings, mostly homes, were gone.

10 houses

The number of homes rebuilt so far, according to city and county data. Most are in the Altadena area, with one in Pasadena and two in Pacific Palisades. None are finished in Malibu. Hundreds more are under construction across the region.

$970 million

The total charitable commitments to LA fire relief is between at least $860 million to $970 million, according to a study by the Milken Institute. Most was raised in the first month after the fires, and individual donations through GoFundMe brought in $265 million.

This story has been updated to correct the date the two fires erupted to Jan. 7, 2025, not Jan. 6, 2024.

WASHINGTON (AP) — CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who betrayed Western intelligence assets to the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in U.S. history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Ames died Monday.

Ames admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for U.S. secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. He admitted disclosing the identities of 10 Russian officials and one East European who were spying for the United States or Great Britain. His betrayals are blamed for the executions of Western agents working behind the Iron Curtain and were a major setback to the CIA.

He pleaded guilty without a trial to espionage and tax evasion and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors said he deprived the United States of valuable intelligence material for years.

He professed “profound shame and guilt” for “this betrayal of trust, done for the basest motives,” money to pay debts. But he downplayed the damage he caused, telling the court he did not believe he had “noticeably damaged” the United States or “noticeably aided” Moscow.

“These spy wars are a sideshow which have had no real impact on our significant security interests over the years,” he told the court in a matter-of-fact tone.

In a jailhouse interview with The Washington Post the day before he was sentenced, Ames said he was motivated to spy by “financial troubles, immediate and continuing.”

By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for orchestrating the murder of her husband by her teenage student in 1990, is seeking to overturn her conviction over what her lawyers claim were several constitutional violations.

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The petition for habeas corpus relief was filed Monday in New York, where she is being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and, in New Hampshire, where the murder happened.

“Ms. Smart’s trial unfolded in an environment that no court had previously confronted — wall-to-wall media coverage that blurred the line between allegation and evidence,” Jason Ott, who is part of Smart’s legal team, said in a statement. “This petition challenges whether a fair adversarial process took place.”

The move comes about seven months after New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte rejected a request for a sentence reduction hearing. Ayotte said she reviewed the case and decided it was not deserving of a hearing.

A spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said it would have no comment about the petition.

A spokeman for New Hampshire’s attorney general said it would not comment on pending litigation “other than to note that the State maintains Ms. Smart received a fair trial and that her convictions were lawfully obtained and upheld on appeal.”

In their petition, lawyers for the 57-year-old Smart argue that prosecutors misled the jury by providing them with inaccurate transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of Ms. Smart that included words that were not audible on the recordings. Among the words they claim weren’t audible but in the transcript were the word killed in the sentence “you had your husband killed,” the word busted in the sentence “I’m gonna be busted” and the word murder in the sentence “this would have been the perfect murder.”

“Modern science confirms what common sense has always told us: when people are handed a script, they inevitably hear the words they are shown,” Smart’s attorney, Matthew Zernhelt, said in a statement. “Jurors were not evaluating the recordings independently — they were being directed toward a conclusion, and that direction decided the verdict.”

Lawyers also argued the conviction should be overturned because the verdict was tainted by the media attention and due to faulty instructions to the jury. They argued jurors were told they must find that Smart acted with premeditation, not told they must consider only evidence presented at trial.

They also argued the trial court gave her a mandatory life sentence without parole for being an accomplice to first-degree murder, despite New Hampshire not mandating that sentence for the charge.

Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband, Gregory Smart, in Derry. The shooter was freed in 2015 after serving a 25-year sentence. Although Smart denied knowledge of the plot, she was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder and other crimes and sentenced to life without parole.

It took until 2024 for Smart to take full responsibility for her husband’s death. In a video released in June, she said she spent years deflecting blame “almost as if it was a coping mechanism.”

Smart’s trial was a media circus and one of America’s first high-profile cases about a sexual affair between a school employee and a student. The student, William Flynn, testified that Smart told him she needed her husband killed because she feared she would lose everything if they divorced and that she threatened to break up with him if he didn’t kill her husband. Flynn and three other teens cooperated with prosecutors and all have since been released.

Flynn and 17-year-old Patrick Randall entered the Smarts’ Derry condominium and forced Gregory Smart to his knees in the foyer. As Randall held a knife to the man’s throat, Flynn fired a hollow-point bullet into his head. Both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to 28 years to life. They were granted parole in 2015. Two other teenagers served prison sentences and have been released.

The case inspired Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book “To Die For” and the 1995 film of the same name, starring Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 6, the sixth day of 2026. There are 359 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 6, 2005, former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on murder charges 41 years after three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison; he died in prison in 2018.)

Also on this date:

In 1919, former President Theodore Roosevelt died in Oyster Bay, New York, at age 60.

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In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of “Four Freedoms” — human rights worthy of defending universally: freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in one’s own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

In 1974, year-round daylight saving time began in the United States on a trial basis as a fuel-saving measure in response to the OPEC oil embargo. The country, however, returned to standard time in October, effectively ending the experiment.

In 1982, truck driver William G. Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of 10 of the “Freeway Killer” slayings of young men and boys. (Bonin was later convicted of four other killings; he was executed in 1996.)

In 1994, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena; four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in the attack. (Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution but denied any advance knowledge about the assault.)

In 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump, fueled by his false claims of a stolen election, assaulted police and stormed into the U.S. Capitol to interrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, forcing lawmakers into hiding. A Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by police as she tried to breach a barricaded doorway inside the Capitol. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, injured while confronting the rioters, suffered a stroke the next day and died from natural causes. Congress reconvened hours later to finish certifying Biden’s victory. In January 2025 — on the first day of his second term — Trump granted blanket clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted or awaiting trial or sentencing for Jan. 6 offenses.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Actor-comedian Rowan Atkinson, who played Mr. Bean, is 71.
• Golf Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez is 69.
• TV chef Nigella Lawson is 66.
• Football Hall of Famer Howie Long is 66.
• Football Hall of Famer Charles Haley is 62.
• Actor Norman Reedus is 57.
• TV personality Julie Chen Moonves is 56.
• Actor Eddie Redmayne is 44.
• Actor-comedian Kate McKinnon is 42.
• Businessman Eric Trump is 42.
• Entrepreneur and yoga instructor Hilaria Baldwin is 42.

A pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run crash in Fort Lauderdale on Monday night, police said.

A man was walking in the 400 block of West Sunrise Boulevard about 8 p.m. when a car hit him and drove away, Fort Lauderdale Police spokesperson Sgt. Patrick O’Brien said in a statement. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officers did not immediately have any information about the car.

Westbound traffic on West Sunrise Boulevard was being diverted northbound on North Andrews Avenue late Monday.

This is a developing story, so check back for updates. Click here to have breaking news alerts sent directly to your inbox.

Nobody was likely happier about Kahmel Johnson’s recent commitment to UCF than his mother, Jesika.

“My momma was going crazy. She was crying and [was emotional],” Johnson shared with the Sentinel on Sunday, just hours after he signed with the Knights from the transfer portal.

It’s a homecoming, of sorts, for the 6-foot-2, 200-pound defensive back, who hails from Jacksonville, where he excelled at football and track and field at Riverside High School before leaving the state to play at Wayne State College, a Division II school in Nebraska.

Johnson is coming off a breakout season with the Wildcats, earning a spot on the first-team, All-NSIC after totaling 37 tackles and 3 interceptions for a team that finished 7-4 and was the runner-up to Augustana University in the South Division of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.

The redshirt freshman entered the transfer portal in November and it wasn’t long before he was on UCF’s radar.

“I took a visit to South Dakota State before visiting UCF,” said Johnson, who also received offers from several Group of Five schools. “I took my visit to UCF and I was the first one there. It felt good because I would be down the street from Jacksonville [and my family].

“The support system that I have in Florida is just unmatched. Money can’t really buy that.”

Johnson joins a UCF secondary that returns starters in cornerbacks Antione Jackson and Jayden Bellamy and safeties Demari Henderson and Braeden Marshall. New defensive backs coach Will Johnson and defensive coordinator and safeties coach Alex Grinch will oversee the unit.

“The coaching staff made me feel at home,” said Johnson. “They’re going to push me, but they’re going to be a good support system as well. Teach me a lot and push me to a place that I feel like I need to be for UCF.”

Although Johnson predominantly played as a free safety at Wayne State, he is confident that he can take on nearly any role in the secondary.

“I really do believe I can play anywhere on the field,” he said. “I learned the position well and I’ll excel anywhere because I’m a real elusive guy. I can do pretty much anything on the field, but I love safety, whether it’s playing safety, boundary, or free, it doesn’t really matter. I can play nickel, too. That’s something Coach Grinch also told me. He sees me excelling in all three of those positions.”

For now, Johnson is excited about the possibilities in front of him at UCF. That includes playing in front of his family and friends. He is also engaged and has a 5-month-old son, Kahmel Jr., which provides even more incentives for this season.

Still, there is plenty to work on through spring and fall camps.

“I’ve got three years of eligibility still, so I’m trying to put in as much work as I can all around,” said Johnson, who knows he has plenty to improve on. “I’m a pretty explosive athlete as I am right now, but I think I can become way more explosive. I think I can definitely improve.”

Matt Murschel can be reached at mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com

PHOENIX — The Miami Hurricanes are going up against a top-10 offense in Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff semifinal, but luckily for UM, some key players may be able to bounce back from injury in time for the game.

Miami listed cornerback OJ Frederique Jr. as probable and cornerback Damari Brown and defensive lineman Ahmad Moten Sr. as questionable on Monday evening’s initial availability report for the Fiesta Bowl. All three have been important parts of the defense this season.

UM coach Mario Cristobal said Saturday that all three players were “progressing at a pretty good rate.”

Wide receiver Daylyn Upshaw and linebacker Malik Bryant were listed as out. Defensive lineman Cole McConathy was listed as questionable.

Frederique and Moten both suffered their injuries during the Miami win over Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. Moten suffered an apparent ankle injury and did not return to the game. Frederique left the game with an apparent leg injury after trying to defend a pass to Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith.

Frederique was on crutches during the postgame celebration; Moten was not. In a video shared on TikTok by The Athletic’s Chris Vannini, Cristobal asks Moten how his ankle is, and Moten said he did not care because UM won.

Moten, a Cardinal Gibbons alumnus, has been an integral part of the Hurricanes’ defensive line this season. He has 25 tackles with five tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks. Pro Football Focus gives him a 78.2 defensive grade.

Frederique, a St. Thomas Aquinas alum, was a freshman All-American last year. He missed Miami’s last five games of the regular season but returned for the playoffs. He has 17 tackles with five pass breakups, and PFF gives him 60.7 grade this season.

Brown has not played since the regular season ended. Brown has 24 tackles and one pass deflection, and he has earned a 75.9 defensive grade from PFF.

Here is the Hurricanes’ complete initial injury report:

OUT

LB Malik Bryant; WR Daylyn Upshaw.

QUESTIONABLE

DB Damari Brown; DL Ahmad Moten Sr.; DL Cole McConathy.

PROBABLE

DB OJ Frederique Jr.

By PATRICK WHITTLE

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the world’s rarest whale species is having more babies this year than in some recent seasons, but experts say many more young are needed to help stave off the possibility of extinction.

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The North Atlantic right whale’s population numbers an estimated 384 animals and is slowly rising after several years of decline. The whales have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, according to scientists who study them.

The whales give birth off the southeastern United States every winter before migrating north to feed. Researchers have identified 15 calves this winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

That number is higher than two of the last three winters, but the species needs “approximately 50 or more calves per year for many years” to stop its decline and allow for recovery, NOAA said in a statement. The whales are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear.

This year’s number is encouraging, but the species remains in peril without stronger laws to protect against those threats, said Gib Brogan, senior campaign director with environmental group Oceana. The federal government is in the midst of a moratorium on federal rules designed to protect right whales until 2028, and commercial fishing groups have pushed for a proposal to extend that pause for even longer.

There is still time left for more baby whales to be born this winter, but 50 is not a reasonable expectation because of a lack of reproductive females in the population, Brogan said.

“We’re not going to be able to calve ourselves to recovery,” Brogan said. “We also need to be doing more to tackle the two primary causes of right whale deaths, being entanglement in fishing gear and being hit by boats.”

The whales have fared better than last winter, when they gave birth to only 11 calves, according to NOAA data. The whales have reached 20 calves only twice since 2010, and they gave birth to no calves in a disastrous 2018 season. The whales are less likely to reproduce when they have suffered injuries or are underfed, scientists have said.

The whales were hunted to the brink of extinction during the era of commercial whaling and have been federally protected for decades. They remain in a crisis at the moment because there have been more deaths than births in the population in the past decade, NOAA said in its statement.

By BRUCE SCHREINER

President Donald Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela has emerged as a flash point in the closely watched Republican primary campaign between Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a long-running Trump antagonist, and retired Navy SEAL officer Ed Gallrein, who has the president’s backing.

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Massie, showing his non-interventionist leanings, fired off a series of social media posts criticizing the military operation that captured Nicolás Maduro and removed him from the South American country.

“Wake up MAGA,” Massie wrote. “VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for.”

The congressman claimed that Trump wrongly circumvented Congress when ordering the attack.

“In the Constitution, the Founders vested war making power in Congress, not the Executive branch,” he wrote.

Gallrein responded that Massie had “shown his true colors” by criticizing the military operation.

“This operation sends a clear message: the United States will not allow rogue regimes to enable criminal networks or use oil and other resources to fuel our global adversaries,” Gallrein said on social media. “Holding bad actors accountable is how we restore law and order, deter aggression, and protect American families.”

Gallrein added that American intervention “opens the door to a new chapter for the people of Venezuela — one defined not by decades of oppression, but by the possibility of peace and prosperity.”

He is Trump’s choice to challenge Massie, a maverick who has had an up-and-down relationship with Trump. The primary election in May will test Trump’s hold over Republican politics. The sudden emergence of Venezuela as an issue will test the president’s ability to hold together his coalition during a challenging election year for Republicans that could be defined by domestic concerns like health care and affordability.

The libertarian-leaning Massie has won reelection by lopsided margins since entering Congress in 2012 — even when he incurred Trump’s wrath.

The military action in Venezuela is the latest example of Massie standing up to Trump.

The congressman opposed the massive tax breaks and spending cuts package last year that Trump calls “beautiful” but Massie says will grow the national debt and hurt the economy. Massie said the president lacked authority to attack Iran’s nuclear sites without congressional approval. And Massie was at the forefront of efforts to force the public release of case files on the sex trafficking probe into the late Jeffrey Epstein.

In his bid to unseat the congressman, Gallrein has the president’s vaunted political operation on his side, and a super PAC launched by Trump aides has run ads attacking Massie. But he will confront an entrenched, well-funded incumbent in Massie.

Trump on Monday reiterated his support for Gallrein on his social media platform and urged other Republicans to stay out of the May primary.

“I have heard that there are other Candidates exploring a run for this seat, but I am asking all MAGA Warriors to rally behind Captain Ed Gallrein, the Candidate who is, far and away, best positioned to DEFEAT Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the beautiful Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Trump said.

So far, at least two Democrats have filed to run for the congressional seat stretching across northern Kentucky, along with a third Republican besides Massie and Gallrein. The eventual Republican nominee will be heavily favored in a district last represented by a Democrat two decades ago.

By JOSH FUNK

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.

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This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.

Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill “resulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator’s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,” so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.

“However, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream’s estimated annual earnings,” Caram said. “True deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.”

The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.

The agency said the company “failed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors” for the pipeline.

That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that “Third Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.”

The NTSB said the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.

A Third Coast spokesperson said the allegations were a shock because the company “consistently meets or exceeds regulatory requirements across our operations.”

“After constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.

The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said.

By SARAH RAZA

A Minnesota hotel that wouldn’t allow federal immigration agents to stay there this month is apologizing and saying the refusal violated its own policies. The Department of Homeland Security had accused the global Hilton hotel chain of a “coordinated” effort to refuse service to its employees.

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Hilton and local operators of the Hampton Inn Lakeville property released statements within hours apologizing and said the messages refusing to serve agents who were focused on immigration enforcement didn’t reflect their policies.

In a social media post, DHS posted screenshots of a message sent Friday from a Hilton email address saying that immigration agents would not be allowed to stay at the hotel about 20 miles south of Minneapolis, and that their reservation was canceled.

“When officers attempted to book rooms using official government emails and rates, Hilton Hotels maliciously CANCELLED their reservations,” DHS said in the post, accusing Hilton Hotels of deliberately undermining and impeding law enforcement from enforcing immigration laws.

Hampton Inn locations are under the Hilton brand, but a Hilton representative said the property is independently operated. The majority of Hampton Inns are owned and operated by franchisees.

“We have been in direct contact with the hotel, and they have apologized for the actions of their team, which was not in keeping with their policies,” the statement said.

Everpeak Hospitality, the hotel operators, said in a statement that the cancellation was inconsistent with their policy.

“Everpeak Hospitality has moved swiftly to address this matter as it was inconsistent with our policy of being a welcoming place for all,” the company said in a statement. “We are in touch with the impacted guests to ensure they are accommodated. We do not discriminate against any individuals or agencies and apologize to those impacted.”

By MARC LEVY

SPRING CITY, Pa. (AP) — Tech companies and developers looking to plunge billions of dollars into ever-bigger data centers to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing are increasingly losing fights in communities where people don’t want to live next to them, or even near them.

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Communities across the United States are reading about — and learning from — each other’s battles against data center proposals that are fast multiplying in number and size to meet steep demand as developers branch out in search of faster connections to power sources.

In many cases, municipal boards are trying to figure out whether energy- and water-hungry data centers fit into their zoning framework. Some have entertained waivers or tried to write new ordinances. Some don’t have zoning.

But as more people hear about a data center coming to their community, once-sleepy municipal board meetings in farming towns and growing suburbs now feature crowded rooms of angry residents pressuring local officials to reject the requests.

“Would you want this built in your backyard?” Larry Shank asked supervisors last month in Pennsylvania’s East Vincent Township. “Because that’s where it’s literally going, is in my backyard.”

Opposition spreads as data centers fan out

A growing number of proposals are going down in defeat, sounding alarms across the data center constellation of Big Tech firms, real estate developers, electric utilities, labor unions and more.

Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL, counted seven or eight deals he’d worked on in recent months that saw opponents going door-to-door, handing out shirts or putting signs in people’s yards.

“It’s becoming a huge problem,” Cvengros said.

Data Center Watch, a project of 10a Labs, an AI security consultancy, said it is seeing a sharp escalation in community, political and regulatory disruptions to data center development.

Between April and June alone, its latest reporting period, it counted 20 proposals valued at $98 billion in 11 states that were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state-level pushback. That amounts to two-thirds of the projects it was tracking.

People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds talk during a break in an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Some environmental and consumer advocacy groups say they’re fielding calls every day, and are working to educate communities on how to protect themselves.

“I’ve been doing this work for 16 years, worked on hundreds of campaigns I’d guess, and this by far is the biggest kind of local pushback I’ve ever seen here in Indiana,” said Bryce Gustafson of the Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition.

In Indiana alone, Gustafson counted more than a dozen projects that lost rezoning petitions.

Similar concerns across different communities

For some people angry over steep increases in electric bills, their patience is thin for data centers that could bring still-higher increases.

Losing open space, farmland, forest or rural character is a big concern. So is the damage to quality of life, property values or health by on-site diesel generators kicking on or the constant hum of servers. Others worry that wells and aquifers could run dry.

Lawsuits are flying — both ways — over whether local governments violated their own rules.

Big Tech firms Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook — which are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers across the globe — didn’t answer Associated Press questions about the effect of community pushback.

Microsoft, however, has acknowledged the difficulties. In an October securities filing, it listed its operational risks as including “community opposition, local moratoriums, and hyper-local dissent that may impede or delay infrastructure development.”

Even with high-level support from state and federal governments, the pushback is having an impact.

People listen during an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting where an agenda item involved a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Maxx Kossof, vice president of investment at Chicago-based developer The Missner Group, said developers worried about losing a zoning fight are considering selling properties once they secure a power source — a highly sought-after commodity that makes a proposal far more viable and valuable.

“You might as well take chips off the table,” Kossof said. “The thing is you could have power to a site and it’s futile because you might not get the zoning. You might not get the community support.”

Some in the industry are frustrated, saying opponents are spreading falsehoods about data centers — such as polluting water and air — and are difficult to overcome.

Still, data center allies say they are urging developers to engage with the public earlier in the process, emphasize economic benefits, sow good will by supporting community initiatives and talk up efforts to conserve water and power and protect ratepayers.

“It’s definitely a discussion that the industry is having internally about, ‘Hey, how do we do a better job of community engagement?’” said Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, a trade association that includes Big Tech firms and developers.

Data center opposition dominates local politics

Winning over local officials, however, hasn’t translated to winning over residents.

Mike Petak of Spring City gestures while speaking to East Vincent Township supervisors in opposition to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

Developers pulled a project off an October agenda in the Charlotte suburb of Matthews, North Carolina, after Mayor John Higdon said he informed them it faced unanimous defeat.

The project would have funded half the city’s budget and developers promised environmentally friendly features. But town meetings overflowed, and emails, texts and phone calls were overwhelmingly opposed, “999 to one against,” Higdon said.

Had council approved it, “every person that voted for it would no longer be in office,” the mayor said. “That’s for sure.”

In Hermantown, a suburb of Duluth, Minnesota, a proposed data center campus several times larger than the Mall of America is on hold amid challenges over whether the city’s environmental review was adequate.

Residents found each other through social media and, from there, learned to organize, protest, door-knock and get their message out.

People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds attend an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

They say they felt betrayed and lied to when they discovered that state, county, city and utility officials knew about the proposal for an entire year before the city — responding to a public records request filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy — released internal emails that confirmed it.

“It’s the secrecy. The secrecy just drives people crazy,” said Jonathan Thornton, a realtor who lives across a road from the site.

Documents revealing the extent of the project emerged days before a city rezoning vote in October. Mortenson, which is developing it for a Fortune 50 company that it hasn’t named, says it is considering changes based on public feedback and that “more engagement with the community is appropriate.”

Rebecca Gramdorf found out about it from a Duluth newspaper article, and immediately worried that it would spell the end of her six-acre vegetable farm.

People sign in and head into an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting where an agenda item involved a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

She found other opponents online, ordered 100 yard signs and prepared for a struggle.

“I don’t think this fight is over at all,” Gramdorf said.

Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.

Edith Renfrow Smith, the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College in Iowa and a longtime Chicago schoolteacher, remained mentally sharp well past 100, becoming the subject for medical researchers studying what they called “SuperAgers.”

Smith, 111, died of natural causes on Friday at the Breakers assisted living facility, where she had moved in October, said her daughter, Alice Frances Smith.

Edith Renfrow was born in Grinnell, Iowa, on July 14, 1914, the fifth of six children. Her grandparents, George Craig and Eliza Jan Craig, were born into slavery. Her father was a hotel chef.

The Renfrows were one of the only African American families in Grinnell at that time, and her parents stressed the importance of education for all of their children.

“My mother insisted that education was the only thing that could not be taken away from them,” Smith told National Public Radio’s Scott Simon in 2023.

Smith graduated from Grinnell College in 1937 — 91 years after the college was founded — with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, becoming the first Black woman ever to graduate from the small liberal arts college and the 11th Black graduate of the college to that point.

While at Grinnell, Smith met Amelia Earhart when the famed aviator visited the campus.

“She was one of the celebrities that came to Grinnell to talk to the students,” Smith told National Public Radio in 2023. “And she was just like another one of us. It was a delightful visit.”

She married Henry Smith in 1940. The couple moved to Chicago’s South Side, and Smith worked at a South Side YWCA,  at the University of Chicago and as a secretary to Ald. Oscar Stanton De Priest. She began a 22-year teaching career at Ludwig Van Beethoven Elementary School at 25 W. 47th St. on the South Side, retiring in 1976.

Jazz great Herbie Hancock lived across the street from the Smiths while growing up.

“(Edith) was a very sophisticated lady, and she and my mother hit it off very well,” Hancock told the Tribune in 2024. “My mother was always looking at things like art and culture and those things, and in the neighborhood, there weren’t a whole lot of people looking at that.”

Hancock credited Smith with introducing him to Grinnell College, from which he graduated.

“She talked about Grinnell being a great college for academics, and it made me think that Grinnell would be a really nice thing to do, it’d be a new experience because I’d never lived in a small town and I didn’t know anything about corn, and let’s see what happens,” Hancock said. “I’m happy I went there — it really changed my life, (because) it was where I really decided I wanted to be a jazz musician.”

In retirement, Smith was a longtime volunteer at the Art Institute of Chicago. As she reached her late 90s in the 2010s, she began drawing interest from researchers from Northwestern and from the news media, both of which were intrigued by Smith’s keen, vivid memory and her strong cognitive functioning.

She participated in Northwestern medical school’s 2017 study of “SuperAgers” that showed what was obvious to Smith: Social connections keep one sharp.

“I’m just a person who likes people,” she told the Tribune in 2017. “When you like people, you communicate.”

Edith Renfrow Smith works during an arts and crafts class on Nov. 7, 2017, at Bethany Retirement Community in Andersonville. Smith died Jan. 2, 2026, at 111. She was one of the "SuperAgers," a group studied by Northwestern made up of elderly adults with the cognitive abilities of much younger adults. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)

And that love of people extended to strangers, as well. At one retirement community where she resided, Smith was one of nine people assigned to welcome new residents and to try to help make them feel at home.

“I have a smile for everybody,” she told the Tribune in 2018. “I try to learn someone’s name as soon as they come in.”

In 2018, Smith appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, and three years later, she appeared in a PBS program, “Build a Better Memory Through Science.”

Grinnell awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2019, named a library after her in its Black Cultural Center, and named a student art gallery for her in another campus building in 2021. And in 2024, a residence hall building at Grinnell was named for her. Smith — at age 110 — was on hand for its dedication ceremony, in September 2024.

Due to her many years of volunteer work, Smith was inducted into the Chicago Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 2009.

“Wake up every morning and thank the good Lord that you are alive and able to look at his wonderful world,” she told NPR in 2023.

Smith’s husband of 73 years, Henry, died in 2013. She is survived by a daughter, Alice.

An earlier version of this story misstated the first name of Edith Renfrow Smith’s husband. 

Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.