8:22 AM

Former Miss New Jersey, 24, Dies From Injuries Sustained in Car Crash





Former Miss New Jersey Cara McCollum has passed away from injuries she suffered in a car crashFeb. 15, her family announced Monday.

She died at 4:31 a.m. surrounded by family in the operating room, they posted on Facebook.


McCollum, 24, was critically injured when her convertible spun off the highway in New Jersey and hit multiple trees before stopping at an embankment.





Police believe that she may have been driving too fast on slick roads, and that drugs or alcohol were not involved. McCollum had been wearing a seatbelt, and the airbags did deploy.


Her family thanked McCollum’s friends for their support on Facebook.


“Before she died, Cara made the selfless decision to donate her organs. At this very moment, she is saving lives.”


“We’ve prayed constantly for a miracle, and we believe God has answered our prayers. Although it’s not the miracle that we first envisioned, it’s a miracle nonetheless.”


News station SNJ Today, where McCollum was an anchor, posted their condolences.


“The entire SNJ Today family extends its condolences to the many loyal viewers, colleagues, friends and family of Cara McCollum,” they wrote. “Whether you had the privilege of knowing her or if you enjoyed her newscasts during her all too brief time with us, you know that her smile, determination and sincerity made her a beloved individual.”


“Cara showed warmth to everyone she met. She was a part of our news team family and we are gratified to have worked with her – even for such a short time. We will miss her terribly.”


A native of Arkansas, McCollum joined SNJ Today in July after graduating from Princeton University in 2015. She won the title of Miss New Jersey in 2013, and later represented her adopted state in the Miss America pageant.



Former Miss New Jersey, 24, Dies from Injuries Sustained in Car Crash

7:57 AM


NEW YORK (AP) — Lumber Liquidators’ stock plunged Monday as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says people exposed to certain types of the company’s laminate flooring were three times more likely to get cancer than the agency previously predicted.


The CDC said that in its original report it had used an incorrect value for ceiling height. It said that resulted in health risks calculated using airborne concentration elements about three times lower than they should have been.



It now estimates the risk of cancer at six to 30 cases per 100,000 people. It previously estimated two to nine cases per 100,000 people.


The agency said that its recommendations will likely stay the same — that people take steps to reduce exposure.


Lumber Liquidators said in a statement Monday that it has strengthened its “quality assurance procedures,” such as testing sample products.


The company stopped selling Chinese-made laminate floors in May, a few months after CBS news show “60 Minutes” reported that those floors contain high levels of the carcinogen formaldehyde. Lumber Liquidators, based in Toano, Virginia, also began providing customers with free air quality tests.


Earlier this month, it was announced in a separate case that Lumber Liquidators would pay more than $13 million for illegally importing hardwood flooring, after the company pleaded guilty to environmental crimes last year. The company pleaded guilty to environmental crimes in October.


Shares of Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc. slid $2.83, or 20 percent, to $11.38 in morning trading Monday. Its shares have fallen 83 percent over the past year.



Lumber Liquidators stock plunges on revised CDC report

7:50 AM

Lumber Liquidators’ stock plunged Monday as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says people exposed to certain types of the company’s laminate flooring were three times more likely to get cancer than the agency previously predicted.


The CDC said that in its original report it had used an incorrect value for ceiling height. It said that resulted in health risks calculated using airborne concentration elements about three times lower than they should have been.


It now estimates the risk of cancer at six to 30 cases per 100,000 people. It previously estimated two to nine cases per 100,000 people.


The agency said that its recommendations will likely stay the same — that people take steps to reduce exposure.


Lumber Liquidators said in a statement Monday that it has strengthened its “quality assurance procedures,” such as testing sample products.



The company stopped selling Chinese-made laminate floors in May, a few months after CBS news show “60 Minutes” reported that those floors contain high levels of the carcinogen formaldehyde. Lumber Liquidators, based in Toano, Virginia, also began providing customers with free air quality tests.


Earlier this month, it was announced in a separate case that Lumber Liquidators would pay more than $13 million for illegally importing hardwood flooring, after the company pleaded guilty to environmental crimes last year. The company pleaded guilty to environmental crimes in October.


Shares of Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc. slid $2.83, or 20 percent, to $11.38 in morning trading Monday. Its shares have fallen 83 percent over the past year.


____


Our earlier story, from Reuters, posted at 6:48 a.m.


Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc.’s shares were set to tumble on Monday after a revised federal agency report showed people exposed to some types of the company’s laminate flooring were three times more likely to get cancer than previously estimated.



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Feb. 18 it estimated the risk of cancer was 6-30 cases per 100,000 people, compared with the 2-9 cases it had estimated in a Feb. 10 report. The CDC said the revised results were preliminary.


Lumber Liquidators’ shares were set to open more than 15 percent lower on Monday, which would be the stock’s biggest intraday percentage drop in six months.


The CDC said it had used an incorrect value to calculate ceiling height, which meant its estimates of the airborne concentration of cancer-causing formaldehyde were about three times lower than they should have been.


CBS “60 Minutes” reported on Sunday it was alerted to the possibility that scientists had not converted feet to meters in some calculations.


Lumber Liquidators was not available for comment outside regular business hours. It had supported the recommendations of the CDC’s previous report on the safety of flooring made in China between 2012 and 2014.


The company’s’ shares and sales have been in a tailspin since March last year when CBS “60 Minutes” reported the retailer’s laminates from China contained excessive levels of formaldehyde.


Up to Friday’s close of $14.21, Lumber Liquidators’ shares had risen 17.5 percent since the CDC’s initial report. But they are still down 79 percent since the company had in late February last year warned of the CBS report.



Lumber Liquidators shares plunge after CDC revises cancer report

7:46 AM
Shut Up, We Can Do This

Last night was the draw for the Copa America Centenario, this summer’s tournament bringing together the best of North and South America, and as hosts, the U.S. had reason to hope for a favorable draw. It really could not have gone much worse.


The U.S. was one of the four seeded teams, meaning group play matches against powers Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico were impossibilities. And the U.S. could have landed Uruguay in their group, and didn’t, so be thankful for small mercies. But the draw put them together with perhaps the three toughest teams remaining:


  • June 3, at Santa Clara, vs. Colombia

  • June 7, at Chicago, vs. Costa Rica

  • June 11, at Philadelphia, vs. Paraguay

“I take full responsibility,” joked former U.S. defender Alexi Lalas, one of four former pros who participated in the presentation. “I apologize to the nation.”


Conspiracy theories aside (if world soccer wanted to punish America for bringing down FIFA, we’d have gotten Uruguay), it looks grim, sure. Colombia and Costa Rica both made it to the quarterfinals at the last World Cup, and Paraguay, the only team of the three behind the U.S. in the world rankings, is historically a tough matchup for the Americans. The USMNT will need to take points off at least two of these sides, and none of them are gimmes.



Except we’ve been here before, and assumed we were boned, and weren’t. The 2014 World Cup draw stuck the U.S. in one of the groups of death, and they beat Ghana without it feeling particularly unlikely, and drew Portugal in a match they could easily have won. Not being favored in a match doesn’t mean the U.S. can’t or won’t win it.



“Obviously it’s a difficult group, no doubt about it, but it’s doable,” said U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann afterward. “We had a similar kind of scenario in Brazil and we went through, and so now we start with Colombia right away instead of Ghana.



Don’t underestimate the importance of home-field advantage. American fans oughtn’t be outnumbered or outchanted in their own stadiums against any of these three. There’s also the possibility that the U.S. won’t face full-strength squads. Per ESPN’s Doug McIntyre, Colombia could be preparing for the Olympics (if they beat the U.S. for the final qualifying spot in March), and Paraguay’s coach has made noise about bringing a younger roster up for the Copa America.


But: we don’t want to win that way, do we? Bring on the challenges, because the USMNT is never going to keep improving by beating up on the Haitis of the world. What has been considered a “winnable” match has progressed incredibly in recent decades, to the point where hanging tough with Colombia would still be an upset, but it wouldn’t be a miracle. That’s a hell of an accomplishment already—I’ll always take a side that takes on all comers, even if it loses more than it wins. Because they can win. The U.S. can do this.



Shut Up, We Can Do This

5:55 AM

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump’s rivals are running out of time to stop him after his dominant performance in South Carolina.


A close look at the election calendar suggests that if the New York billionaire’s rivals don’t slow him by mid-March, their only chance to deny him the Republican presidential nomination may be a nasty and public fight at the party’s convention this summer.


“When you look at it right now, it looks like there’s this juggernaut,” said Rich Beeson, a senior aide to one of Trump’s main rivals, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.




Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a South Carolina Republican primary night event in Spartanburg, S.C., Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. T...


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a South Carolina Republican primary night event in Spartanburg, S.C., Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. Trump claimed a big victory in South Carolina’s Republican primary Saturday, deepening his hold on the party’s presidential field as the contest moved into the South. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)



The reason is delegates and how they’re awarded.


Winning states generates headlines, but the nomination is earned by collecting a majority of the delegates awarded in primaries and caucuses. Next up: Nevada’s caucuses on Tuesday.


This year, most contests award delegates proportionally, based on each candidate’s share of the vote. Beeson and strategists for other campaigns argue that could make it hard for Trump to build a big lead because even the second- and third-place finisher can win delegates.


If one candidate can run up a significant lead, as Trump has begun to, then proportional contests also make it difficult for rivals to catch up.


South Carolina is the perfect example of this problem for Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The state isn’t winner-take-all when it comes to delegates, but Trump’s strength in all parts of South Carolina allowed him to haul in all 50 delegates awarded in Saturday’s primary.


Trump now has 67 delegates. Cruz and Rubio took home none from South Carolina, leaving them with a total of 11 and 10, respectively.


Trump is well on his way, and he knows it.


“Folks, let’s go, let’s have a big win in Nevada, let’s have a big win in the SEC,” Trump said in his South Carolina victory speech, referring to the states with universities in the Southeastern Conference that will vote next month. “Let’s put this thing away.”


Only a small fraction of the delegates to be won in the GOP primary season, which began Feb. 1 in Iowa and ends June 7 in California and a handful of other states, have been awarded to date. But some of Trump’s opponents acknowledge he could build an insurmountable lead by mid-March if current trends continue.


“There are going to be a lot of circumstances where we can declare some victories and at least get this thing to March 15,” Beeson said. “Once we get to March 15, if the die has not been cast by then, it’s a different game.”


Why March 15?


That’s the first day on which the GOP’s rules allow states to hold a winner-take-all contest.


Florida will award 99 delegates that day, while Ohio will give out 66. The Missouri primary is that day, too.


Like South Carolina, Missouri awards a pot of delegates to the statewide winner, as well as three delegates each to the winner of each congressional district. That makes it possible for one candidate to win all of Missouri’s 52 delegates, or at least a large majority.


Put simply, it’s a day in which a candidate running second to Trump could catch up. Or fall even further behind.


Altogether, there are 14 such contests on the GOP primary calendar, offering a total of 752 delegates. That’s not enough delegates to claim the nomination; it takes 1,237. But if one candidate wins most of those states, he could build a lead too big to overcome.


In the modern political era, a candidate usually wins enough delegates to emerge as the presumptive nominee several weeks — or even months — before the end of primary voting. That happens when the candidate claims so many delegates it’s all but impossible for anyone else to catch up.


But the nomination isn’t formalized until the party’s presidential nominating convention, scheduled for July this year. The last time the Republican nomination wasn’t decided before the convention was 1976. Yet some of Trump’s rivals are already talking about the possibility of a “contested” convention as they envision a series of second- or third-place finishes in the upcoming GOP primaries.


Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, recently told The Associated Press, “I would be surprised if it’s not May or the convention” when the party settles on its nominee.


At the convention, a lead in the race for delegates guarantees nothing if the candidate doesn’t have an outright majority, said Ben Ginsberg, a leading Republican election attorney. Under most state party rules, delegates are only required to vote for their candidate on the first ballot at the convention.


“If no one comes into the convention with a majority of delegates, then all bets are off,” Ginsberg said. “You’re dealing with a potentially unruly and independent group of people.”


___


Ohlemacher reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.


___


Follow Steve Peoples and Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/sppeoples and http://twitter.com/stephenatap




Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pauses while speaking at his South Carolina primary night rally at the South Carolina State Fairgr...


Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pauses while speaking at his South Carolina primary night rally at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)





Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, speaks during an election-night rally Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/John B...


Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, speaks during an election-night rally Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)



 



Donald Trump"s rivals face dwindling time to stop him

5:32 AM
EnlargeDonald Trump(Credit: AP/Paul Sancya)


The big showdown in South Carolina is over and it came down pretty much as everyone expected. Donald Trump came in first with 32.5 percent, Rubio and Cruz nearly tied for second with Rubio ever so lightly edging Cruz with 22.5 percent to Cruz’s 22.3. The bottom three, Bush, Kasich and Carson all landed with 7-ish points each. The big news was that Jeb Bush dropped out of the race within minutes of the results being called.




So, what does this all mean? Well, nothing new really. Trump declared victory with an odd admission of what really turns him on about running for president, when he said, “It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious…. it’s beautiful. When you win, it’s beautiful.” He is very, very good at being mean, nasty and vicious. Nobody can say that isn’t working for him.


The pundits are all wondering what happens next, with two rivals still fighting for second place and a couple of others hanging on despite the fact that they are not actually getting anywhere. According to the New York Times, members of the establishment are starting to panic:


Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi, sounded a note of alarm about Republicans continuing to wait to see how the race plays out.


“After Trump has won in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Republicans are crazy and about to blow the White House if we don’t rally to stop him,” he said. “It’s certainly time that we have to consolidate the race.”


He predicted that Mr. Trump’s nomination would not only cost Republicans the White House but also hurt the party’s chances of keeping its majority in the Senate.


If the idea is to stop Trump, then somebody is going to have to drop out and drop out quickly. The delegate scheme that was hatched to prevent a re-run of Romney’s long slog against such luminaries as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum has turned into a formula for a victory for Donald Trump. Recall this New York Times article from last fall:


In the starkest sign of how unsettled the situation is, what once seemed unthinkable — that Mr. Trump could win the Republican nomination — is being treated by many within the Republican establishment as a serious possibility. And one reason his candidacy seems strong is a change by the party in hopes of ending the process earlier: making it possible for states to hold contests in which the winner receives all the delegates, rather than a share based on the vote, startingMarch 15, two weeks earlier than in the last cycle.


If Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote. And the later it gets, the harder it becomes for a lead in delegates to be overcome, with fewer state contests remaining in which trailing candidates can attempt comebacks.


They wanted to end it earlier in order to prevent the nominee from being forced so far to the right that he will be hamstrung in the general election as Mitt Romney was. That calculation is no longer operative. At this point they’ll be happy to elect a nominee who won’t cause what’s left of the Republican Party to implode completely.


The assumption among the establishment types is that if only Cruz, Kasich and Carson would get out of the way, all those voters would go to Rubio and they could finally knock out Trump and carry on with the plan. Unfortunately, even if they were able to finally get Rubio a free lane in which to run, there’s no guarantee that he would be the beneficiary of all those freed up votes.  That’s because Trump draws from every demographic. As Ronald Brownstein in the Atlantic pointed out:


On most fronts, the big story in South Carolina was the breadth of Trump’s appeal. Repeating the New Hampshire pattern, Trump in South Carolina ran slightly better among men (36 percent) than women (29 percent). He carried 29 percent of voters who identified as very conservative; 35 percent of somewhat conservative voters; and 34 percent of moderates. That also followed the New Hampshire precedent of little ideological variation in Trump’s support.


In South Carolina, Trump won 33 percent of independents and 32 percent of self-identified Republicans; in New Hampshire he had carried exactly 36 percent of both groups. Trump ran somewhat better last night among voters older than 45 (35 percent) than those younger (26 percent). In New Hampshire, by contrast, Trump’s support varied little by age, though he also performed somewhat better with older voters in Iowa.


(Trump also won a plurality of evangelical voters who turned out in huge numbers to vote. The exit polls don’t delve down quite so deeply, but my suspicion remains that he draws from the “prosperity theology” disco-evangelical crowd, which is a lot less culturally conservative than the more traditional evangelicals who went, as expected, for Ted Cruz.)





Indeed, according to this article in the New York Times, even some Jeb Bush donors are considering joining the Trump bandwagon — or at least letting it carry on without any obstruction from them:


Fred Zeidman, a major Republican donor and longtime Bush family friend who had backed Mr. Bush, said he planned to take a breath and see how things played out. The same was true for Woody Johnson, the owner of the Jets football team, who was Mr. Bush’s national finance chairman. An aide to Mr. Johnson pointed out that he had knocked on doors in early states for Mr. Bush and invested lots of time to help him, and he was not ready to shift allegiances so soon.


Mr. Johnson, who has long been a friend of Mr. Trump, has nonetheless found himself used as an object lesson over the last week by Mr. Trump, who named him at rallies as an example of special-interest donors who supported candidates like Mr. Bush. And in conversations on Sunday morning, there was evidence of interest among some of Mr. Bush’s former donors about possibly backing Mr. Trump.


So what this all adds up to is that the GOP establishment is just as flummoxed about what to do with the Trump phenomenon as before. And this should be no surprise considering that the only thing that changed was a guy who was in 4th or 5th place finally realized he was dead in the water and dropped out.


Still, there is another pundit take-away from the South Carolina results that might be a bit more troubling down the road. One of the more astonishing aspects of Trump’s win in that gothic southern state is that he proved once again that it doesn’t matter what he says, as long as he delivers his lines with that big swinging attitude of his. As Igor Bobic and Ryan Grim point out in a piece at the Huffington Post, over the course of the South Carolina primary campaign Trump summarily executed a number of GOP sacred cows:


Trump declared that former President George W. Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction to march the country to war; blamed Bush for the 9/11 attacks, arguing that he ignored intelligence community warnings; defended Planned Parenthood; boasted that he was the only Republican who would not cut Social Security or Medicare; said he approved of the individual mandate in Obamacare; and promised to slap onerous tariffs on companies who outsource jobs.




He also vowed to stay neutral in disputes between Israel and Palestine, which is the equivalent of carpet bombing and entire herd of sacred cows.


Pundits on TV and elsewhere were quick to interpret the fact that Trump won so decisively in such a traditional state to mean that all those Republicans were drawn to him because they agree with him on those issues.  They seem to think this might signal that the GOP is becoming a mainstream populist party.


I would argue the opposite is true. They voted for him in spite of his apostasy on all those issues. Indeed, it’s pretty obvious they were willing to rationalize all of it because they believe so strenuously in all the other issues on which he running. They are ecstatic over his anti-“political correctness” campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and their American children and ban 1.6 billion Muslims from entering the country, while putting the ones who are already here under surveillance. These voters cheer wildly for his enthusiastic endorsement of torture, his promise to kill the families of terrorist suspects and his pantomimes of summary executions of soldiers accused of desertion.


His puerile insults and schoolyard bullying are seen as signs of strength. His profane language is appreciated for its gritty machismoHe treats the press with total contempt, and the voters love it.


Over and over again, when asked to explain what they like about him, Trump supporters exclaim, “He knows what I’m thinking!” And what these people are thinking is that he’s making it safe for them to be “politically incorrect” again, giving sanction to publicly express their resentment toward people who don’t look and act like them. There are certainly reasons why these voters feel that way, but they are not due to populist anger toward the 1 percent. After all, the man they are cheering on with such enthusiasm is a man who spends half his time on the stump bragging about his vast wealth and explaining that it’s perfectly normal for businessmen like himself to bribe and cajole politicians to do his bidding. He’s never promised to change that system, not once. And his fans have never once asked him to.





The scariest thing about Trump’s primary dominance: The GOP still doesn’t understand the monster it created
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