While the story of YouTube Vanced (later just Vanced) seems like it’s mostly over after the app shuttered operations, the folks behind the beloved mod apparently still have more to say. Several rumors have spun up regarding the app’s demise, so on Saturday, the team behind Vanced posted an article on anonymous blogging platform Telegra.ph titled “Vanced Discontinuation.” It purported to brief anyone “having trouble understanding the reason” why the application was discontinued.
The post dismissed rumors that Vanced was stopped for reasons related to NFTs or a shoutout from a media group and also claimed the takedown had nothing to do with allegations of piracy or issues with ad-blocking. Additionally, in response to rumors that Vanced devs were Russian, the post stated that “[none] of the team members are in Russia or Ukraine, nor do they have any links to those countries.”
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Vanced also denied that their app had any “illegal” features, then gave what the folks behind the app say are the “actual” reasons they received a cease and desist letter:
Vanced is discontinued for “legal reasons” as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding.
We were asked to remove all links for the distribution of any vanced apps that results in the decision of discontinuation.
The statement went on to say that the team behind Vanced would never reveal the app’s source code to the public. Doing so could “cause serious complications for us.” Also, forget about ever downloading the app again. All links to a downloadable version of Vanced have been deleted and the Vanced team says they can’t help with alternate methods of grabbing a version of the app, either.
Vanced concluded by asking disappointed fans of the app not to attack anyone over its demise and to alert them to any other false information. So, there you have it for Vanced, the original — RIP. One of the reasons so many loved Vanced is because the app had alternative features that YouTube could probably use, and some of them were pretty damn good — check them out here.
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About The Author
Steve Huff (74 Articles Published)
Steve is the Weekend News Editor for Android Police. He was previously the Deputy Digital Editor for Maxim magazine and has written for Inside Hook, Observer, and New York Mag. He’s the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.”
BELIZE CITY, March 19 (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate arrived in Belize on Saturday for a weeklong Caribbean tour that was marred by a local protest before it even began amid growing scrutiny of the British Empire’s colonial ties to the region.
The arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge coincides with the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 70th year on the throne, and comes nearly four months after Barbados voted to become a republic, cutting ties with the monarchy but remaining part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.
Three miniature cannons fired a salute to the couple as their plane landed in Belize City before a military band played the national anthems of Belize and Britain at a welcoming ceremony that kept the media throng at a distance.
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William inspected a guard of honor as the band played local creole song “Ding Ding Wala,” then drove off with his wife to meet Prime Minister John Briceno.
Afterwards, Briceno told Reuters the duke and duchess were “excited to be here in Belize as we are delighted to have them,” adding: “We wish them a fruitful and memorable visit.”
The couple are due to stay in Belize, formerly British Honduras, until Tuesday morning. On the eve of their departure, an event planned for Sunday was scrapped when a few dozen villagers staged a protest.
Residents of Indian Creek, an indigenous Maya village in southern Belize, said they were upset that the royal couple’s helicopter had been granted permission to land on a local soccer field without prior consultation. read more
The village is in a land dispute with Fauna & Flora International (FFI), a conservation group supported by the royal family, stirring discontent over colonial-era territorial settlements still contested by indigenous groups.
A visit to a different site is being planned instead, Belize’s government said. In a statement, Kensington Palace confirmed the schedule would be changed because of “sensitive issues” involving the Indian Creek community.
In a statement, FFI said it had purchased land at the nearby Boden Creek from private owners in December 2021, and that it would conserve and protect the area’s wildlife while supporting the livelihoods and traditional rights of local people.
Without directly addressing the dispute, FFI said it bought the land to benefit the area’s ecological integrity, resident communities and Belize as a whole, and pledged to maintain “open and continuous dialogue” with the local community.
After Belize, the duke and duchess are due to visit Jamaica and the Bahamas. Meetings and a variety of events are scheduled with politicians and a range of civic leaders.
Britain’s Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, meet with Belize’s Prime Minister Johnny Briceno and his wife Rossana, as they begin their tour of the Caribbean on behalf of the Queen to mark her Platinum Jubilee, at the Laing Building, in Belize City, Belize March 19, 2022. Jane Barlow/Pool via REUTERS
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Dickie Arbiter, Queen Elizabeth’s press secretary from 1988 to 2000, described the tour as a goodwill visit that ought to give a temporary lift to the family’s popularity.
Today, many people in former colonies see the monarchy as an anachronism that should be let go, he said. But he expected that little would change while Elizabeth remained on the throne.
“The royal family is pragmatic,” he said. “It knows it can’t look at these countries as realm states forever and a day.”
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Debates over colonial-era oppression, including possible reparations for the descendants of slaves in Jamaica, could push more countries to emulate Barbados’ recent move. read more
Carolyn Cooper, a professor emerita at the University of the West Indies, said the royal couple’s visit was unlikely to discourage Jamaica from opting for republic status.
“I think there is a groundswell of popular opinion against the monarchy,” she said.
Some in Belize, which gained independence from Britain only in 1981, speak warmly about remaining in the fold.
“I believe it’s a wonderful opportunity for them to appreciate the country’s multiculturalism, natural attractions, and to enjoy our culinary practices,” said Joseline Ramirez, a manager in the Cayo district of western Belize.
Others are less enthusiastic.
Alan Mckoy, a mechanic in Belize City, said he “couldn’t care less” about the royal family.
“They are no better than any of us,” he said.
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Reporting by Jose Sanchez in Belize City
Additional reporting by Dave Graham, Kate Chappell and Cassandra Garrison
Editing by David Alire Garcia, Edmund Klamann, Frances Kerry, Diane Craft and Jonathan Oatis
Little did Pfister know that he had stumbled across one of the most complete skeletons of the mighty Triceratops.
“At that time, I suspected or hoped it was something special, but it took another month of excavation before I knew the extent and quality of the specimen,” he said.
It’s called Horridus, a name given to the specimen by its new owner Museums Victoria, Australia’s largest public museum organization. The nickname is derived from its full name Triceratops horridus, and it lived 67 million years ago.
Pfister is the owner of Great Plains Paleontology, a company based in Madison, Wisconsin, that scouts for and digs up fossils. Over his nearly 30-year career, he’s discovered multiple Tyrannosaurus rex specimens along with other rare dinosaurs, but Horridus remains one of his all-time favorites, he said.
After finding the dinosaur remains in 2014, Pfister took more than a year to excavate the bones with a couple of his colleagues.
That’s understandable, considering the Triceratops left more than 266 bones for the paleontologist to unearth.
The skeleton made the long trek from North America in eight special crates to reach its new home at the Melbourne Museum.
A fearsome herbivore
These bones make up the most complete dinosaur remains at any Australian museum, according to Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at Museums Victoria.
Horridus is nearly 85% complete, standing about 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall, 7 meters (23 feet) long and weighing 1,000 kilograms (2,205 pounds), he said. The skull is 98% complete and features three horns along with a majestic frill, the flat bone plate jutting out from the top of the Triceratops’ head.
The dinosaur may have used its horns to protect itself from predators or to attract potential mates, Fitzgerald said.
Not much is known about how the plant-eating dinosaur became so perfectly preserved, but Fitzgerald said he believed the creature would have had to been buried shortly after dying.
“I suspect the carcass got washed intact into a river channel, sank quickly to the bottom and then was rapidly covered by sand and mud on the riverbed,” he said. It could have also died in the water, he added.
Paleontologists are rarely able to decipher a dinosaur specimen’s sex, so it’s not clear if this Horridus was male or female. Unless physicists invent a time machine, it’s unlikely humans will be able to answer that question within the century, Fitzgerald said.
“In the meantime, it’s these enduring mysteries that continue to spur paleontologists to find out more about our planet’s past and ignite wonder in us all,” he said.
How to see Horridus
The Melbourne Museum opened the Triceratops exhibit, called “Triceratops: Fate of the Dinosaurs,” this month.
It’s a permanent part of the museum collection, so visitors don’t need to worry about the dinosaur exhibit going away anytime soon, according to Fitzgerald. Its housing in a public museum also allows scientists to engage in scientific research on the skeleton, he said.
If a trip to Melbourne isn’t on your bucket list, you can examine the bones of a 3D model of Horridus online.
Horn-ing in: While Republicans are likely to get most of the attention during this year’s U.S. Senate races, voters may have noticed an unusual coincidence on the Democratic side.
Two women with the same last name are running, one in each of Oklahoma’s two Senate races.
Kendra Horn and Madison Horn are not sisters. They are not cousins, mother and daughter, or aunt and niece.
In short, they are not related.
Kendra Horn, 45, is a former 5th District congresswoman who worked for then-Congressman (now University of Tulsa President) Brad Carson in the early 2000s, ran Democrat Joe Dorman’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign and has been a lobbyist and policy consultant for the aerospace industry. She grew up in Chickasha and has degrees from the University of Tulsa and Southern Methodist University.
Kendra Horn is a candidate for the Senate seat being given up by Republican Jim Inhofe.
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Madison Horn, 32, grew up in Stilwell, moved to Georgia not long after finishing high school, and wound up with a Washington, D.C., cybersecurity company. She now lives in Oklahoma City. Although she is not related to Kendra Horn, she said she is a distant cousin of fellow Adair County native U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin — a Republican who could be matched against Kendra Horn in the general election.
Madison Horn is one of at least three Democrats planning to enter the primary for the other U.S. Senate seat, which is being defended by Republican James Lankford.
Aside from being Democrats, the Horns have at least one thing in common — both have worked with nonprofit youth organizations. Kendra Horn has been involved with the Girl Scouts, while Madison Horn worked for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeastern Arkansas right out of high school.
It should be noted that the Horns aren’t the only Democrats running for U.S. Senate.
Jason Bollinger, a young Oklahoma City attorney who claims Kendra Horn as a friend, and Tulsan Jo Glenn, a former teacher and city of Tulsa public prosecutor who has been a leader in Tulsa County Democratic Party politics, are up against Madison Horn in the June 28 Democratic primary for the Lankford seat.
Election lawsuit: Oral arguments in Enid attorney Stephen Jones’ suit to stop the special election for Inhofe’s seat in the Senate will begin at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
In an unusual move, the arguments will be livestreamed on the court’s website, oscn.net.
Jones is arguing that Inhofe’s successor cannot be chosen until the office is actually vacant, which as things stand now won’t occur until the end of the current Congress early next year.
A decision in Jones’ favor would mean Inhofe would have to retire this year for there to be a special election in 2022. If he remains until early next year, the governor would appoint a temporary replacement to serve until after a special election could be held in 2024.
Under the dome: Expect some long days and maybe nights in the Oklahoma House and Senate this week ahead of Thursday’s floor deadline. Bills not passed by their chamber of origin by then will be considered dead for the remainder of the session.
About 750 bills remain on general order, meaning they’ve been voted out of committee but have not been heard on the floor. About 440 of those are in the House, the remainder in the Senate. It’s not inconceivable that others could magically appear on agendas before the week is out.
State Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, continued preaching caution on spending and tax cuts despite record revenue.
Gov. Kevin Stitt signed six bills last week, the first of the 2022 session. All were relatively minor items dealing with taxes and state expenditures.
The state Senate maintained the Legislature’s sudden push for hydrogen power by passing a couple of related incentives, one for hydrogen-powered motor vehicles and another for education costs connected to development of hydrogen power.
The Senate last week passed and sent to the House legislation to repeal a number of court fees and replace the revenue with general fund appropriations.
The Oklahoma Democratic Party blasted away at what it called Republicans’ “anti-expert movement,” which it says is “jeopardizing the public health of all Oklahomans” by turning the Health Department into a political arm of the Governor’s Office.
Trump train: With Oklahoma Republicans crawling over each other to get the blessing of former President Donald Trump in this year’s competitive Republican primaries, Stitt actually received an endorsement.
“Kevin Stitt has done a fantastic job as Governor of Oklahoma,” Trump said in a written statement. “He is a champion for our America First agenda, a fearless defender of the Second Amendment, and a supporter of our great Military and Vets.”
Stitt does have a primary this year but is expected to win without difficulty.
Stitt has not explicitly embraced Trump’s “America First” slogan, which is controversial in some circles because it is borrowed from a group of 1930s isolationists and Nazi sympathizers.
The slogan was previously used by both Republican and Democratic politicians, mostly to signal isolationist and anti-immigration leanings.
Campaigns and elections: The 2nd Congressional District field continued to grow last week with the addition of Muskogee Police Chief Johnny Teehee.
A Cherokee Nation citizen, Teehee grew up in Vian and has spent the last 35 years with the Muskogee Police Department. He said he is particularly concerned about the influx of illegal drugs across the southern U.S. border.
Teehee received national attention last year when he attended the funeral of a 17-year-old Nebraska girl who was killed in a shootout with Muskogee police. He had been invited by the girl’s father.
Teehee is the fifth candidate to enter the June 28 Republican primary for what will be an open seat.
No non-Republican has announced a candidacy.
Tulsa County Democratic Party Chairwoman Amanda Swope announced that she will be a Democratic candidate in state House District 71. The seat is currently held by Democrat Denise Brewer, who is not seeking reelection.
As newly configured, HD 71 runs from the Interstate 244 bridge over the Arkansas River and the south side of the Inner Dispersal Loop to 81st Street on the east side of the river, then east to Lewis Avenue, except for an irregular boundary north of 31st Street.
Lankford’s campaign includes weekly call-in prayer meetings.
Lankford’s primary opponent, Jackson Lahmeyer, is telling supporters he can help bring Trump back before the 2024 election by throwing Biden out of office. This would involve Republicans winning control of the Congress this year, installing Trump as speaker of the House, declaring Biden mentally incompetent and impeaching Vice President Kamala Harris.
Alex Gray, a Republican candidate for the seat being surrendered by Inhofe, was endorsed by former Trump Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller and retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.
Miller served as defense secretary for the final two months of Trump’s term; Kellogg was national security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence and, briefly, acting national security adviser.
Gray was an aide in the Trump White House and has previously been endorsed by several people with ties to the Trump administration.
Devon Energy founder Larry Nichols and his wife, Polly, one of Oklahoma City’s most powerful power couples, are hosting a March 28 fundraiser for Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor. Also listed as hosts are Jeff and Sally Starling. Jeff Starling is an officer with Lagoon Water Midstream, a company that disposes of oil and gas production wastewater.
Republican Penny James of Durant said she’s a candidate in southeastern Oklahoma’s state House District 21. GOP incumbent Dustin Roberts is term-limited.
Meetings and events: April school board elections will be on the menu for the Tulsa County Democratic Party’s gathering at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Freeway Cafe West, 5849 S. 49th West Ave.
AARP Oklahoma will have a telephone town hall on efforts to expand access to high-speed internet in the state. The town hall begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday. See AARP Oklahoma’s Facebook page for details.
Bottom lines: The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority contracted with NCS Analytics to establish a statewide data platform to monitor and regulate commercial license operations. … Koch Energy’s Enid fertilizer plant was the only Oklahoma facility to earn the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star certification for 2021.
— Randy Krehbiel Tulsa World
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After a day on which US-listed Chinese stocks had exploded 33 per cent higher and the Hang Seng Technology Index had staged its biggest ever one-day gain, a veteran Asia investor at one of the world’s largest hedge funds called last Thursday to declare a turning point.
The scale of the rally was welcome and impressive, he said, but its propellant — a pledge from the top of the Chinese Communist party to introduce a range of “policies favourable to the market”, and immediate endorsement of that from other high-level government organs — came with huge implications.
For the first time, in his view, the left and right hands of Chinese policymaking and market management appeared to be working in harmony and signalling an important change of direction. He may be right. But the question is whether that matters much if the global economy is decoupling.
For an optimist, the statement on Wednesday from Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s closest economic adviser, was encouraging. It implied that, after last year’s bruising clashes between the state and the stock market, an accommodation had been reached between Xi’s “common prosperity” rhetoric and a recognition that market confidence is at once desirable and fragile.
Seemingly, this accommodation came from Xi himself and involved some admission that a prolonged glow around the world’s second biggest equity market may, in these tormented times, have a political value.
Tech stocks led by Alibaba rallied the strongest on Liu’s list of market salves, partly because the sector had been the most painfully bludgeoned by China’s recent measures, and partly because the promise of an agreement between Beijing and Washington on the regulation of US-listed Chinese companies should more generally juice valuations.
Caught in the maelstrom was a JPMorgan Chase report last Monday that downgraded more than two dozen prominent Chinese internet stocks, describing the basket as “unattractive, with no valuation support in the near term”. Fun was poked at the report because of the rally a few days later. Another theory is that the report’s prominence and negative tone helped to prod Beijing into declaring a floor sooner rather than later.
Placed against the optimistic view of China’s move, however, are a number of factors. JPMorgan’s note emerged from a remarkably rough patch for Chinese stocks — an extended sell-off that had scythed valuations far below their February 2021 peak. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with the associated geopolitical turmoil, meant there were few visible brakes on the downward spiral. China’s move, in that context, was less a grand shift of mindset than an emergency circuit-breaker triggered as policymakers hit their pain threshold.
As traders pointed out, Thursday’s rally was driven by hedge funds and a squeeze on short sellers. The long-only money — foreign and domestic — has yet to make definitive bets. Adding to its hesitancy is that the signalling from Liu and the Financial Stability and Development Committee that he chairs has met near total silence from the tech companies and other corporations. The market rally maps the joy of someone who has been told their grim-looking medical condition is easily treatable; the companies’ reaction is more a “fool me once” glower.
Looming menacingly above this, however, are dynamics that Beijing cannot change. Although Chinese confidence-boosting spasms are rare, they are not unprecedented. They have parallels in the successful experiments following the global financial crisis and after 2014, when panics related to domestic growth or US trade wars took hold.
On previous occasions, however, the Chinese confidence booster was fired into markets where globalisation still felt fundamentally unstoppable and decoupling seemed a remote risk. Neither can be said with confidence now.
Even before the invasion of Ukraine heightened the deglobalisation and decoupling concerns, technology nationalism, the redrawing of supply chains and other megatrends were revising calculations about investing in Chinese stocks. The ambiguities of Beijing’s positioning with Moscow have not abated. Xi’s remarks on Friday in a call with US president Joe Biden that the international community “should work for peace and tranquility”, were superficially soothing but are unlikely to shift the underlying concern about decoupling. Investor hesitancy on China continues to have plenty of valid excuses.
Last week’s actions by Beijing are important for neutralising some of the more idiosyncratic concerns related to domestic policies that hit certain sectors of the stock market. But that leaves the Chinese market as a more direct proxy for investors’ views on the future of globalisation.
The 33-year-old man shot multiple times in the legs and groin in an attempted robbery of his six-figure Richard Mille watch is a French-born cryptocurrency expert who flaunted his timepieces on social media.
Pierrick Jamaux told police a man demanded his watch as soon as he and his companions got out of an Uber at their midtown hotel Friday morning, and then shot him before he could react, according to law enforcement sources.
Jamaux, who was with his model wife, Sarah Watts, 26, and another woman, was returning to the Fifty Hotel and Suites at 155 East 50th St. from the Sapphire 39 strip club on West39th Street.
As Jamaux fell to the ground from the gunshot wounds, his attacker bent over him trying to take something, sources said.
Then Jamaux’s companion, a 25-year-old woman, jumped on the gunman’s back before he shrugged her off and fled, sources said.
Pierrick Jamaux would often flaunt his watches on social media. astropierrick/Instagram
Jamaux was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he had multiple entry and exit wounds to both legs, according to sources.
Five shell casings were recovered from the scene.
Watts was seen leaving Bellevue Hospital Saturday afternoon but declined to comment on her husband.
Jamaux, a French native now living in Hong Kong, is a founder of an online banking platform called Hi, which says it is a “next-gen crypto exchange and mobile banking app, for savings, investments and payments.”
His company bio says he is a “lifestyle guru.”
Jamaux’ Instagram account shows him and his wife, a model from Australia, out on the town in Hong Kong and Paris, enjoying caviar and champagne.
In one photo from December, Jamaux has his arm around his wife at a Hong Kong restaurant with what looks to be a Richard Mille watch on his wrist.
Pierrick Jamaux was shot outside of the Fifty Hotel in Midtown. Seth Gottfried for NY Post
Some of the company’s watches are made in limited editions or of unique materials including one with an alloy developed by NASA to be used on supersonic aircraft wings, according to one report. Some models are priced at more than $1 million.
The company’s website lists singer Pharrell Williams, golfer Bubba Watson and actor John Malkovich as “friends and partners.”
The suspect who shot Jamaux remained at large Saturday. Sources said that he could be seen in surveillance video going into a vestibule and then re-emerging a few seconds later in light colored clothing. He walked north on Lexington and dropped a dark bundle into a trash can.
Another person could be seen picking up the bundle several minutes later, sources said.
The University of North Carolina’s men’s basketball team spent part of December being crushed by Kentucky. January brought humiliations at Miami and Wake Forest. February included being embarrassed on its home court by Duke and Pittsburgh and requiring overtime to beat a woeful Syracuse.
Then came March. The Tar Heels went over to Duke and spoiled Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium on March 5. Then, in overtime on Saturday in Fort Worth, they upset Baylor, the No. 1 seed in the East region and the reigning national champion, to advance to the round of 16 in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Each signature victory is of the stripe that can redeem any misbegotten season. But both? As Roy Williams, who retired as North Carolina’s coach last year but was in the stands on Saturday, might say: “Daggum.”
The description could also aptly describe much of the rest of the action Saturday in the tournament. St. Peter’s — yes, the 15th-seeded Peacocks — advanced to the round of 16 with a victory over No. 7 seed Murray State, and the field’s top overall seed, Gonzaga, fought harder than expected to get past No. 9 seed Memphis.
The eighth-seeded Tar Heels, who blew a 25-point lead with less than 11 minutes remaining in regulation before recovering, will meet U.C.L.A. on Friday in Philadelphia.
They — and any other team remaining in this year’s men’s tournament — might be hard-pressed, though, to author a greater work of suspense than their 93-86 downing of Baylor, the first No. 1 seed to lose this year.
Yes, Baylor won the tipoff, and with Kendall Brown’s dunk off a fast break, built a 4-0 lead in all of 68 seconds. Then U.N.C. seized it and did not even allow the game to be tied until there were 15.8 seconds remaining and Baylor had improbably erased a performance by the Tar Heels that had seemed more likely to wind up in the record books than in overtime.
Freshman Dontrez Styles opened overtime with a 3-pointer and U.N.C. managed — this time — to hold on.
“It was just something,” said Armando Bacot, one of North Carolina’s star players. “It was stressful, for sure.”
In the first half — after which the Tar Heels led by 13 — Baylor struggled mightily behind the arc and its turnovers fueled Carolina’s rise and accounted for 15 of the Tar Heels’ 42 points before the intermission.
So did R.J. Davis, a sophomore from White Plains, N.Y., who scored 30 points to lead U.N.C. by day’s end.
The chaos of Saturday’s game was, in many respects, a fitting mark in North Carolina’s topsy-turvy debut campaign under Hubert Davis, who succeeded Williams.
The Tar Heels started to rise after the 9-point loss to Pittsburgh on Feb. 16 and have lost only once since, to Virginia Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. Krzyzewski marveled over them this month, once his own team, then ranked fourth in the country, was done in by players like Bacot, a 6-foot-10 junior who collects rebounds with the zeal of an Internal Revenue Service agent, and Brady Manek, who transferred from Oklahoma and came into Saturday’s game leading North Carolina in 3-pointers.
“We knew the potential of this team coming into this season, and we just wanted to turn it around,” R.J. Davis said on Friday. “We knew after the loss to Pitt, that wasn’t the way we wanted to play. So from that point on, I think we just turned it around and started to compete. And everyone bought into their roles and that’s kind of what we’ve been buying into.”
Helped along by a flagrant foul, Baylor got around to buying into the majesty of being a No. 1 seed. There is only so much a team can do, though, on an afternoon when it trailed by 25.
Waco-based Baylor, at least, avoided the overlapping indignities of a long trip home after a miserable loss, and, thanks to a victory over Norfolk State on Thursday, the ignominy of being the earliest exiting departing champion in tournament history.
Dive Deeper Into the N.C.A.A. Tournaments
Very little else went quite as the Bears hoped.
Baylor could not manage a basket for a stretch of close to four minutes in the second half. U.N.C. took that interlude and scored 13, building a lead of 24.
Much of that came from Manek, whose 9 points in the first half came to feel small by the end of the second, when he had 17. It is virtually certain that he would have finished with more than 26 points, but he was ejected with just more than 10 minutes to play after a flagrant foul.
His dismissal proved the catalyst for the kind of Baylor onslaught that, less than two hours earlier, would have seemed like a surefire route for them to Philadelphia.
One shot after another, one opportunity after another exploited, the Bears looked like the team most expected to swagger through Dickies Arena and advance.
“We knew that as a team we weren’t going to give up, and we decided to apply pressure a lot more and be assertive out there,” said Adam Flagler, a Baylor guard. “So once we got into those diamonds and traps, we were able to get some stops and get some easy looks, and therefore got the run going.”
Baylor’s late success in pressing North Carolina, Hubert Davis said, had two consequences: It forced the Tar Heels to speed up and led to turnovers.
“They did not want to go home,” he said of Baylor.
Eventually, with less than 16 seconds left, the Bears tied the game at 80, where the score would stay until overtime.
The 3-pointer by Styles to begin overtime let U.N.C. regain control. Bacot made a free throw. Baylor effectively hung around until 78 ticks remained, with the Tar Heels up by 6 after a flurry of free throws and layups from both teams.
Then, though, time ebbed further, and the score did not change much, with Baylor, which earned a share of the Big 12 Conference’s regular-season title, squandering chances that could have drawn it closer to salvaging an afternoon and a season.
“At the end of the day, it’s hard making shots in that second game, and both of us don’t have deep benches and usually the numbers will probably back that up,” said Scott Drew, Baylor’s coach. “But they had two guys that came out of the gate shooting it well.”
Drew said he thought his team had displayed “the heart of a champion” by staging the comeback it did.
But North Carolina, a team maybe to forget not long ago, became the program to play on in March.
Gonzaga, down by 10 at halftime, comes back against Memphis.
Top-ranked Gonzaga survived a scare late Saturday night, rallying from a double-digit deficit and then holding off a fierce Memphis team to remain alive in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament with an 82-78 victory in the second round.
Drew Timme came alive in the second half to spark Gonzaga’s comeback, finishing with 25 points, 14 rebounds and 4 assists, while point guard Andrew Nembhard added 23 points, including four free throws in the final minute.
Even after Gonzaga surged to a 76-69 lead, seemingly taking control, the Tigers steadied themselves.
Jalen Duren threw down a dunk, and after Timme left a jumper short, DeAndre Williams hit a jumper in the lane to draw Memphis within 76-73. Rasir Bolton made a pair of free throws to boost Gonzaga’s lead to 5 with 42 seconds left.
Lester Quinones answered with a quick 3-pointer and Memphis fouled Nembhard, who sank both free throws — a rarity on a night when the Zags were uncharacteristically shaky at the line, making just 13 of 24 free throws.
Gonzaga moves on to play fourth-seeded Arkansas in a West regional semifinal in San Francisco on Thursday. It is the seventh consecutive season the Zags have reached the tournament’s second weekend.
The Zags, the top overall seed, have hardly looked the part through two rounds.
They found themselves trailing 16th-seeded Georgia State by 54-52 with 13 minutes left in their first-round game before hitting the Panthers with a late blitz to win comfortably. They looked out of sorts on Saturday, too, getting beat in transition and struggling to get the ball in the paint against the long, athletic Tigers.
When Alex Lomax bolted the length of the court and dished to Josh Minott, who sank a floater at the buzzer, Memphis ran off the court at halftime with a 41-31 lead.
The Zags returned and rectified their inside scoring vacuum the same way they had on Thursday — be feeding Timme the ball. He scored 21 points in the second half, leading the charge back. And when Chet Holmgren sank a jumper with 12:53 left, Gonzaga had drawn even at 51.
The surprise run of St. Peter’s will head to the tournament’s second weekend.
Murray State’s Trae Hannibal was breaking away for a dunk. St. Peter’s forward KC Ndefo raced downcourt behind him, leapt for a clean block, then sprawled out into a crowd of Murray State cheerleaders seated under the basket.
These 15th-seeded Peacocks can fly better than you think. All the way to the round of 16 in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
The hustle play by Ndefo, a 6-foot-7, 195-pound forward, showed the defensive commitment that has anchored this team, which extended its March run with a 70-60 victory over No. 7 seed Murray State in Indianapolis.
“I’m just happy for these guys, I’m kind of soaking it in right now,” Shaheen Holloway, the St. Peter’s coach, said in a television interview. “It’s an amazing vibe.”
Ndefo was brilliant for the Peacocks (21-11) with 17 points, 10 rebounds, 6 blocks and 3 assists. Junior guard Doug Edert, whose mustache inspired its own Twitter account, added 13 points, including a huge 3-pointer that extended St. Peter’s lead to 5 points in the final minutes.
Murray State, which outlasted San Francisco in overtime in the first round for its 21st straight win, had not lost since Dec. 22 at Auburn.
The Peacocks are just the third No. 15 seed to reach the last 16 after Florida Gulf Coast in 2013 and Oral Roberts in 2021. They will meet the winner of Sunday’s game between No. 3 Purdue and No. 6 Texas on Friday at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, where they are sure to draw a big local crowd.
They are the first New Jersey school since Seton Hall in 2000 to advance that far. The Peacocks had never won an N.C.A.A. tournament game before slaying Kentucky, which has won eight national championships.
St. Peter’s — a tiny Jesuit school of some 2,300 students nestled in the heart of Jersey City, two miles west of New York City — has now won nine straight games and 10 of its last 11. On campus, students watched the game on a big screen from an arena nicknamed Run Baby Run. Members of the university’s spirit squad took a 10-hour bus ride to get to the game in Indianapolis so they could cheer on the team in person.
KJ Williams and Tevin Brown, Murray State’s two stars, shot a combined 7 of 26 against the stingy St. Peter’s defense. After holding Kentucky to 43 percent shooting, the Peacocks limited the Racers to 35 percent. The Racers have now had five chances to reach the final 16, and have been unable to get there.
Michigan found enough magic in time to beat Tennessee.
Set aside all of the messes of this Michigan season — the ugly clash at Wisconsin and the suspensions that followed, the stinging losses, the quick exit from the Big Ten Conference tournament — because the Wolverines are suddenly winning when it counts.
Michigan, a No. 11 seed in the South region, mounted a late surge in Indianapolis on Saturday to topple third-seeded Tennessee, 76-68.
Tennessee, which had ridden a well-timed winning streak through the Southeastern Conference tournament, never commanded the game in the way it wished. Its lead never exceeded 6 points, and it missed 16 of 18 3-point tries. Michigan, which will next play in San Antonio, was hardly setting records behind the arc, where it went 6 for 16, but those points proved crucial. So did free throws: Eight of Michigan’s final 10 points came from the line.
Hunter Dickinson, Michigan’s starting center, had 27 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Wolverines. Eli Brooks added another 23 points for Michigan in a game with a dozen lead changes.
Michigan showed vulnerabilities, though, turning over the ball 15 times, more than twice as often as the Volunteers, and fueling 20 Tennessee points.
Kansas, another No. 1, got through a scare from Creighton.
Baylor might have lost, but the Big 12 Conference is just glad it avoided two debacles: Kansas, a league stalwart and another of the tournament’s No. 1 seeds, fended off Creighton, 79-72.
But the Jayhawks, whose roster boasts seven seniors and who led by as many as 9 points on Saturday, sometimes seemed to wheeze to Chicago, where they will play next. Trey Alexander, a Creighton freshman, hit a long 3-pointer over Remy Martin to leave his team trailing by just 3. KeyShawn Feazell scored on a layup off a dribble penetration pass from Alex O’Connell to trim the deficit a little more, to 73-72.
An errant pass by Alexander gave Ochai Agbaji, the Big 12 player of the year who would finish on Saturday with 15 points and eight rebounds, a chance to steal and score and rebuild the Kansas lead to 3.
Timely defense kept Creighton, which was playing without its own defensive anchor after an injury on Thursday, from scoring again, while Kansas used four free throws to push its tally to 79.
Kansas will face Providence in the round of 16.
U.C.L.A.’s swarming defense wears down St. Mary’s.
Mick Cronin, the U.C.L.A. coach, came to Westwood determined to focus on defense. And though Jaime Jaquez Jr., Johnny Juzang, Jules Bernard and Tyger Campbell can dazzle offensively, the Bruins are at their best when they are snarling and clawing without the ball.
The Bruins’ defense fueled their memorable run from the First Four to the Final Four last year, and it moved them within two wins of the same destination Saturday as they rolled St. Mary’s, 72-56.
St. Mary’s swished seven of its first 10 field goal attempts and built a 7-point lead. Then, after the U.C.L.A. huddle during the under-12:00 timeout in the first half, the game turned abruptly — surely not by coincidence.
The Bruins clamped down, holding the Gaels to 3 for 16 shooting during the rest of the half, and extended that defensive effort through the rest of the game. As the second half deepened, the constant pressure seemed to wear on St. Mary’s. The Gaels at times appeared spent.
The biggest worry for U.C.L.A. came with 6:58 remaining when Jaquez, who has battled sprained ankles in the past, turned his right ankle while battling for a rebound.
He did not play the rest of the game, and his availability will become a major story line as the Bruins move on to play North Carolina in Philadelphia on Friday. It will be U.C.L.A.’s fifth Sweet 16 appearance in the past nine years. The matchup, featuring two schools that have combined for 17 national titles, undoubtedly will be one of the marquee games of the weekend.
Having played in Gonzaga’s shadow for years in the West Coast Conference, the Gaels (26-8) served notice that they could be a tricky opponent for U.C.L.A. by thoroughly destroying Indiana in a first-round game Thursday night. Buoyed by a 34-5 run to end the first half, they cruised to an easy 82-53 win.
But Indiana, and few others, play the kind of rugged defense that Cronin demands. U.C.L.A. (27-7) is now 22-0 this season when holding opponents under 66 points.
Holly Prigerson, a professor of sociology in medicine, has worked to include prolonged grief as a classified, diagnosable psychiatric disorder. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
After more than a decade of argument, psychiatry’s most powerful body in the United States added a new disorder this week to its diagnostic manual: prolonged grief.
The decision marks an end to a long debate within the field of mental health, steering researchers and clinicians to view intense grief as a target for medical treatment, at a moment when many Americans are overwhelmed by loss.
The new diagnosis, prolonged grief disorder, was designed to apply to a narrow slice of the population who are incapacitated, pining and ruminating a year after a loss, and unable to return to previous activities.
Its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders means that clinicians can now bill insurance companies for treating people for the condition.
It will most likely open a stream of funding for research into treatments — naltrexone, a drug used to help treat addiction, is currently in clinical trials as a form of grief therapy — and set off a competition for approval of medicines by the Food and Drug Administration.
Since the 1990s, a number of researchers have argued that intense forms of grief should be classified as a mental illness, saying that society tends to accept the suffering of bereaved people as natural and that it fails to steer them toward treatment that could help.
A diagnosis, they hope, will allow clinicians to aid a part of the population that has, throughout history, withdrawn into isolation after terrible losses.
“They were the widows who wore black for the rest of their lives, who withdrew from social contacts and lived the rest of their lives in memory of the husband or wife who they had lost,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, chair of the steering committee overseeing revisions to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. “They were the parents who never got over it, and that was how we talked about them. Colloquially, we would say they never got over the loss of that child.”
Throughout that time, critics of the idea have argued vigorously against categorizing grief as a mental disorder, saying the designation risks pathologizing a fundamental aspect of the human experience.
They warn that there will be false positives — grieving people told by doctors that they have mental illnesses when they are actually emerging, slowly but naturally, from their losses.
And they fear grief will be seen as a growth market by drug companies that will try to persuade the public that they need medical treatment to emerge from mourning.
“I completely, utterly disagree that grief is a mental illness,” said Joanne Cacciatore, an associate professor of social work at Arizona State University who has published widely on grief and who operates Selah Carefarm, a retreat for bereaved people.
“When someone who is a quote-unquote expert tells us we are disordered and we are feeling very vulnerable and feeling overwhelmed, we no longer trust ourselves and our emotions,” Cacciatore said. “To me, that is an incredibly dangerous move, and shortsighted.”
‘We don’t worry about grief’
The origins of the new diagnosis can be traced to the 1990s, when Holly Prigerson, a psychiatric public health researcher, was studying a group of patients in late life, gathering data on the effectiveness of depression treatment.
She noticed something odd: In many cases, patients were responding well to antidepressant medications, but their grief, as measured by a standard inventory of questions, was unaffected, remaining stubbornly high. When she pointed this out to psychiatrists on the team, they showed little interest.
“Grief is normal,” she recalls being told. “We’re psychiatrists, and we don’t worry about grief. We worry about depression and anxiety.” Her response: “Well, how do you know that’s not a problem?”
Prigerson set about gathering data. Many symptoms of intense grief, such as “yearning and pining and craving,” were distinct from depression, she concluded, and predicted bad outcomes such as high blood pressure and suicidal ideation.
Her research showed that for most people, symptoms of grief peaked in the six months after the death. A group of outliers — she estimates it at 4% of bereaved individuals — remained “stuck and miserable,” she said, and would continue to struggle with mood, functioning and sleep over the long term.
“You’re not getting another soul mate and you’re kind of eking out your days,” she said.
In 2010, when the American Psychiatric Association proposed expanding the definition of depression to include grieving people, it provoked a backlash, feeding into a broader critique that mental health professionals were overdiagnosing and overmedicating patients.
“You’ve got to understand that clinicians want diagnoses so they can categorize people coming through the door and get reimbursement,” said Jerome Wakefield, a professor of social work at New York University. “That is a huge pressure” on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Still, researchers kept working on grief, increasingly viewing it as distinct from depression and more closely related to stress disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Among them was Dr. M. Katherine Shear, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, who developed a 16-week program of psychotherapy that draws heavily on exposure techniques used for victims of trauma.
By 2016, data from clinical trials showed that Shear’s therapy had good results for patients suffering from intense grief, and that it outperformed antidepressants and other depression therapies. Those findings bolstered the argument for including the new diagnosis in the manual, said Appelbaum, chair of the committee in charge of revisions to the manual.
In 2019, Appelbaum convened a group that included Shear, of Columbia, and Prigerson, now a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, to agree on criteria that would distinguish normal grief from the disorder.
The most sensitive question of all was this: How long is prolonged?
Although both teams of researchers felt that they could identify the disorder six months after a bereavement, the American Psychiatric Association “begged and pleaded” to define the syndrome more conservatively — a year after death — to avoid a public backlash, Prigerson said.
“I have to say that they were kind of politically smart about that,” she said. The concern was that the public was “going to be outraged, because everyone feels because they still feel some grief — even if it’s their grandmother at six months, they are still missing them,” she said. “It just seems like you’re pathologizing love.”
Measured at the year mark, she said, the criteria should apply to around 4% of bereaved people.
The new diagnosis, published this week in the manual’s revised edition, is a breakthrough for those who have argued, for years, that intensely grieving people need tailored treatment.
“It’s kind of like the bar mitzvah of diagnoses,” said Dr. Kenneth Kendler, a professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University who has played an important role in the past three editions of the diagnostic manual.
“It’s sort of an official blessing in the world,” he said. “If we were on the planetary committee of the American Astronomical Society deciding what is a planet or not — this one’s in, and Pluto we kicked out.”
If the diagnosis comes into common use, it is likely to popularize Shear’s treatment and also give rise to a range of new ones, including drug treatments and online interventions.
Shear said it was difficult to predict what treatments would emerge.
“I don’t really have any idea, because I don’t know when the last time there was a really brand-new diagnosis,” she said.
She added, “I really am in favor of anything that helps people, honestly.”
A loop of grief
Amy Cuzzola-Kern, 54, said Shear’s treatment helped her break out of a terrible loop.
Three years earlier, her brother had died suddenly in his sleep of a heart attack. Cuzzola-Kern found herself compulsively replaying the days and hours leading up to his death, wondering whether she should have noticed he was unwell or nudged him to go to the emergency room.
She had withdrawn from social life and had trouble sleeping through the night. Although she had begun a course of antidepressants and seen two therapists, nothing seemed to be working.
“I was in such a state of protest — this can’t be, this is a dream,” she said. “I felt like I was living in a suspended reality.”
She entered Shear’s 16-session program, called prolonged grief disorder therapy. In sessions with a therapist, she would narrate her recollection of the day that she learned her brother had died — a painful process but one that gradually drained the horror out of the memory. By the end, she said, she had accepted the fact of his death.
The diagnosis, she said, mattered only because it was a gateway to the proper treatment.
“Am I ashamed or embarrassed? Do I feel pathological? No,” she said. “I needed professional help.”
Yet, others interviewed said they were wary of any expectation that grief should lift in a particular period of time.
“We would never put a time frame around when someone should or shouldn’t feel that they have moved forward,” said Catrina Clemens, who oversees the victim services department of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which provides services to bereaved relatives and friends. The organization encourages bereaved people to seek mental health care but has no role in diagnosis, said a spokesperson.
Filipp Brunshteyn, whose 3-year-old daughter died after an automobile accident in 2016, said grieving people could be set back by the message that their response was dysfunctional.
“Anything we inject into this journey that says, ‘That’s not normal,’ that could cause more harm than good,” he said. “You are already dealing with someone very vulnerable, and they need validation.”
To set a year as a point for diagnosis is “arbitrary and kind of cruel,” said Ann Hood, whose memoir, “Comfort: A Journey Through Grief,” describes the death of her 5-year-old daughter from a strep infection. Her own experience, she said, was “full of peaks and valleys and surprises.”
The first time Hood walked into her daughter Grace’s room after her death, she saw a pair of ballet tights lying in a tangle on the floor where the little girl had dropped them. She screamed. “Not the kind of scream that comes from fright,” she later wrote, “but the kind that comes from the deepest grief imaginable.”
She slammed the door, left the room untouched and eventually turned off the heat to that part of the house. At the one-year mark, a well-meaning friend told her it was time to clear out the room — “nothing worse than a shrine,” he told her — but she ignored him.
Then one morning, three years after Grace’s death, Hood woke up and returned to the room. She sorted her daughter’s clothes and toys into plastic bins, emptied the bureau and closet and lined up her little shoes at the top of the stairs.
To this day, she is not sure how she got from one point to the other. “All of a sudden, you look up,” she said, “and a few years have gone by, and you’re back in the world.”
The United States’ reactionary moves to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggest that it does not have an adequate plan in place to respond if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use a nuclear weapon, a former U.S. intelligence officer told Fox News.
Rebekah Koffler, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency agent and author of “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America,” explained to Fox News that while the U.S. certainly has a strategic plan in place if Putin uses a nuclear weapon, recent responses to Russia’s aggression instill little confidence that the United States is doing the necessary preparation for such an outcome.
Vladimir President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine only eight months after TIME magazine billed President Biden as ready to take on the Russian leader. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Koffler said that “the fact that we have not responded in a methodical manner to any of Putin’s actions nor have we deterred any of his actions” is reason to be concerned that the United States does not have a coherent plan to respond to a potential nuclear attack.
“Judging by our overall response and that we put all our eggs in one basket with sanctions and we were caught off guard regardless of the fact Putin never made it a secret what he was going to do yet we are grasping at straws,” Kofffler said. “Given that, it doesn’t seem that we are prepared for the possibility of him using nuclear weapons.”
Natali Sevriukova reacts next to her house following a rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
“The minute that Putin said he changed the combat readiness status we didn’t say anything,” Koffler said. “This whole confusion seems like a haphazard approach on our side.”
Koffler says that the United States should be very active in putting together a contingency plan and establishing back channels to prevent Putin from de-escalating the war through escalation, a strategy Putin has developed over his years in power.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Yerevan, Armenia. (Shutterstock)
As far as the likelihood that Putin would resort to using a nuclear weapon, Koffler says that Putin is capable of making such a drastic decision.
“He has high risk tolerance,” Koffler said of Putin. “I believe that it is within his frame of mind.”
Russia claimed on Saturday that it deployed a hypersonic missile that destroyed a munitions warehouse in Ukraine, which Koffler said is part of a strategic plan Putin is using to show the world he has a “high tolerance for warfare.”
“It’s a game-changer in the geopolitical realm, not unlike in the military realm, because they’re trying to [send a] strategic message,” she said. “In my assessment, [Putin] is climbing small steps in the escalation ladder on the trajectory to nuclear warfare.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speeches during the concert marking the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, March,18,2022, in Moscow, Russia. Thousands people gathered at Luznkiki Stadium to support President Putin, annexation of Crimea and military invasion on Ukraine. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images) (Contributor/Getty Images)
“We are so focused on thinking that it’s so crazy and outside the realm of possibility,” Koffler said about the potential use of a nuclear weapon. “But think about all the crazy things he has already done. “He invaded Crimea. He is now attacking Ukraine in the most brutal manner possible.”
Koffler explained that the nuclear option isn’t necessarily one of the next steps Putin will take but that it can’t be “ruled out” because the further you “drive Putin into the corner” the more the “probability increases because he has everything at stake right now.”
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