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David Rancken’s App of the Day 08/09/24 Word of Mouth!
Texas will investigate Centerpoint over Beryl response
AUSTIN (AP) — Texas’ attorney general launched an investigation Monday into Houston’s electric utility over allegations of fraud and waste following Hurricane Beryl, adding to the mounting scrutiny after widespread power outages left millions without electricity for days.
The latest investigation of CenterPoint Energy comes after state regulators and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott have also demanded answers about storm preparations and the response to Beryl, a Category 1 hurricane that knocked out power to nearly 3 million people around the nation’s fourth-largest city.
The storm was blamed for at least three dozen deaths, including those of some residents who died in homes that were left without air conditioning in sweltering heat after the storm’s passage.
“My office is aware of concerning allegations regarding CenterPoint and how its conduct affected readiness during Hurricane Beryl,” Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement. “If the investigation uncovers unlawful activity, that activity will be met with the full force of the law.”
The utility pledged its support of the investigation.
“We look forward to cooperating with the Texas Attorney General or any other agency and have made clear our commitment to upholding the values of our company,” CenterPoint spokesperson John Sousa said.
Paxton did not cite any specific allegations of waste or fraud in his announcement and his office did not respond to requests for comment.
Abbott has demanded answers from CenterPoint for what he called its slow restoration efforts and poor communication with customers in the days leading up to the storm. The state’s Public Utility Commission has launched its own investigation, and lawmakers grilled the company’s top executive over its failures at a hearing last month.
CenterPoint has largely defended its storm preparedness and said that it deployed thousands of additional workers to help restore power. The utility provider has also begun a monthslong plan to replace hundreds of wooden utility poles and double its tree-trimming efforts after the governor pressed for swift action.
Beryl damaged power lines and uprooted trees when it made its Texas landfall on July 8. It’s the latest natural disaster to hit Houston after a powerful storm ripped through the area in May, leaving nearly 1 million people without power.
Many residents fear that chronic outages have become the norm after Texas’ power grid failed amid a deadly winter storm in 2021.
CenterPoint has previously faced questions over the reliability of Houston’s power grid.
In 2008, Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm, knocked out power to more than 2 people million and it took 19 days to fully restore electricity. The city of Houston created a task force initiative to investigate the company’s response and determined it needed to automate parts of its grid to minimize outages.
CenterPoint received millions of dollars in federal funding to implement this technology years ago. However, according to executive vice president Jason Ryan, it’s still a work in progress.
Some utility experts and critics say the company hasn’t adapted its technology fast enough to meet the extreme weather conditions Texas will continue to face.
Dozens of pregnant women turned away from ERs despite federal law
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.
Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.
When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.
That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.
“I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”
The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.
More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.
Two women — one in Florida and one in Texas — were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting treatment, including one in California who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.
Abortion bans complicate risky pregnancy care
In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.
Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies isn’t considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues.
“As fearful as hospitals and doctors are of running afoul of these state abortion bans, they also need to be concerned about running afoul of federal law,” said Marc Hearron, a center attorney. Hospitals face a federal investigation, hefty penalties and threats to their Medicare funding if they violate the federal law.
The organization filed complaints last week with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service alleging that different Texas emergency rooms failed to treat two patients, including Thurman, with ectopic pregnancies.
One complaint says Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, 25, lost a fallopian tube and most of an ovary after an Arlington, Texas, hospital sent her home without treating her ectopic pregnancy, even after a doctor said discharge was “not in her best interest.”
“The doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,” she said in a statement. “I’m filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us.”
Conclusively diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy can be difficult. Doctors cannot always find the pregnancy’s location on an ultrasound, three doctors consulted for this article explained. Hormone levels, bleeding, a positive pregnancy test and an ultrasound of an empty uterus all indicate an ectopic pregnancy.
“You can’t be 100% — that’s the tricky part,” said Kate Arnold, an OB-GYN in Washington. “They’re literally time bombs. It’s a pregnancy growing in this thing that can only grow so much.”
Texas Right to Life Director John Seago said state law protects doctors from prosecution for terminating ectopic pregnancies, even if a doctor “makes a mistake” in diagnosing it.
“Sending a woman back home is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,” Seago said.
But the state law has “absolutely” made doctors afraid of treating pregnant patients, said Hannah Gordon, an emergency medicine physician who worked in a Dallas hospital until last year.
She recalled a patient with signs of an ectopic pregnancy at her Dallas emergency room. Because OB-GYNs said they couldn’t definitively diagnose the problem, they waited to end the pregnancy until she came back the next day.
“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” said Gordon, who left Texas hoping to become pregnant and worried about the care she’d receive there.
“Oh my God, I’m dying”
When Thurman returned to Ascension Seton Williamson a third time, her OB-GYN told her she’d need surgery to remove the fallopian tube, which had ruptured. Thurman, still heavily bleeding, balked. Losing the tube would jeopardize her fertility.
Her doctor told her she risked death if she waited any longer.
“She came in and she’s like, you’re either going to have to have a blood transfusion, or you’re going to have to have surgery or you’re going to bleed out,” Thurman said, through tears. “That’s when I just kind of was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m, I’m dying.’”
The hospital declined to comment on Thurman’s case, but said in a statement it “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”
In Florida, a 15-week pregnant woman leaked amniotic fluid for an hour in Broward Health Coral Springs’ emergency wait room, according to federal documents. An ultrasound revealed the patient had no amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus, a dangerous situation that can cause serious infection.
The woman miscarried in a public bathroom that day, after the emergency room doctor listed her condition as “improved” and discharged her, without consulting the hospital’s OB-GYN.
Emergency crews rushed her to another hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and discharged after six days.
Abortions after 15 weeks were banned in Florida at the time. Broward Health Coral Springs’ obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is “the standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother.”
The hospital declined comment.
In another Florida case, a doctor admitted state law had complicated emergency pregnancy care.
“Because of the new laws … staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient’s health,” a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator who was probing the hospital’s failure to offer an abortion to a woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, well before the fetus could survive.
Troubles extend beyond abortion ban states
Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus’ health occurred in states with and without abortion bans, the AP’s review found.
Two short-staffed hospitals — in Idaho and Washington — admitted to investigators they routinely directed pregnant patients to other hospitals.
A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby’s death.
Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.
Nursing and doctor shortages, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women, warned Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official.
“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” she said.
Crews demolishing church where gunman killed parishioners
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS (AP) — Crews on Monday began to tear down a Texas church where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshippers in 2017, using heavy machinery to raze the small building even after some families sought to preserve the scene of the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history.
A judge cleared the way last month for the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs to tear down the sanctuary where the attack took place, which until now had been kept as a memorial. That ruling came after some families in the community of less than 1,000 people filed a lawsuit hoping for a new vote on the building’s fate. Church members voted in 2021 to tear it down.
Authorities put the number of dead in the Nov. 5, 2017, shooting at 26 people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby. After the shooting, the interior of the sanctuary was painted white and chairs with the names of those who were killed were placed there. A new church was completed for the congregation about a year and a half after the shooting.
John Riley, an 86-year-old member of the church, watched with sadness and disappointment as the long arm of a yellow excavator swung a heavy claw into the building over and over.
“The devil got his way,” Riley said, “I would not be the man I am without that church.”
He said he would pray for God to “punish the ones” who put the demolition in motion.
“That was God’s house, not their house,” Riley said.
For many in the community, the sanctuary was a place of solace.
Terrie Smith, president of the Sutherland Springs Community Association, visited often over the years, calling it a place where “you feel the comfort of everybody that was lost there.” Among those killed in the shooting were a woman who was like a daughter to Smith — Joann Ward — and Ward’s two daughters, ages 7 and 5.
Smith watched Monday as the memorial sanctuary was torn down.
“I am sad, angry, hurt,” she said.
In early July, a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order sought by some families. But another judge later denied a request to extend that order, setting in motion the demolition. In court filings, attorneys for the church called the structure a “constant and very painful reminder.”
Attorneys for the church argued that it was within its rights to demolish the memorial while the attorney for the families who filed the lawsuit said they were just hoping to get a new vote.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church roster before the vote was taken. In a court filing, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit.
A woman who answered the phone at the church said Monday that she had no comment then hung up.
The man who opened fire in the church, Devin Patrick Kelley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but was not present on the day of the shooting.
Communities across the U.S. have grappled with what should happen to the sites of mass shootings. Last month, demolition began on the three-story building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, it was torn down and replaced.
Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. In Colorado, Columbine High School still stands, though its library, where most of the victims were killed, was replaced.
In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish the school.
ERCOT’s 2030 load projection shocked lawmakers
AUSTIN – The San Antonio Express-News says that energy experts are challenging the state grid operator’s jaw-dropping projection for how high electrical demand could rise by 2030, saying that even as Texas faces explosive growth, there is no way its thirst for electricity will reach 150 gigawatt in less than six years — a forecast that has put lawmakers in a tizzy. To date, the highest peak demand recorded by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas is about 85.5 gigawatts. And Juan Arteaga — a senior analyst with Enverus, which recently published its own study on demand projections — is skeptical of the motivation behind those who say it could rise 75% by the end of the decade. “These guys are not stupid,” Arteaga said. “They’re just using that number to push for either more funds or more infrastructure investment. They run the system. They know it’s unrealistic.”
Enverus puts its demand projection for Texas in 2030 at 93.5 gigawatts — still a 10% jump accounting for population growth and electric vehicles, but far less jarring than ERCOT’s estimate that total demand could more than double from its level in 2020. ERCOT’s latest end-of-decade projections sent shock waves through the Capitol that manifested during June hearings by the Texas House and Senate. The figure is still top of mind for lawmakers, as they consider increasing the Texas Energy Fund’s $5 billion of available taxpayer-backed funding to support low-interest loans for more natural gas plants. ERCOT stood by the estimate as recently as last week during a second energy-focused hearings at the Texas House. Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, asked ERCOT Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Woody Rickerson whether he concurred with the roughly 150 gigawatt estimate that CEO Pablo Vegas had shared with lawmakers. Rickerson said he did, as Spiller shared his concerns about what that level of sudden demand growth would do to the grid’s reliability. “We may be able to get there, should be able to get there. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get there in that time frame,” Spiller said about the challenge to increase generation capacity accordingly. “My concern is the interim. I mean, the next year, two, three, and four (years) are the biggest concerns that I’ve got.”
Houston-area cities and consumers challenge CenterPoint
HOUSTON – Houston Public Media report that several groups representing Houston-area cities and customers are challenging CenterPoint Energy’s withdrawal of a rate increase the company proposed to the Public Utility Commission in March. The organizations argue CenterPoint’s move is an effort to avoid having its rates cut. Last week, CenterPoint filed a request to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to withdraw proposed rate increases that would have amounted to $1.25 a month for customers. The increases would have boosted CenterPoint’s revenue by $17 million, according to documents the company filed with the PUC in March. “We are acting urgently to strengthen our resiliency, improve our communications and emergency coordination,” CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells said in a statement on August 1 explaining the withdrawal. “We believe any delay or distraction from this mission is unacceptable.”
But a court filing by the Gulf Coast Coalition of Cities, the Texas Coast Utilities Coalition, the Houston Coalition of Cities, and the Texas Consumer Association argued this move was hardly a gift to ratepayers. “CenterPoint professes it is doing ratepayers a favor by withdrawing this rate case, but the Company’s rates are excessive,” the filing said. “The company may not simply rebuff the Commission when it is overearning and should not be left off the hook once again to continue to over-earn.” Sandra Haverlah, president of the Texas Consumer Association, said that CenterPoint had been overcharging ratepayers to the tune of more than $100 million a year. “Since it’s a lookback case over four years, the total approximately over the four years would be somewhere close to $400 million,” Haverlah said. Thomas Brocato, general counsel for the Gulf Coast Coalition of Cities, underscored the point.
Hughes Springs investigating overnight vehicle burglaries
HUGHES SPRINGS – According to our news partner KETK, the Hughes Springs Police Department is investigating the burglary of several vehicles on Saturday night and into Sunday morning. According to the police department, the burglaries were allegedly done in the “hours of darkness” by people on foot. Hughes Springs Police Department is asking any security camera owners to review their footage from the nights of Aug. 10 and into the morning on Aug. 11.
Anyone with information into the vehicle burglaries is asked to call Hughes Springs PD at 903-639-2621.
08-10-24 – Neita Fran Ward – The Art Connection
County intends to hire 10 new detention officers
SMITH COUNTY — At their budget workshop for the 2025 fiscal year on Wednesday, the Smith County Commissioner’s Court verbally agreed to add 10 new detention officer jobs in the county. According to our news partner KETK, the move comes after years of the Smith County Sheriff’s Office having to go over budget on overtime because of a need for additional staffing at the Smith County Jail and elsewhere.
“Each year, knowing what we spent the year before, we’ve found less and less overtime,” Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith said. “The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”
At the workshop, Smith presented data that showed how the sheriff’s office reportedly had $300,000 budgeted for overtime and ended up spending $1,019,020 in 2020. Similarly, in 2021, they had even more overtime budgeted with $450,000 and they ended up spending $1,525,436. Continue reading County intends to hire 10 new detention officers
Trump putting mass deportations at the heart of his campaign
Uvalde: 911 call reveals uncle begged to talk gunman out of shooting
Mexican drug lord says he was ambushed before being taken to US
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican drug cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada said that he was ambushed and kidnapped when he thought he was going to meet the governor of the northern state of Sinaloa, and then taken against his will to the United States, according to a letter released Saturday by his lawyer.
In the two-page letter, Zambada said that fellow drug lord Joaquín Guzmán López asked him to attend a meeting on July 25 with local politicians, including Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, from the ruling Morena party.
But before any meeting took place, he was led into a room where he was knocked down, a hood was placed over his head, he was handcuffed, and then taken in a pickup truck to a landing strip where he was forced into a private plane that finally took him and Guzmán López, one of the sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, to U.S. soil, according to the letter.
Zambada’s comments were released a day after the U.S. ambassador to Mexico confirmed that the drug lord was brought to the United States against his will when he arrived in Texas in July on a plane along with Guzmán López.
After Zambada’s comments, which raised question about links between drug traffickers and some politicians in Sinaloa, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked reporters “to wait to get more information” and to hear the governor’s version.
The governor’s office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Saturday. When the arrests of Zambada and Guzmán López were announced, Rocha told local media that he was in Los Angeles that day.
In early August, Zambada, 76, made his second appearance in U.S. federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody the week before.
Guzmán López apparently had been in negotiations with U.S. authorities for a long time about possibly turning himself in. Guzmán López, 38, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
But U.S. officials said they had almost no warning when Guzmán López’s plane landed at an airport near El Paso. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said that the plane had taken off from Sinaloa — the Pacific coast state where the cartel is headquartered — and had filed no flight plan. He stressed the pilot wasn’t American, nor was the plane.
The implication is that Guzmán López intended to turn himself in, and brought Zambada with him to procure more favorable treatment, but his motives remain unclear.
Zambada was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
Zambada is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
Palestine man arrested for bank robbery inside Walmart
PALESTINE – The Palestine Police Department arrested a man on Friday for allegedly attempting to rob the First Convenience Bank inside of Walmart. According to our news partner KETK, officers were dispatched to the First Convenience Bank inside of the Walmart Supercenter at approximately 3:41 p.m. on Friday following reports of a robbery in progress.
According to officials, a male subject entered the bank and demanded a large amount of money from an employee at the bank. The subject allegedly stated that he would use force if the employee did not comply, the employee was able to text a relative stating that they were being robbed, after which a 911 call was made. Continue reading Palestine man arrested for bank robbery inside Walmart
Things to know as CrossFit Games resume in Texas a day after a competitor died during a swim event
DALLAS (AP) — The CrossFit Games resumed Friday, a day after competitor Lazar Dukic died after going underwater and not resurfacing during a swimming event in a Texas lake.
In a post on the social platform X, CrossFit Games officials said that they and the entire CrossFit community were “shattered,” and while their first instinct was to “shutdown,” “isolate” and “mourn,” they decided “the best way to grieve is together.”
After the remainder of Thursday’s events were canceled, competition resumed with a moment of silence and an announcement that this year’s games, which run through Sunday, would be dedicated to Dukic. Many of the athletes who lined up for the ceremony were in tears.
Here are things to know about the tragedy and the CrossFit games:
Who was Lazar Dukic?
Dukic was a 28-year-old competitor from Serbia. The CrossFit Games said in its post on X that in addition to being “one of our sport’s most talented competitors,” he was “a son, a brother, and a friend to practically everyone who knew him.” It called Dukic “fiercely competitive, incurably joyful and uncommonly kind.”
Dukic’s biography on the CrossFit website says he was the third-ranked CrossFit athlete in Serbia and 88th worldwide. He finished ninth in his debut in the games in 2021, eighth the next season and ninth in 2023.
Dukic, who also played water polo, was an athlete ambassador for FITAID, a sports drink brand, said Gijs Spaans, the general manager for FITAID in Europe. Spaans said Dukic was a driven athlete and “just a really, really good dude,” the kind of person who “lights up the room.”
How did Dukic die?
Fort Worth police said officers who were working the event were told a participant was unaccounted for after last being seen in the water and not resurfacing. The fire department was called out at around 8 a.m. to assist, and its dive team recovered Dukic’s body from Marine Creek Lake just after 10 a.m.
The Tarrant County medical examiner has not yet listed Dukic’s cause of death.
Prior to the 800-meter (0.5-mile) swim, participants took part in a 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) run.
Kaitlin Pritchard, a spectator, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she was by the finish line at the swimming event when she saw Dukic approach. She said he was among swimmers she noticed had changed up their swimming patterns, which she thought could have been because they were tired from the run.
Pritchard saw people she assumed were lifeguards on paddleboards on the lake but didn’t notice any of them jump in to try to rescue anyone, she said.
What safety precautions were in place?
CrossFit CEO Don Faul said in a statement Friday to The Associated Press that safety is “of paramount concern” and officials have “rigorous protocols in place for each event at the CrossFit Games.” He added that the organization has initiated an investigation into Dukic’s death, which will include “an independent third party review.”
The previous day Faul said at a news conference that safety personnel were on site at the swimming event, but he did not provide additional details. CrossFit did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking details on its safety plan.
What is CrossFit?
CrossFit was founded over 20 years ago, starting out in a garage gym in Santa Cruz, California.
It says on its website that it is a fitness program featuring workouts with “constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movements.” CrossFit said Friday that it has over 12,000 affiliated gyms across nearly 150 countries.
CrossFit’s popularity is tied to the bonding atmosphere created by the high-intensity workouts, said Darin White, executive director of the Center for Sports Analytics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.
“It’s very community-based, you’re part of the gym, you’re part of that community and you encourage each other,” White said.
Training activities include everything from weightlifting and gymnastics to running, swimming and boating, White said.
What are the CrossFit Games?
The mission of the games, first held in 2007, is to “find the fittest athletes in the world,” according to the CrossFit website. They change every year, and often the details are not announced until just beforehand. Competitors come from around the world.
The City of Fort Worth said on its website that this year’s games were expected to draw 10,000 people.
White said ESPN’s broadcasting of the CrossFit Games in recent years has helped spread its popularity around the world. He said the games are similar to a decathlon only with a dozen or more separate events, and sometimes athletes don’t know their next event until minutes before it starts.
CrossFit said that over 343,000 participants from around the word competed in this year’s CrossFit Open, the first stage of their competitive season, which ends at the games with the crowning of the champions.
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Miller reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix and AP Sports Writer Pete Iacobelli in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.