Coach K says Calif. law needed

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Mike Krzyzewski believes it’s time for college sports to get in step with the times when it comes to paying athletes, though the Duke coach said getting there raises a lot of challenging questions.

Krzyzewski said Tuesday at ACC media day that college sports can no longer stick its head in the sand on that issue and others.

“We need to look at that, as a whole issue, not just this one thing for image and likeness,” Krzyzewski said. “What’s best for these kids? We need to stay current with what’s happening.”

The pay-for-play discussion has gained momentum since California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that goes into effect in 2023. The law allows athletes at universities in California to make money from their images, names or likenesses.

“I’m glad it was passed because it pushes the envelope a little, it pushes the issue,” Krzyzewski said. “But I don’t want to answer just for that. I’d like to see, ‘OK, let’s take a look at all the things that need to be done. Will we do them? How can we do them?’ I don’t have the answer.

“But I’d like to have a bunch of people get together over a period of time and play catch-up with what we probably should have been doing more of a decade or two ago.”

Commissioner John Swofford and many of the league’s other high-profile men’s basketball coaches say that allowing college athletes to profit from endorsement deals is reasonable — even if nobody seems to have a simple solution to a highly complex problem.

Swofford said the California law is “extreme” and that he would prefer to see it resolved on a national level rather than by individual states.

He also expressed some concern, saying “We have to be really careful about unintended consequences that can come with it. I don’t think we can look at it in a pure silo of a couple of sports. I think we have to look at the whole picture and the impact on Olympic sports, women sports.”

Krzyzewski predicted dozens of states will follow suit with similar legislation.

He said college athletics has been too reactionary in dealing with changes as opposed to proactively seeking reforms to the collegiate model.

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said the proposal raises more questions than answers.

“I don’t know how you can make it a fair option,” Boeheim said. “That is what I would like to know. And nobody knows, because if they knew they would say it.”

Boeheim expressed concern over college athletes in big markets having more chance to profit than those attending more rural schools. He said it’s just one of many topics that would need to be addressed.

Said Tar Heels coach Roy Williams: “We are all talking about something that we don’t know what the crap it is. I mean it’s like putting me in charge or nuclear weapons.”

Players at ACC media day also were torn on the new California law.

Junior forward Aamir Simms said the conversation has been broached on the Clemson campus — home of the football national champions — and he said it is a “tricky one.”

He believes college players should be paid to play — but with some limitations.

The danger, Simms said, is that some players are being paid millions of dollars “they won’t really care about playing for the school; they will just care about getting the most endorsement.”

Not every player Tuesday said change is needed.

Louisville’s redshirt senior Steven Enoch said he has no complaints with his four years of college and how the system currently is structured. He is content with the ruling in 2014 that allowed college programs to grant athletes unlimited meals and snacks.

“That is the one change I am most thankful for,” Enoch said.

Williams may not know the answers, but he does feel something needs to change.

“There’s a lot of money being made,” Williams said. “When Peyton Manning was at Tennessee they sold 50,000 of his jerseys for something like $70 a pop and he didn’t get one nickel. And that’s not right. I don’t care what way you look at it, that’s not right.”

German legend, and Chicago Fire star calls it a career

CHICAGO (AP) — Former Germany captain Bastian Schweinsteiger says he is retiring from soccer, ending an 18-year professional career.

The 35-year-old midfielder made 121 appearances for Germany from 2004-16, and was in the team that won the World Cup in 2014.

Schweinsteiger played for Bayern Munich, Manchester United and, since 2017, Chicago Fire in his club career. He won the Champions League with Bayern in 2013.

Schweinsteiger announced his retirement over Twitter on Tuesday, writing: “Saying goodbye as an active player makes me feel a little nostalgic but I am looking forward to the exciting challenges that await me soon.”

He is married to former tennis player Ana Ivanovic. 

A look back in time

60 Years Ago

October 1959

Three world-famous musical organizations have been booked for performances at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center for the season. Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians will lead off on Nov. 18. On Feb. 22, the San Antonio Symphony orchestra will appear in concert and late next spring the U.S. Navy Band will give two performances here.

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Harvey Rogers, building and maintenance supervisor for the Iola Post Office and the Allen County Courthouse, will head the United Fund drive for government agencies in Iola this fall. Rogers is a lifelong resident of Iola and attended the Iola schools. He is a veteran of the Korean War and has been active in community affairs.

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An 80-acre site was purchased yesterday by the Iola City Commission for an industrial park. The acreage, which is across from the Wichman Ford Agency on U.S. 169 about a mile north of town, cost $36,000. The city’s investment will increase substantially as utilities are brought to the area. The money was taken from an industrial fund created by the sale of a portion of the land owned by the city adjacent to the Iola Municipal Airport. The same fund was used to buy the land sold this year to Iola Molded Plastics for expansion of its boat plant. This sale returned about $30,000 to the fund and made the new purchase possible, Mayor Jack Hastings said.

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Continued operation of the Tulsan passenger train between Kansas City and Tulsa for one year was ordered Tuesday by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Tulsan is now the last remaining passenger train between the two cities.

Colony church ponders the mysteries of the universe

Howard Reiter gave the Communion meditation at Colony Christian Church Sunday, “In His Hands.” How big is the cosmos? How many stars are there? We may never know, Reiter said, but God knows each of them by name. And the God of the galaxies can still meet all of our needs, no matter how large or small they may be. (Isaiah 40:25-31)

Pastor Chase Riebel gave the sermon on “Our Purpose – Salt & Light.”

Our purpose on Earth is to make more disciples for Him, shine His light, and preserve the Gospel. The story of creation in Genesis 1 helps to outline this purpose.  (Ref: Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 1, Isaiah 61:1-4 & 9:1-7, Luke 4 & 6, 1 John 4:4).

Men’s Bible study is at 7 a.m. Tuesdays in the church basement. The youth group meets at 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays in the church, with adult Bible study following at 7 o’clock in the parsonage.

Middle school students are invited to spend time at the Community Church from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday. Hidden Haven women’s retreat is Friday and Saturday.

Sorority prepares for Farm City Days event

Lori Ensminger and Rhodenia Rowe hosted Monday’s meeting of Kappa Alpha Chapter, Phi Tau Omega Sorority.

Items were collected for the Allen County Animal Rescue Facility’s donation drive and will be delivered this week.

Jolene Boeken, Farm-City Days Committee chairman, outlined the agenda for Saturday’s celebration and delegated responsibilities. Proceeds from the fundraiser will go toward helping local cancer patients.

A rush party is scheduled for Oct. 21.

Kansas to give corporations time to file income taxes

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is giving about 300 corporations an extra 30 days to file their state income tax returns because of the complexity of federal income tax changes enacted at the end of 2017.

The state Department of Revenue announced Tuesday that it will allow corporations to file their tax returns by Nov. 15 without penalty if they’d already sought an extension on filing their federal taxes until Oct. 15.

Corporations that time their tax filings to the end of their fiscal year also will receive an additional 30 days.

The department said the extra time is designed to ensure that corporations still owing some state income taxes for 2018 can file accurate returns following changes in the federal tax code championed by President Donald Trump.

Nobel Prize honors lithium-ion battery developers

STOCKHOLM (AP) — If you’re reading this on a mobile phone or laptop computer, you might thank this year’s three laureates for the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on lithium-ion batteries.

Yet the batteries developed by the British, American and Japanese winners that make those devices possible are far more revolutionary than just for on-the-go computing and calling. The breakthroughs the three achieved also made storing energy from renewable sources more feasible, opening up a whole new front in the fight against global warming.

“This is a highly-charged story of tremendous potential,” said Olof Ramstrom of the Nobel committee for chemistry.

The prize announced todauy went to John B. Goodenough, 97, a German-born American engineering professor at the University of Texas; M. Stanley Whittingham, 77, a British-American chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton; and Akira Yoshino, 71, of chemicals company Asahi Kasei Corp. and Meijo University in Japan.

The honor awarded to the three scientists is a capstone of a truly transformative technology that has permeated billions of lives across the planet, including anyone who uses mobile phones, computers, pacemakers, electric cars and beyond.

“The heart of the phone is the rechargeable battery. The heart of the electric vehicle is the rechargeable battery. The success and failure of so many new technologies depends on the batteries,” said Alexej Jerschow, a chemist at New York University, whose research focuses on lithium ion battery diagnostics.

Whittingham expressed hope the Nobel spotlight could give a new impetus to efforts to meet the world’s ravenous — and growing — demands for energy.

“I am overcome with gratitude at receiving this award, and I honestly have so many people to thank, I don’t know where to begin,” he said in a statement issued by his university. “It is my hope that this recognition will help to shine a much-needed light on the nation’s energy future.”

Goodenough, who is considered an intellectual giant of solid state chemistry and physics, is the oldest person to ever win a Nobel Prize — edging Arthur Ashkin, who was 96 when he was awarded the Nobel for physics last year. Goodenough still works every day.

“That’s the nice thing — they don’t make you retire at a certain age in Texas. They allow you to keep working,” he told reporters in London. “So I’ve had an extra 33 years to keep working in Texas.”

The three each had unique breakthroughs that cumulatively laid the foundation for the development of a commercial rechargeable battery, to replace alkaline batteries like those containing lead or zinc, which had their origins in the 19th century.

Lithium-ion batteries — the first truly portable and rechargeable batteries — took more than a decade to develop, and drew upon the work of multiple scientists in the U.S., Japan and around the world.

The work had its roots in the oil crisis in the 1970s, when Whittingham was working on efforts to develop fossil fuel-free energy technologies. He harnessed the enormous tendency of lithium — the lightest metal — to give away its electrons to make a battery capable of generating just over two volts.

By 1980, Goodenough had doubled the capacity of the battery to four volts by using cobalt oxide in the cathode — one of two electrodes, along with the anode, that make up the ends of a battery.

But that battery remained too explosive for general commercial use. That’s where Yoshino’s work in the 1980s came in. He substituted petroleum coke, a carbon material, in the battery’s anode. This step paved the way for the first lightweight, safe, durable and rechargeable commercial batteries to be built and enter the market in 1991.

“We have gained access to a technical revolution,” said Sara Snogerup Linse of the Nobel committee for chemistry. “The laureates developed lightweight batteries with high enough potential to be useful in many applications — truly portable electronics: mobile phones, pacemakers, but also long-distance electric cars.”

“The ability to store energy from renewable sources — the sun, the wind — opens up for sustainable energy consumption,” she added.

Speaking at a news conference in Tokyo, Yoshino said he thought there might be a long wait before the Nobel committee turned to his specialty — but he was wrong. He broke the news to his wife, who was just as surprised as he was.

“I only spoke to her briefly and said, ‘I got it,’ and she sounded she was so surprised that her knees almost gave way,” he said.

The trio will share a 9-million kronor ($918,000) cash award. Their gold medals and diplomas will be conferred in Stockholm on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.

On Tuesday, Canadian-born James Peebles won the Nobel physics prize for his theoretical discoveries in cosmology together with Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who were honored for finding an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — that orbits a solar-type star.

Americans William G. Kaelin Jr. and Gregg L. Semenza and Britain’s Peter J. Ratcliffe won the Nobel prize for advances in physiology or medicine on Monday. They were cited for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”

Two Nobel literature laureates are to be announced Thursday — one for 2018 and one for 2019 — because last year’s award was suspended after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Swedish Academy. The coveted Nobel Peace Prize is Friday and the economics award will be announced on Monday.

Protesters warned

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador’s military has warned people who plan to participate in a national strike over fuel price hikes to avoid acts of violence.

The military says it will enforce the law during the planned strike today, following days of unrest that led President Lenín Moreno to move government operations from Quito to the port of Guayaquil.

The military’s backing is key for Moreno, who said late Tuesday that his government is negotiating with dozens of indigenous groups protesting against the fuel price hikes.

The president said the dialogue is difficult because so many indigenous groups are involved. He also said he will not resign despite widespread discontent in the South American nation of 17 million.

Ecuador’s political crisis shows no signs of abating. While labor groups planned the strike Wednesday, economic activity in much of the country has already been stalled by clashes, looting, blockades and other disruptions.

Violence started last week after Moreno ended fuel subsidies, leading to price increases. The government says about 570 people have been arrested.

The disturbances have spread from transport workers to students and then to indigenous demonstrators, an ominous turn for the government. Indigenous protesters played a major role in the 2005 resignation of Ecuador’s president at the time, Lucio Gutiérrez, though the military’s tacit approval was key to his removal.

Trump defends pulling out of Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility.

Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far.

Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurdswho had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides.

“A catastrophic mistake,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican leader.

“Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Trump said Monday he understood criticism from fellow GOP leaders but disagreed. He said he could also name supporters, but he didn’t.

Pentagon and State Department officials held out the possibility of persuading Turkey to abandon its expected invasion. U.S. officials said they had seen no indication that Turkey had begun a military operation by late Monday.

Trump, in late afternoon remarks to reporters, appeared largely unconcerned at the prospect of Turkish forces attacking the Kurds, who include a faction he described as “natural enemies” of the Turks.

“But I have told Turkey that if they do anything outside of what we would think is humane … they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy,” Trump said.

In recent weeks, the U.S. and Turkey had reached an apparent accommodation of Turkish concerns about the presence of Kurdish fighters, seen in Turkey as a threat. American and Turkish soldiers had been conducting joint patrols in a zone along the border. As part of that work, barriers designed to protect the Kurds were dismantled amid assurances that Turkey would not invade.

Graham said Turkey’s NATO membership should be suspended if it attacks into northeastern Turkey, potentially annihilating Kurdish fighters who acted as a U.S. proxy army in a five-year fight to eliminate the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. Graham, who had talked Trump out of a withdrawal from Syria last December, said letting Turkey invade would be a mistake of historic proportion and would “lead to ISIS reemergence.”

This all comes at a pivotal moment of Trump’s presidency. House Democrats are marching forward with their impeachment inquiryinto whether he compromised national security or abused his office by seeking negative information on former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival, from Ukraine and other foreign countries.

As he faces the impeachment inquiry, Trump has appeared more focused on making good on his political pledges, even at the risk of sending a troubling signal to American allies abroad.

“I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home and bring them home as rapidly as possible,” he said.

The strong pushback on Capitol Hill prompted Trump to recast as well as restate his decision, but with renewed bombast and self-flattery.

He promised to destroy the Turkish economy “if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.”

Sunday night the White House had said the U.S. would get its troops out of the way of the Turkish forces. That announcement came after Trump spoke by phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

One official described that White House announcement as a botched effort appeared aimed at making Trump look bold for ending a war. The official said attempts by the Pentagon and State Department to make the statement stronger in its opposition to Turkey’s military action were unsuccessful.

That official, like others interviewed, was not authorized to speak on the record and was granted anonymity to comment.

The official added that Erdogan appeared to be reconsidering his earlier resolve because he was relatively quiet Monday. But damage done to relations with the Kurds could be irreparable.

An official familiar with the Erdogan call said the Turkish president was “ranting” at Trump, saying the safe zone was not working and that Turkey couldn’t trust the U.S. military to do what was needed. And in reaction, Trump said the U.S. wanted no part of an invasion and would withdraw troops.

The announcement threw the military situation in Syria into fresh chaos and injected deeper uncertainty into U.S. relations with European allies. A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity on a sensitive topic, said France wasn’t informed ahead of time. A Foreign Ministry statement warned Turkey to avoid any action that would harm the international coalition against the Islamic State and noted the Kurds had been essential allies. It entirely omitted any mention of the United States.

U.S. involvement in Syria has been fraught with peril since it started in 2014 with the insertion of small numbers of special operations forces to recruit, train, arm and advise local fighters to combat the Islamic State. Trump entered the White House in 2017 intent on getting out of Syria, and even before the counter-IS military campaign reclaimed the last militant strongholds early this year, he declared victory and said troops would leave.

Trump defended his latest decision, acknowledging in tweets that “the Kurds fought with us” but adding that they “were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so.”

“I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home,” he wrote.

In his later remarks, Trump asserted that American troops in Syria are not performing useful work. They are, he said, “not fighting.” They are “just there,” he said.

Among the first to move were about 30 U.S. troops from two outposts who would be in the immediate area of a Turkish invasion. It’s unclear whether others among the roughly 1,000 U.S. forces in northeastern Syria would be moved, but officials said there was no plan for any to leave Syria entirely.

Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that a U.S. withdrawal from Syria would be a major boost to Russia’s position there.

He added that other allies in the region, including the Kurds, will “look at this withdrawal as U.S. unwillingness to stand up for its rights and maintain its alliances in the region.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., another strong Trump supporter, said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” that he had concerns.

“I want to make sure we keep our word for those who fight with us and help us,” he said, adding that, “If you make a commitment and somebody is fighting with you, America should keep their word.”

Former Trump administration officials also expressed concern.

Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. “must always have the backs of our allies, if we expect them to have our back. … Leaving them to die is a big mistake.”

Turkey considers the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged an insurgency against Turkey for 35 years.

Farmers’ Market bids adieu to 2019

Buyers have one final opportunity to purchase fresh produce and other goods at the Allen County Farmers’ Market.

Thursday’s market session is the last one of 2019, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Iola.

Buyers who participate in the Double Up Food Bucks program are encouraged to use up the remainder of their tokens.

Vendors also accept EBT and debit cards.

The Farmers’ Market is sponsored by the  Land of Kansas and Health Forward Foundation.