Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Mike Leake, a key rotation piece and pending free agent, notified the club that he will exercise his ability to opt out of playing the 2020 season, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said.
Players who are “high risk” for COVID-19 are entitled to full service time and salary if they opt out, according to the 2020 Operations Manual developed by MLB and the MLB Players Association. Players with no high-risk concerns may opt out, but without accruing service time or salary. It’s unclear which category Leake would fall into, and Hazen declined to specify when asked.
Hazen said he received a phone call from Leake recently that informed him of the news. Hazen declined to discuss the reasons for Leake’s decision, calling the conversation “personal in nature.”
The roughly $6.5 million technology – the first of its kind in Arizona – uses 13 visibility detectors, a weather radar system, speed sensors and a small weather station, all of which are run through ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said in a Facebook live town hall that the tribe will continue its 57-hour weekend lockdown for the next three weeks, meaning most businesses will be closed, people will be encouraged to stay home and visitors will be discouraged. Closure of tribal government offices will also continue.
“What we’re showing you here is that now is not the time to travel. I know it’s summer – we want to travel,” Nez said. “We’ve been sitting in our homes for over three months now, but now is not the time.”
It comes one day after Gov. Doug Ducey was forced to reimpose restrictions on businesses and gatherings in Arizona as the surging number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths have made the state a national hot spot for the disease.
By comparison, the number of cases on the Navajo Nation have been trending down for most of the past two weeks, Nez said. Except for Saturday, when there were 121 new cases, the Navajo have seen fewer than 100 new cases a day over those two weeks, with one day falling to just 27 positive cases.
In response to demands from a coalition of more than 1,400 faculty, staff and students at the University of Arizona, President Dr. Robert Robbins announced via email that he would halt their planned furloughs until August.
“I have decided the best way forward is to delay the implementation of the university’s furlough and furlough-based salary programs from July 1 to August 10, 2020,” Robbins wrote. "While this move will cost the university approximately $4 million, it will allow us to come together and have meaningful and transparent discussions regarding the tradeoffs we must consider for all faculty and staff who will be impacted."
In April, the university administration announced their plans to mitigate the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This included a hiring freeze, delays in merit-based pay increases, executive pay cuts, a halt to new building projects and furloughs and pay cuts on a graduated scale to faculty and staff scheduled to begin May 11.
Tags: University of Arizona , Furlough , President Robert Robbins , Coalition for Academic Justice at UArizona , CAJUA , Image
It’s been almost 10 years since Republicans, riding the Tea Party wave, took control of the House of Representatives and started hacking at the IRS’ enforcement budget. Down it went, some years the cuts were steep, some not, as Republican lawmakers laughed off dire warnings about the consequences of letting tax cheats run free.
For the past couple years, ProPublica has been cataloging the descent of the IRS. We’ve watched as audits of the rich and the largest corporations have plummeted and become less aggressive, while audits of poor taxpayers have remained comparatively high.
A handful of Arizona officials have joined 80 House Democrats and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in demanding that the Trump administration “safely and swiftly” release children and adults held in immigration detention centers due to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The group sent a letter to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Matthew T. Albence following an order from a federal judge on June 26 saying that all children who have been detained for more than 20 days at three facilities should be released.
“We write to you to urge you to safely and swiftly release all parents and children that are detained at the Karnes County Residential Center (“Karnes”), the South Texas Family Residential Center (“Dilley”), and the Berks County Residential Center (“Berks”)—the three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) facilities that detain family units with their children—by July 17, 2020,” the letter reads.
Tags: COVID19 , ICE , Family Separation , Kirkpatrick , Gallego , Stanton , Image
Fire crews are also maintaining a presence around the community of Summerhaven on top of Mount Lemmon, which has yet to lose any homes to the fire.
Get your groove on Wednesday, July 8 with Little House of Funk, known for dishing out Sonoran soul and “deep-fried blues” and voted in 2018 as Tucson’s best R&B band.
“Their setlists include popular covers, sultry arrangements and dynamic originals for all the hip-swinging, toe-tapping energy you crave,” said Gaslight General Manager Heather Stricker.
On Thursday, July 9 the ultimate country cover band is rolling into town. Backroads Country Band plays all of the hits, including songs by George Strait, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, Travis Tritt, Brooks and Dunn—all the way to the No. 1 hits of today from Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Sam Hunt, Old Dominion, Florida Georgia Line, Zac Brown Band and more.
Pima County had seen 8,387 of the state's 84,092 confirmed cases.
Cases in Arizona have more than quadrupled since June 1, when the state had 20,123 confirmed cases.
A total of 1,720 people have died after contracting the virus.
Maricopa County has more than half the state's cases, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hitting 52,256.
This morning's Arizona Department of Health Services report shows that as of yesterday, 2,876 Arizonans were hospitalized, more than double the 1,009 hospitalized on June 1.
A record 1,289 people arrived at emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on June 30. Previous to June, the number of people seeking help in emergency rooms never topped 667.
A total of 675 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds yesterday.
As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket, Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday ordered the closing of some bars and all gyms, movie theaters, water parks, and river tubing activities for at least one month. Ducey also said Arizona would delay the start of the school year by two weeks to Aug. 17.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman did not join Ducey for the press conference but released a separate statement.
"What Arizona's numbers will look like by Aug. 17 remains unclear," Hoffman said. "But one thing is for certain: If efforts are not taken across the entire state to curb the spread of this virus, our schools will only continue to face complications in reopening their facilities."
Yesterday, in an interview with KTAR radio host Mike Broomhead, Hoffman added that schools should be prepared to launch their online programs as soon as possible.
“We are encouraging schools to start their distance learning programs, or their online learning programs, as soon as they are ready to in terms of when their academic year was scheduled to start,” Hoffman said. “If you asked me a month ago or even two weeks ago I would have said plan for schools to be open and now the circumstances have changed so drastically in such a short period. I would say this has been highly unpredictable.”
Ducey warned that Arizonans will see more cases of COVID-19 before the numbers begin to decrease.
“Our expectation is, our numbers will be worse,” said Ducey, who repeated his call for Arizonans to mask up when in public, stay home as much as possible, wash their hands and keep a physical distance from others.
The Department of Health has also activated its “crisis standards of care” and asked hospitals to cancel non-emergency surgeries as more COVID patients fill hospitals, ICU beds, and emergency rooms.
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