AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge rose last month at its fastest pace since June, an alarming sign that price pressures remain entrenched in the U.S. economy and could lead the Fed to keep raising interest rates well into this year.
Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that consumer prices rose 0.6% from December to January, up sharply from a 0.2% increase from November to December. On a year-over-year basis, prices rose 5.4%, up from a 5.3% annual increase in December.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.6% from December, up from a 0.4% rise the previous month. And compared with a year earlier, core inflation was up 4.7% in January, versus a 4.6% year-over-year uptick in December.
The report also showed that consumer spending rose 1.8% last month from December after falling the previous month.
January’s price data exceeded forecasters’ expectations, confounding hopes that inflation was steadily decelerating and that the Fed could relent on its campaign of rate hikes. It follows other recent data that also suggested that the economy remains gripped by inflation despite the Fed’s strenuous efforts to tame it.
INFLATION
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _Democrat Jennifer McClellan has defeated her Republican opponent to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she will be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress. McClellan is an attorney and veteran state legislator. She prevailed over pastor and Navy veteran Leon Benjamin in the race for the blue-leaning 4th District, which has its population center in the capital city and stretches south to the North Carolina border. The seat was open after the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin in November. McEachin died weeks after being elected to a fourth term after a long fight with the secondary efforts of colorectal cancer.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Grant Basile scored 33 points, including 16 in a near six-minute stretch of the second half, and Virginia Tech defeated Notre Dame 93-87 on Saturday.
The Hokies made 10 consecutive shots — seven of them by Basile — in building an 85-75 lead with 3:49 to go and finished it off by making eight of their last nine from the free-throw line. Basile, a 15.6 points-per-game scorer, has back-to-back 33-point games.
After making 13 of their first 25 3-point tries, the Fighting Irish missed their last five in the final eight-plus minutes as Virginia Tech pulled away.
Justyn Mutts scored 19 points for the Hokies (15-10, 5-9 ACC) and M.J. Collins and Sean Pedulla added 12 points each. Basile made 13 of 19 shots, 3 of 7 from 3-point distance.
Nate Laszewski, who scored 20 points for Notre Dame (10-15, 2-12) in the first half, continued his hot shooting in the second half. He had 30 points and made six of his first eight 3-pointers to keep Notre Dame close and J.J. Starling tied the score at 59 when he hit a driving layup with 11:43 remaining.
But Virginia Tech, which had led for most of the game except for one 12-minute stretch of the first half, surged ahead with an 11-4 run capped by a three-point play by Basile that began his stretch of 16 points in six minutes as the Hokies went on to build their double-digit lead.
Laszewski finished with a career-high 33 points and eight rebounds. He made 12 of 17 shots, including 6 of 9 3-pointers. His previous high was 28 two seasons ago. Cormac Ryan made 5 of 9 3-pointers for Notre Dame and finished with 17 points. Ven-Allen Lubin added 11 points.
Notre Dame visits Duke on Tuesday and Virginia Tech’s next game is at Georgia Tech on Thursday.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Virginia coach Tony Bennett said he didn’t know what happened on the final play of regulation in the eighth-ranked Cavaliers’ 69-62 overtime victory against Duke.
Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer didn’t, either — and he was left fuming.
“I still would like an explanation exactly,” Scheyer said after the game. “I don’t have clarity on that.”
Duke (17-8, 8-6 Atlantic Coast Conference) appeared poised to win when Kyle Filipowski drove to the basket on the final play of regulation Saturday and two defenders contested his shot. Officials initially whistled a foul, drawing thunderous disapproval from fans, but waved it off after a lengthy review — a decision the ACC later said was incorrect.
On the play, which started with 1.2 seconds left, Filipowski drove from the left side and officials called a foul. Replays showed Reece Beekman appeared to get a clean block on the shot but also made enough body contact to knock Filipowski to the floor.
“He made a big-time play attacking the basket, and there’s no doubt he’s knocking down those free throws in my mind,” Scheyer said.
“They told me after the fact that the call was made after the buzzer and you can see the ball left his hands before point zero,” Scheyer said of the officials. “So I don’t know exactly what the rule is.”
The league issued a statement hours later, saying officials applied rules incorrectly and that Filipowski should have been sent to the line for two free throws.
According to the league, officials had determined after a review that a foul by Virginia’s Ryan Dunn had been committed after time expired. But the NCAA rule book states that the ball being in flight made it a live play with players in those situations being considered “an airborne shooter,” which should have led to free throws, according to the statement.
Instead, it was Armaan Franklin making the big shot, a 3-pointer with 39 seconds left in overtime to finish a 23-point performance. Franklin said he was initially out of position for the play, but adjusted and point guard Kihei Clark found him.
“I saw them kind of like mashed up on the side with Kihei on the wing, and I just ran to the corner. His man didn’t switch off. I just had an open corner look and I shoot a million of those a day,” he said.
Clark added 16 points and five assists and Ben Vander Plas scored 13 for the Cavaliers (19-4, 11-3), who won despite a 9-for-22 performance from the free throw line. Vander Plas also was credited with drawing 11 of the 24 fouls whistled against Duke.
Jeremy Roach led the Blue Devils with 16 points and Tyrese Proctor had 14. Filipowski, who averages 15.5 points, was scoreless.
Trailing 58-53, Duke got a driving basket from Roach with 1:31 left and a 3-pointer by Jacob Grandison from in front of the Blue Devils’ bench to tie it with 50 seconds left. Neither team scored again in regulation.
Vander Plas drew a huge ovation when he made a pair of free throws to open the overtime scoring. At that point, Virginia had missed nine of 12 from the line. Clark’s driving basket and another free throw gave the Cavaliers a 63-58 lead, and two baskets by Proctor were all the Blue Devils managed in the extra period.
Duke, now 2-6 in league road games, became the 39th consecutive ACC opponent to fail to reach 70 points at John Paul Jones Arena.
The Cavaliers used an 8-0 run to lead 54-51 with just under five minutes to play. Ryan Young hit a pair of free throws to pull Duke within a point, but after Virginia failed to score, the Blue Devils committed their third shot clock violation of the game with 3:29 left.
Virginia used a 14-5 run spanning the halves to take a 35-30 lead, but Duke responded with a 19-9 run that featured eight points by Dariq Whitehead, who had missed the past four games with an ankle injury.
BIG PICTURE
Duke: Roach scored 12 consecutive points for the Blue Devils after Dereck Lively opened their scoring with a pair of free throws. His last basket of the run gave him more points that Virginia’s 11 at the time.
Virginia: Despite a distinct size disadvantage, the Cavaliers drove continually in the opening half, getting 20 of their 25 points in the paint. The Blue Devils had four players with two fouls by halftime and Roach was whistled for his third 31 seconds into the second half.
Virginia finished with 42 points in the paint and 20 points off Duke’s 22 turnovers.
UP NEXT
Duke: Returns home to face Notre Dame on Tuesday night.
Virginia: Travels to Louisville on Wednesday night.
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WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — A building believed to be the oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children in the U.S. was hoisted onto a flatbed truck and moved a half-mile Friday to Colonial Williamsburg, a Virginia museum that continues to expand its emphasis on African American history.
Built 25 years before the American Revolution, the original structure stood near the college campus of William & Mary. The pinewood building held as many as 30 students at a time, some of them free Black children studying alongside the enslaved.
Hundreds of people lined the streets to celebrate its slow-speed trip into the heart of the living history museum, which tells the story of Virginia’s colonial capital through interpreters and restored buildings.
For historians and descendants alike, the Bray School contradicts the belief that all enslaved Americans were uneducated. But the school’s faith-based curriculum — created by an English charity — also justified slavery and encouraged students to accept their fate as God’s plan.
“There was this need to proselytize and to bring salvation while still not doing anything to destabilize the institution of slavery,” Lee said. “Save the soul, but continue to enslave the body. It was the here versus the hereafter.”
It was a brand of duplicity that fit easily into the larger contradictions of the country’s founding, when the Democracy being forged explicitly denied rights and freedoms to many of its people.
Williamsburg is less than 10 miles from Jamestown, which England established in 1607. The colony was supplied with enslaved Africans for labor just a dozen years later. A century and half after that, Black people, most of them still enslaved, represented just over half of Williamsburg’s 2,000 people.
The Bray School was established in 1760 at the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, chairman of a London-based Anglican charity named after philanthropist Reverend Thomas Bray. The charity also set up schools in other cities, including New York and Philadelphia.
The curriculum ranged from spellers to the Book of Common Prayer. But even within the schools’ paternalistic framework, the education could still be empowering, perhaps even subversive.
“I was going through a facsimile of one of the books, and there are words like ‘liberty,’” Lee said. “What did learning those words do to expand these children’s sense of themselves? Their sense of the world?”
Isaac Bee, a Bray School student, would run away as an adult from a slave owner named Lewis Burwell. An ad that Burwell placed in The Virginia Gazette in 1774 offered a cash bounty for his return and warned that Bee could read.
The white teacher, a widow named Ann Wagner, lived upstairs at the school, and taught an estimated 300 to 400 students, whose ages ranged from 3 to 10, according to surviving records.
The Williamsburg Bray School operated until 1774; only Philadelphia’s reopened after the Revolutionary War. The structure became a private home for many years before it was incorporated into William & Mary’s campus.
Historians believed they had identified the original Bray School building, but it wasn’t confirmed until 2021, through the use of dendrochronology, a scientific method that examines tree rings in lumber to determine the wood’s harvest date.
“This is a remarkable story of survival,” said Matthew Webster, Colonial Williamsburg’s executive director of architectural preservation and research. “And for us, it’s so important to put it back (to its original state) and tell the full and true story.”
The Bray School was exceptional: Although Virginia waited until the 1800s to impose anti-literacy laws, white leaders across much of Colonial America forbid educating enslaved people, fearing literacy would encourage their liberty. South Carolina criminalized teaching slaves to write English in 1740.
Inside the schoolhouse, the original post at the bottom of the walnut staircase still stands, its square top rounded and nicked from centuries of use, Webster said, adding that it’s a “very powerful piece for a lot of people.”
For Tonia Merideth, the Bray School Lab’s oral historian, the building stirred up many emotions upon her first visit. It was material proof against the narrative that her ancestors were illiterate and dumb.
“Everything that I learned about my ancestors was wrong,” she said. “They could learn. They did learn. They were able.”
Merideth added: “Regardless of the intentions of the school, the children were still taking that education and possibly serving it for their own good and aiding in their community.”
The moving of the Bray School is part of Colonial Williamsburg’s ongoing reckoning over its past storytelling of Black history and the nation’s origin story. The museum was founded in 1926 but did not tell Black stories until 1979.
In 2021, it uncovered the brick foundation of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches. Last year, archeologists began to excavate graves at the site.
The Bray School’s new location is right next door.
“We’re going back and we’re getting that school and we’re getting that legacy,” Merideth said. “And we’re bringing it back to the historic area.”
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — Sean Pedulla scored 22 points and Virginia Tech beat No. 6 Virginia 74-68 on Saturday, snapping the Cavaliers’ seven-game winning streak.
Pedulla hit 6 of 13 from the floor as the Hokies (14-10, 4-8 Atlantic Coast Conference) posted their biggest win of the season. He added 8 of 9 from the free-throw line as Virginia Tech never trailed.
Justin Mutts added 17 points for the Hokies, who shot 50% from the floor for the fourth straight game.
Jayden Gardner’s 20 points led Virginia (17-4, 9-3), which saw its usually stingy defense struggle.
CLEMSON, S.C. (AP) — Hunter Tyson had the option to pass, drive or shoot on Clemson’s final play. Tyson chose to follow coach Brad Brownell’s main instruction in the time out with the Tigers down by two: “If you’re open, shoot it.”
Tyson did, making a 3-pointer with 12 seconds to go to lift the 19th-ranked Tigers to a dramatic, 51-50 victory over Virginia Tech on Saturday.
Tyson had missed five of his previous six from behind the arc. Yet, Brownell called his number.
“They stayed confident, drew up a play for me and I shot it pretty well,” Tyson said.
Did you have any doubts it wouldn’t go in?
“No,” Tyson said with a smile.
PJ Hall had 20 points and eight rebounds while Tyson finished with 12 points and nine boards as Clemson (16-4, 8-1 ACC) continued its surprise run atop the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“I just felt like he was going to make a play today,” Brownell said of Tyson, who had five straight double-doubles in ACC play earlier this season.
Tyson’s play helped the Tigers bounce back from their first league loss after returning to the Top 25, at Wake Forest 87-77, on Tuesday.
Brownell acknowledged it was not an “aesthetically pleasing” game — both teams shot under 39% and combined to go 9 of 40 on 3s — but his players kept up their rugged defense to keep within reach after the Hokies rallied from five down to lead in the final three minutes.
Virginia Tech was still up 50-48 on Grant Basile’s foul shot before Tyson’s big moment.
The Hokies had a final chance, but Hunter Cattoor’s 3 was off the mark and Tyson came up with the ball, holding it high as time ran out.
The sold-out crowd erupted as it had moments before as Tyson’s shot went through.
Brownell said the game was important to show Clemson, which came in averaging nearly 76 points a game, can win in different styles. “This is when you have a good team,” he said.
Clemson, which trailed 33-26 early in the second half, had regained momentum after Hall’s three-point play built a 44-39 lead with less than eight minutes left over the cold-shooting Hokies, who were in the midst of a 1-for-16 run from the field. But Michael Collins Jr.’s 3 and Basile’s inside shot tied things at 44 to set up the final stretch.
Basile, who led the Hokies with 13 points, missed the second of two foul shots with 21.5 seconds to hold a 50-48 edge.
For Virginia Tech, coach Mike Young said there’s plenty of time to regain its footing.
“You turn the page and move on with the hand we’ve been dealt,” he said.
BIG PICTURE
Virginia Tech: The Hokies were way off target throughout the second half, finishing the period with only six field goals on 25% shooting. From long range, they were worse as they went just 2 of 11 behind the arc.
Clemson: The Tigers need injured junior point guard Chase Hunter back in a hurry. Without him there this week, Clemson fell at Wake Forest and was in a tight one throughout with the Hokies.
CLEMSON INJURIES
Brownell was unsure when his two injured players, Alex Hemenway and Hunter, might return. Hemenway, a senior who’s perhaps the team’s most reliable 3-point shooter, has missed the past eight game. Hunter has missed the last two. Brownell said both are expected back at some point this season, although he couldn’t pinpoint when.
UP NEXT
Virginia Tech returns home to play Duke on Monday night.
Clemson hosts Georgia Tech on Tuesday night.
MONTEREY PARK, Calif. (AP) — A gunman opened fire at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance studio following a Lunar New Year celebration, killing 10 people and setting off a manhunt for the suspect in the nation’s fifth mass killing this month.
Another 10 people were wounded and were taken to hospitals, where their conditions ranged from stable to critical, Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Sunday.
The scene unfolded late Saturday in Monterey Park, a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles that is composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans.
When officers arrived at the studio around 10:30 p.m., people were “pouring out of the location screaming,” Meyer said. He said officers then went into the ballroom and found victims as firefighters treated the wounded.
Meyer gave no description of the male suspect or the weapon he used and offered no explanation for why police gave no information on the shooting for hours while the assailant apparently remained on the run.
He said it was too early in the investigation to know if the gunman knew anyone at the ballroom or if it was a hate crime.
“We will look at every angle,” Meyer said.
The shooting happened in the heart of downtown Monterey Park where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities. A police car was parked near a large banner that proclaimed “Happy Year of the Rabbit!”
The celebration in Monterey Park is one of California’s largest and had attracted tens of thousands throughout the day.
Two days of festivities, which have been attended by as many as 100,000 people in past years, were planned. But officials canceled Sunday’s events following the shooting.
Tony Lai, 35, of Monterey Park was stunned when he came out for his early morning walk to learn that the noises he heard in the night were gunshots.
“I thought maybe it was fireworks. I thought maybe it had something to do with Lunar New Year,” he said. “And we don’t even get a lot of fireworks here. It’s weird to see this. It’s really safe here. We’re right in the middle of the city, but it’s really safe.”
The tragedy marked not just the fifth mass killing in the U.S. since the start of the year but also the deadliest since May 24, when 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.
The database also shows that 2022 was also one of the nation’s worst years in terms of mass killings, with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed not including the perpetrator.
The latest violence comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.
The White House said President Joe Biden was briefed on the situation by Homeland Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
Attorney General Merrick Garland was also briefed, Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson said.
The shooting occurred at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, a few blocks from city hall on Monterey Park’s main thoroughfare of Garvey Avenue, which is dotted with strip malls of small businesses whose signs are in both English and Chinese. Cantonese and Mandarin are both widely spoken, Chinese holidays are celebrated, and Chinese films are screened regularly in the city.
The business offered dance lessons from Tango to Rumba to the Fox Trot, and rented its space for events. On Saturday, its website said it was hosting an event called “Star Night” from 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m..
Seung Won Choi, who owns the Clam House seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from where the shooting happened, told The Los Angeles Times that three people rushed into his business and told him to lock the door.
The people said to Choi that there was a shooter with a gun who had multiple rounds of ammunition on him.
Wong Wei, who lives nearby, told The Los Angeles Times that his friend was in a bathroom at the dance studio when the shooting started. When she came out, he said, she saw a gunman and three bodies.
The friend then fled to Wei’s home at around 11 p.m., he said, adding that his friends told him that the shooter appeared to fire indiscriminately with a long gun.
Police were investigating another incident in the nearby city of Alhambra, where a similar business, the Lai Lai Ballroom, had police tape across its front door and an officer guarding it.
Detectives could be seen working near the open back door, where a woman wearing gloves was carefully examining the door handle as though checking for prints.
Officials gave no details on what had happened and it was unclear whether the incident was connected to the Monterey Park shooting.
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Legislation that would give inmates in Virginia prisons free phone calls and email access and reduce the costs of food and other commissary items in local jails won approval Friday from a Democrat-led Senate committee. The bills are expected to face longer odds in the Republican-controlled state House.
Inmate advocates who support a bill sponsored by state Sen. Jennifer Boysko to allow prison inmates access to free communications said the costs for inmates to keep in touch with their loved ones can reach hundreds of dollars a month and often put the families of inmates in debt. They also said that keeping in touch with family members during incarceration is an important benefit that helps inmates stay connected with a support system that makes it easier for them to reenter society after they complete their sentences.
“It will allow for fathers to have a constant contact with their children, (so) that when they’re released or their time is up from prison, that will add a smoother transition for them to welcome back into the home, back into their community,” Richard Walker, a formerly incarcerated convicted felon, told the Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee.
A separate bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Morrissey would eliminate or cap fees charged to inmates in local and regional jails, including fees charged for snacks, hygiene products and other items inmates buy in jail commissaries. The bill, which calls for pricing goods sold in commissaries at a maximum of 10% above typical market rates for such items, faces strong oppositions from sheriffs, who run the jails and say the fees are used to pay for rehabilitative, educational and recreational programs for inmates.
“I’m trying to be reasonable and fair, but I also don’t want to see the value of the programs that we have go away because we lack funding,” said Henrico County Sheriff Alisa Gregory.
Morrissey said the costs for inmate communications vary widely among jails around the state, with some relatively low, but others with what he called “exorbitant” prices. He cited one jail he said charges $14.30 for a 15-minute phone call and another that charges 53 cents for every email.
“The gouging of prisoners — it’s not the way we operate in a decent society,” Morrissey said after the hearing.
It was not immediately clear how much the state would have to pay to make up for the revenue that would be lost if communications fees are eliminated and fees for commissary items are reduced. Both bills were referred to the Finance & Appropriations Committee. If approved, the bills would then go to the full Senate for a vote.
The bills are expected to face a more difficult time in the House of Delegates, where Republicans hold a 52-48 majority. A similar jail fees bill proposed by Democratic Del. Irene Shin was rejected by a House subcommittee on Thursday.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion in new data centers in Virginia under a deal with the state, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.
Millions of dollars in incentives to close the deal still require legislative approval, but General Assembly leaders in both parties expressed support in a news release issued by Youngkin’s office.
Still, data centers have become a politically volatile topic, particularly in northern Virginia, where the structures are increasingly common and where neighbors are voicing noise and environmental concerns.
Data centers house the computer servers and hardware required to support modern internet use, and demand continues to increase. But the data centers require high-powered fans and extensive cooling capacity that can generate noise. They also consume huge amounts of electricity that can require construction of high-voltage transmission lines to support them.
Bills proposed in the legislature this year would increase regulate where centers could be located.
The governor’s office said the locations of the data centers, to be built by 2040, will be determined at a later date. But tech companies prefer northern Virginia because it is close to the historical backbone of the internet, and proximity to those connection points provides nanoseconds of advantage that are of importance to tech companies that rely on the servers to support financial transactions, gaming technology and other time-sensitive applications.
Bill Wright, a Prince William County resident who opposed a massive data center expansion recently approved by the county’s Board of Supervisors over considerable community opposition, said Friday’s announcement shows that “the influence of big tech money has become intoxicating to our politicians.”
He said that he does not object to data centers in and of themselves and hopes that the state will place them in areas that don’t harm the environment, and in rural areas where jobs are needed. But he expressed skepticism that the state is willing to stand up to tech companies that want the centers in northern Virginia.
“Northern Virginia is being overwhelmed by these things,” Wright said. “We may as well start calling ourselves the Commonwealth of Amazon.”
Suzanne Clark, a spokeswoman the the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, said Amazon Web Services is exploring several site locations “in collaboration with the Commonwealth” but did not specify any sites.
Northern Virginia has been a tech hub since the formation of the internet, and now hosts more data centers than the next five largest U.S. markets combined, according to the Northern Virginia Technology Council. They have also proven to be a cash cow for local governments that embrace them — data centers now provide for more than 30 percent of the general fund budget of Loudoun County, a suburb of the nation’s capital with more than 400,000 residents.
Another data center opponent, Elena Schlossberg with the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, expressed dismay that Youngkin felt emboldened to announce a data center deal in a year when state and local officials are all on the election ballot in Virginia — and as community concern over data centers is growing.
“That is just mind-boggling that he does not see that communities are uniting” in opposition to data centers, she said.
In a tweet, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said $35 billion represents the largest capital investment in Virginia history. In terms of jobs, the governor’s office said it is expected to generate more than 1,000 jobs across the state. That pales in comparison to the 25,000 jobs associated with Amazon’s decision in 2018 to build a second headquarters in Arlington County.
The deal calls for Amazon to receive incentives from a new Mega Data Center Incentive Program, as well as a grant of up to $140 million for workforce development site improvements and other costs. Both will require legislative approval.
The exact amount of the grant under the incentive program will depend on how many jobs are created, according to the enabling legislation under consideration by the General Assembly. It will also include temporary exemptions from a sales and use tax levied on data centers in Virginia.
State Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, is sponsoring legislation that would restrict the placement of data centers near natural or historic resources. Petersen said Virginia risks being overwhelmed by data centers if protections aren’t put in place.
“In my opinion, the data centers are short-term financial gains with long-term environmental consequences. Industrial buildings with no actual workers are not the economy of the future,” he said. “In fact, they may well be obsolete in a decade. Meanwhile, we are losing valuable farmland and historic sites.”
An Amazon Web Services spokesman declined to comment on the record over how many data centers are planned and Amazon’s preferences for where to locate them.