Ukrainian court puts an Orthodox leader under house arrest

• April 2, 2023

By KARL RITTER and ELENA BECATOROS

KYIV, Ukraine — A Kyiv court ordered a leading priest to be put under house arrest Saturday after Ukraine’s top security agency said he was suspected of justifying Russian aggression, a criminal offense. It was the latest move in a bitter dispute over a famed Orthodox monastery.

Metropolitan Pavel is the abbot of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, Ukraine’s most revered Orthodox site. He has denied the charges and resisted the authorities’ order to vacate the complex.

In a court hearing earlier in the day, the metropolitan said the claim by the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, that he condoned Russia’s invasion was politically driven and that he had “never been on the side of aggression.”

After the court’s ruling, a monitoring bracelet was placed around his ankle, despite his objections that he has diabetes and should not wear it. The house arrest was to last two months.

“I am accepting this,” he said shortly before the bracelet was attached. “Christ was crucified on the cross, so why shouldn’t I accept this?”

Earlier in the week, he cursed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, threatening him with damnation.

The monks in the monastery belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of having links to Russia. The dispute surrounding the property, also known as the Monastery of the Caves, is part of a wider religious conflict that has unfolded in parallel with the war.

The Ukrainian government has cracked down on the UOC over its historic ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, has supported Russian President Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine.

Many Orthodox communities in Ukraine have cut their ties with the UOC and transitioned to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which more than four years ago received recognition from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

The UOC has insisted that it’s loyal to Ukraine and has denounced the Russian invasion. But Ukrainian security agencies say some in the church have maintained close ties with Moscow. The agencies have raided numerous holy sites of the church and then posted photos of rubles, Russian passports, and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch as proof that some church officials have been loyal to Russia.

The government had ordered the monks to leave the compound by March 29. It claims they violated their lease by making alterations to the historic site, and other technical infractions. The monks rejected the claim as a pretext.

Dozens of UOC supporters gathered outside the monastery on Saturday, singing hymns in the rain. A smaller group of protesters also turned up, accusing the other side of sympathizing with Moscow.

“They wash the brains of people with Russian support, and they are very dangerous for Ukraine,” said Senia Kravchuk, a 38-year-old software developer from Kyiv. “They sing songs in support of Russia, and that’s horrible, here, in the center of Kyiv.”

Third-year seminary student David, 21, disagreed. Dressed in a priest’s robes and with a Ukrainian flag draped round his shoulders, he insisted the Lavra priests and residents were in no way pro-Russian. The state, he said, was trying to evict hundreds of people from Lavra without a court order.

“Look at me. I’m in priest’s clothes, with a Ukrainian flag and a cross around my neck. Could you say that I’m pro-Russian?” said David, who declined to give his last name because of the tensions surrounding the issue. “The priests are currently singing a Ukrainian hymn, and they’re being called pro-Russian. Can you believe it?”

In other news Saturday, Zelenskyy condemned the U.N. Security Council for allowing Russia to assume its presidency. The council’s 15 members each serve as president for a month, on a rotating basis.

Zelenskyy said Russian artillery had killed a 5-month-old boy in the town of Avdiivka on Friday, “one of hundreds of artillery attacks” each day, and added that Russia presiding over the Security Council “proves the complete bankruptcy of such institutions.”

Two civilians were reported killed in Russian shelling on Saturday, one each in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, Ukrainian authorities there said.

Zelenskyy also said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday about defense cooperation.

While Ukraine is preparing for a counteroffensive expected later this spring, Russian forces have kept pressing their effort to capture the city of Bakhmut. Fighting in that stronghold in Ukraine’s east has dragged on for eight months.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a Saturday visit to the military headquarters overseeing the action in Ukraine that Russia’s defense industries have boosted production of ammunition “by several times.”

The U.K. Defense Ministry said in an analysis Saturday that the Russian offensive overseen by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military, has fizzled.

“Gerasimov’s tenure has been characterized by an effort to launch a general winter offensive with the aim of extending Russian control over the whole of the Donbas region,” the British ministry said on Twitter. “Eighty days on, it is increasingly apparent that this project has failed.”

The ministry said Russian forces have made only marginal gains in the Donbas “at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties.” Russia was “largely squandering its temporary advantage in personnel” from a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists Putin ordered in the fall, the U.K. analysis said.

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​ Orange County Register 

California city to provide services to homeless encampment

• April 2, 2023

Associated Press

SACRAMENTO — A Northern California city said it will let a homeless encampment stay on some public land, agreeing to provide trailers and other services for up to four months.

A group of homeless people, mostly women, have been living on a lot owned by the city of Sacramento, California, for more than a year, the Sacramento Bee reported.

On Friday, city officials announced they had leased the land for free to Safe Ground Sacramento, a nonprofit group, for up to four months. People can park their cars or RVs on the property, and the city will provide up to 33 trailers for people to live in.

The city said the site will be self-governed by what it calls a “resident council,” along with an operations plan that must be approved by the City Council in the next 30 days.

“I am incredibly proud that through months of hard work and open communication we found an innovative solution for this site that benefits our entire community,” Councilmember Sean Loloee, whose district includes the land, said in a city blog post.

For decades, major cities across California have been grappling with homelessness, a problem that has only worsened in recent years as a housing shortage has increased rents and made it difficult to find an affordable place to live. California now has nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, according to federal data.

Cities have tried lots of different approaches to address the issue. In San Jose, a city of nearly 1 million people at the south end of the San Francisco Bay, officials installed about 500 small homes for homeless people to live in. The program reduced the rate of the city’s homeless people who were unsheltered for the first time in years, Mayor Matt Mahan said.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state would build 1,200 of these small homes across the state — homes that are as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters) that have electricity but no running water. Sacramento is scheduled to get 350 of those homes, most of which will likely be at the state fairgrounds, according to Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Across California, local governments have plans for a 15% reduction in homelessness by 2025. Those plans originally called for a 2% reduction in homelessness, a goal that angered Newsom because he thought it was too low. Local governments revised those plans after Newsom threatened to withhold state funding.

The homeless encampment in Sacramento, known as “Camp Resolution,” is not meant to be permanent. The city said the initial lease will run for four months. But the lease can be renewed until “all the residents obtain permanent housing.”

“We are anxious to assist Camp Resolution residents to demonstrate that homeless people can self-govern and assist each other to obtain permanent housing,” said Mark Merin, executive director for Safe Ground Sacramento.

​ Orange County Register 

Angels blow out A’s on the strength of an 11-run inning

• April 2, 2023

OAKLAND — Once the Angels returned to action Saturday, it didn’t take them long to bury the frustration of an Opening Day loss and the controversy that followed on the subsequent day off.

The Angels exploded for 11 runs in the third inning of a 13-1 pummeling of the Oakland A’s.

It made for a much happier walk from the dugout to the clubhouse than on Thursday night, when the Angels were stinging from a one-run loss just as third baseman Anthony Rendon engaged in an altercation with a fan.

The Angels are still waiting to hear from Major League Baseball to find out if Rendon will face any discipline, but in the meantime they took care of their on-field business with a comfortable victory.

“It was great,” said Taylor Ward, who drove in three on a single and a homer in the third. “Definitely the start we needed, I think. Just bring the fire like that. I think that’s what we need to do every game, just keep the foot on the pedal.”

For the first two innings, the Angels had no answers for Japanese right-hander Shintaro Fujinami, who was making his big-league debut. The Angels went in order, with four strikeouts against his assortment of 99 mph fastballs and diving splitters.

In the third, though, the Angels knocked Fujinami out quickly.

Luis Rengifo walked and Gio Urshela, Logan O’Hoppe and Ward had consecutive hits, producing two runs. Mike Trout walked to load the bases.

Shohei Ohtani – who had faced Fujinami in high school in Japan – smoked a line drive off the left-field fence. Runners had to hold in case it was caught, so it went as a single, scoring one more run.

Rendon hit a sacrifice fly. Hunter Renfroe walked. Jake Lamb singled, ending Fujinami’s day.

Rengifo then walked again. Urshela singled again. O’Hoppe hit a sacrifice fly. Ward then blasted a two-run homer, completing the 11-run outburst.

Manager Phil Nevin said the spark to the inning was Rengifo having a disciplined plate appearance and drawing a walk.

“Knowing there’s the potential for losing the strike zone a little bit, we have to be patient and stick with our approach,” Nevin said. “Luis’ at-bat was exactly what we talked about.”

Angels starter Patrick Sandoval was the beneficiary of the outburst, picking up a victory with five innings of work on 86 pitches. He gave up just one run on a Ramon Laureano homer.

“All right, pretty good,” Sandoval said of his outing. “I made some pitches. I also didn’t make some pitches. But getting through five with an 11-run lead and not screwing it up, I’m happy about it.”

Left-hander Tucker Davidson pitched the final four innings. Davidson is expected to be the Angels’ No. 6 starter, but they don’t need him to fill that role until April 12, so it was convenient to get him some work in a blowout to start sharp.

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When it was over, Davidson qualified for his first big-league save by virtue of working at least three innings to close out a victory. That earned him a beer shower from his teammates.

All in all, it was a happy clubhouse, although Sandoval wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was a relief after what had transpired in the previous two days.

“Just another game,” he said. “Game 2 of a long season. Business as usual.”

​ Orange County Register 

The Queen Mary is officially open for public tours — sparking excitement about what’s to come

• April 2, 2023

Long Beach’s historic World War II-era ship, the Queen Mary, finally reopened for public tours on Saturday, April 1, after a three-year closure — marking the first event in what officials say will be a grand reopening slated to kick off in the coming weeks.

Groups of about 30 people each gathered on the ship’s Promenade Deck starting at about 11 a.m. on Saturday to partake in their choice of three different tours: The Glory Days Historical Tour, the Haunted Encounters Tour and the Steam & Steel Tour — each which take about an hour and are available until 6 p.m. daily.

For some, including Gail Hurst — a tourist from England — Saturday’s reopening offered a chance to experience the ship for the first time. Hurst and her husband decided to visit the Queen Mary on a whim, as their trip with Princess Cruise Line boarded just across the parking lot from the vessel.

“My mom and dad had their 40th wedding anniversary on it — so we got to see where they were for the first time,” Hurst said in an interview after disembarking from her tour of the ship. “It was fabulous. We plan (to visit again) if we ever come to America.”

The ship’s operators, Evolution Hospitality, initially announced that the ship would re-open to the public earlier this week.

Long Beach city officials and Evolution, which took over the ship’s day-to-day management last June, have been working to revitalize the vessel after it fell into massive disrepair under its previous operator, Urban Commons.

The Queen Mary initially closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 — but a 2021 city audit found that Urban Commons had not completed $23 million dollars worth of repairs, which the city had funded. Urban Commons forfeited its 66-year lease on the ship that same year, bringing the Queen Mary back under city control for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Related links

Long Beach allocates extra $1 million for Queen Mary repairs, reopening delayed
Last round of critical Queen Mary repairs underway, Long Beach says
Queen Mary welcomes passengers aboard for the 1st time in nearly 3 years

After the City Council approved the new management contract with Evolution last year, both found that several critical repairs needed to be completed before the Queen Mary could reopen to the public. Those included replacing the ship’s boilers, elevators and restrooms, repairing the plumbing, and upgrading parking.

Those fixes have been underway since last year — but are finally close to being finished, according to Steve Caloca, the Queen Mary’s managing director.

The installation of new boilers, heat exchangers, and a new emergency generator — which are necessary to have hot water on board and ensure the ship’s safety in the case of an emergency — should be complete within the next few days, Caloca said in a Saturday interview.

And other repairs — including aesthetic fixes all around the Queen Mary — are currently underway.

“All of the main hall floor is going to be redone,” Caloca siad. “The Promenade Deck, all of those those floors, have been restored to the original teak  — and we probably have just another 200 feet to go.”

But the ongoing nature of those repairs didn’t seem to bother 7-year-old Tristan Rodriguez — whose fascination with ships prompted his parents book a time slot on the Steam & Steel tour on Saturday afternoon.

“We’ve been checking in on the refurbishment just because he (Tristan) got really interested and wanted to come and see this,” Tristan’s mom, Elianny Rodriguez, said. “We kept checking back and just waiting for it to reopen.”

The younger Rodriguez has been fascinated with all things engineering since he was just two-years-old, according to his mom. He’s gone so far as to create piece-by-piece replicas of famous ships — including the Queen Mary — in Minecraft from scratch, a skill he picked up by watching YouTube tutorials.

“We wanted to check out like the steam engine when (Tristan) saw the tour because we knew how much he was into them,” Rodriguez said, “And (we knew) it would teach us facts about certain ships that we weren’t even aware of so we could talk about it with him.”

Tristan, for his part, carried a miniature model of the Queen Mary throughout his entire tour, which gave him an up close look at the Queen Mary’s engine room and propellors.

He said he loves ships so much because “they float and they have lots of stuff deep” within them — and he likes learning how they work.

“The propellers push the ship and they also steer,” Tristan said, pointing out where the propellors are located on his model of the ship — shortly before letting out a yell of excitement and taking a brief run around the ship’s Observation Deck.

The Rodriguez’s, meanwhile, said they’re all excited to come back soon to visit the ship.

Evolution and the city, meanwhile, are planning to open up other parts of the ship — including the restaurants and bars — soon, though a date has yet to be confirmed. The Queen Mary Hotel, while not quite open yet, is currently accepting room reservations for stays starting in May.

“Thousands of people have already signed up to stay here or to experience a tour within days of reopening registration,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said on Saturday. “There’s a lot of progress, but there’s still a lot of work to do — in the weeks to come, there’ll be more and more things opened.

“But bottom line,” Richardson added, “The Queen Mary’s best days are ahead.”

​ Orange County Register 

Don’t fret about getting old; just refuse to BE old

• April 2, 2023

“Rain, rain, go away.”

No, wait!

“Rain, rain, stay and end the drought.”

No, wait!

What do I want?

It would be nice if we could control the weather to our preferences, but that’s not going to happen. The delightful thing is that we can control our thoughts about the weather. It may not always be easy, but taking charge of our thinking works for having a positive experience, even in the midst of a not-so-good day.

A student driving on the freeway in the rain got caught in traffic. She sent a text to her instructor: “I’ll be late. I’m stuck in traffic.” Unfortunately, the spell checker sent, “I’ll be late. I’m stuck in tragic.”

How many people get stuck in “tragic” as they age? How often do you hear someone say, “It’s terrible to get old?”

There’s even a name for being afraid of old age. It is called gerascophobia. What can you do about your age? Not much.

Like the weather, it’s not in our control, but we can refuse to be old. That doesn’t mean to deny our signs of aging but to wear them proudly. After all, we’ve made it through all of our worst storms so far. We can let go of the yearning to be younger and embrace all the wonderful things we can do and be now.

Sophia Bush wrote, “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.”

So, what can we do to distract us from our “tragic aging” thoughts? Don’t hesitate to ask for help if we are having a bad day. It can be tough to put oneself in a vulnerable position, especially if we have always been able to do everything for ourselves.

In his book “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” Charlie Mackesy wrote, “Asking for help isn’t giving up, said the horse. It’s refusing to give up.”

No matter our physical condition, we can continue to learn more and more about ourselves – especially if the spirit with which we approach each day is about getting to the heart of who we are and loving it.

Our lives can be about doing things wholeheartedly because we get to – this is our one unique chance to experience our particular life.

Louise Hay wrote, “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself (and your age) and see what happens.”

Rain, rain, do what you want – you are not in charge of me.

The Rev. Linda McNamar is a Laguna Woods Village resident.

​ Orange County Register 

Tornado survivors recount flying debris, destroyed buildings

• April 2, 2023

By ADRIAN SAINZ and ANDREW SELSKY

WYNNE, Ark. — With tornadoes hitting the Midwest and the South this weekend, some survivors said they emerged from their homes to find buildings ripped apart, vehicles tossed around like toys, shattered glass and felled trees.

J.W. Spencer, 88, had never experienced a tornado before, but when he and his wife saw on TV that a tornado was nearing their small town of Wynne, Arkansas, he opened a front window and rear door in his house to relieve air pressure. The couple scurried into the bathroom, where they got into the bathtub and covered themselves with quilts and blankets for protection.

Fifteen minutes later, the storm unleashed its fury. Debris came whistling through the house.

“We just rode it out,” Spencer said on Saturday. “We heard stuff falling, loud noises. And then it quit. It got quiet.”

After it passed, the couple emerged to see their neighborhood devastated by the tornado. Many large trees were down. Houses were severely damaged. The high school’s roof was shredded and the windows were blown out. But Spencer and his wife were not injured. The giant trees on their property lay sideways on the lawn and the house had some minor damage.

“We come through it real good, as far as the physical part,” Spencer said.

Near a theater in Belvidere, Illinois, where a tornado killed one man and injured 40 concertgoers, Ross Potter picked up glass shards Friday in front of his building. The last time the town was devastated to this extent from a tornado was in 1967.

Ambulances whirred by after the theater was hit.

“They took, I can’t even remember how many people,” Potter said. He was lucky — only a few of his building’s windows were broken, mostly on the second floor. Across the street, most of the brick siding on a storefront was ripped away.

Back in Wynne in northeastern Arkansas, Alan Purser stopped in his pickup truck to chat with Spencer. Purser described how he rode out the tornado with his cats in his home, which is being remodeled. He took a risk, sheltering in the sun room which is covered by glass, but it was one of the few rooms not being remodeled.

“I just lay down with my cats, and lay a blanket over me, and let it rumble,” he said of the tornado that flipped over the camper van parked outside.

RELATED: At least 21 dead after tornadoes rake US Midwest, South

When a tornado hit Little Rock, Arkansas, nine firefighters were in Fire Station No. 9, located in one of the most devastated areas of the city. They sheltered in the chief’s office as the tornado damaged their building.

“If I said it wasn’t scary, I’d be lying,” Capt. Ben Hammond said Saturday.

Once the tornado passed, the firefighters began working to help injured residents and to clear debris blocking their equipment.

“Once you address all the people you can see, then you’ve got to start looking for the people you can’t see,” he said.

The fire station has served as a shelter for neighbors amid fears that another storm was coming.

Associated Press reporters Harm Venhuizen in Belvidere, Illinois, and Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this story. Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon.

​ Orange County Register 

At least 21 dead after tornadoes rake US Midwest, South

• April 2, 2023

By ADRIAN SAINZ and ANDREW DeMILLO

WYNNE, Ark. — Storms that dropped possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 21 people in small towns and big cities across the South and Midwest, tearing a path through the Arkansas capital, collapsing the roof of a packed concert venue in Illinois, and stunning people throughout the region Saturday with the damage’s scope.

Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees, and laid waste to neighborhoods across a broad swath of the country. The dead included seven in one Tennessee county, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, three in Sullivan, Indiana, and four in Illinois.

Other deaths from the storms that hit Friday night into Saturday were reported in Alabama and Mississippi, along with one near Little Rock, Arkansas, where city officials said more than 2,600 buildings were in a tornado’s path.

Stunned residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke Saturday to find the high school’s roof shredded and its windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.

Debris and memories of regular life lay scattered inside the damaged shells of homes and strewn on lawns: clothing, insulation, roofing paper, toys, splintered furniture, a pickup truck with its windows shattered.

Ashley Macmillan said she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed, “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead.” A falling tree seriously damaged their home, but no one in the family was hurt.

“We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes rattling. And then it just got calm,” she said.

Recovery was already underway, with workers using chain saws to cut fallen trees and bulldozers moving material from shattered structures. Utility trucks worked to restore power.

RELATED: Tornado survivors recount flying debris, destroyed buildings

At least seven people died in Tennessee’s McNairy County, east of Memphis along the Mississippi border, said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.

“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” Leckner said, adding that although it appeared all people were accounted for, crews were going door to door to be sure.

In Belvidere, Illinois, some of the 260 people attending a heavy metal concert at the Apollo Theatre pulled a 50-year-old man from the rubble after part of the roof collapsed; he was dead when emergency workers arrived. Officials said 40 other people were injured, including two with life-threatening injuries.

“They dragged someone out from the rubble, and I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him), ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do,” concertgoer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.

The venue’s Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.

Crews worked Saturday to clean up around the Apollo, with forklifts pulling away loosely hanging bricks. Business owners picked up shards of glass and covered shattered windows.

Across and down the street from the Apollo stood a mural with an oversized black-and-white photograph of schoolchildren battling strong winds and rain after an especially violent tornado ravaged the rural town on April 21, 1967, killing 24.

In Crawford County, Illinois, three people were killed and eight others injured after a tornado hit around New Hebron, Bill Burke, the county board chair, said.

Sheriff Bill Rutan said 60 to 100 families were displaced.

“We’ve had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house is collapsed on top of them, but luckily they had that safe space to go to,” Rutan said at a news conference.

Illinois state Rep. Adam Niemerg called the tornado “catastrophic.”

That tornado was not far from where three people were killed in Indiana’s Sullivan County, about 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.

Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is essentially unrecognizable right now” and that several people were rescued from rubble overnight. There were reports of as many as 12 people injured, he said, and search-and-rescue teams combed damaged areas.

“Quite frankly, I’m really, really shocked there isn’t more as far as human issues,” he said, adding that recovery “is going to be a very long process.”

In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than 50 were hurt, some critically, authorities said.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was a high-end EF3 twister with wind speeds up to 165 mph (265 kph) and a path as long as 25 miles (40 kilometers).

Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was having lunch at home when the tornado roared through his neighborhood, causing him to hide in his laundry room as sheetrock fell on his head and windows shattered. When he emerged, the house was mostly rubble.

“I see everything around me is sky,” Shahed-Ghaznavi recalled. He barely slept Friday night.

“When I closed my eyes, I couldn’t sleep, imagined I was here,” he said Saturday outside his home.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to help local responders.

A suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama’s Madison County, said county official Mac McCutcheon. And in northern Mississippi’s Pontotoc County, officials confirmed one death and four injuries.

The storms struck just hours after President Joe Biden visited the Mississippi community of Rolling Fork, where tornadoes last week destroyed parts of town.

Tornadoes also caused damage in eastern Iowa, and broke windows on cars and buildings northeast of Peoria, Illinois.

It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.

“That’s a quite active day,” he said. “But that’s not unprecedented.”

Hundreds of thousands lost power because of the sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest. A threat of tornadoes and hail remained for the Northeast, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New York.

More than 530,000 homes and businesses in the affected area lacked power at midday Saturday, over 200,000 of them in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us.

Blizzard conditions whipped parts of Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin, cutting power to tens of thousands in the Twin Cities area. Parts of Interstate 29 were closed.

Nearly 100 new wildfires were reported Friday in Oklahoma, according to the state forest service. Fires were expected to remain a danger through the next week.

DeMillo reported from Little Rock. Associated Press writers around the country contributed to this report, including Harm Venhuizen in Belvidere, Illinois, and Corey Williams in Detroit.

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County scores and player stats for Saturday, April 1

• April 1, 2023

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Scores and stats from Orange County games on Saturday, April 1

Click here for details about sending your team’s scores and stats to the Register.

SATURDAY’S SCORES

BASEBALL

CRESTVIEW LEAGUE

Villa Park 3, Foothill 0

VP: Brown (W, 6IP, 3H, 0R, 7K). Krodel 1-3, 2RBI, Pone 1-3, RBI. McArthur 1-3, SB, R.

Foot: Parker (6IP, 7H, 2ER, 9K). Mueller 1-2, BB.

SOUTH COAST LEAGUE

Tesoro 7, Trabuco Hills 3

Tes: Faust 2-4, 3RBI. Peper 2-3, 2R, RBI. Kemmerer 1-3, 2B, R.

TH: B. Gray 1-4, HR, 2RBI. Strenger 1-3, RBI.

NONLEAGUE

Irvine 6, Edison 5

Irv: Hew 2-3, 2B, 2R. Featherston 2-2, BB, R. Brito0-2, BB, RBI.

Edi: Winokur 3-4, HR, 2RBI. Hunter 3-4, 2 2B, RBI. Palmerin 1-3, RBI.

GIRLS LACROSSE

NONLEAGUE

Newport Harbor 14, Crescenta Valley 6

Goals: (NH) Matousik 5, Close 3

Other nonleague scores

St. Margaret’s 19, Santa Fe Christian 3

​ Orange County Register