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Aug. 7, 2024

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Colleagues,

Good Wednesday morning on this Aug. 7, 2024,

After nearly 30 years as a photojournalist in Spain with The Associated Press, Álvaro Barrientos has covered his last running of the bulls in Pamplona.

He plans to retire later this month, and we lead with a story on his career from AP Images. 

My most recent Spotlight column in my hometown newspaper, The Messenger of Fort Dodge, Iowa, focused on a family with Fort Dodge ties whose home and popular café next to a dam near Mankato, Minn., were destroyed by a raging Blue Earth River. You no doubt saw the national newscasts of the two-story white house sliding into the river.

Included in my story was the fact that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited the site just after the tragedy. He was no stranger to the café or the family, as he frequented it when bike riding at the time he lived in Mankato and taught high school and coached football. Yes, the same Tim Walz who Tuesday was named to be the vice president running mate to Kamala Harris. Click here to read the story.

Here’s to a great day – be safe, stay healthy, live it to your fullest.

Paul

Photographer Alvaro Barrientos retires after a stellar 30-year career

Revelers run with bulls from La Palmosilla ranch accompanied by steers during the first day of the running of the bulls at the San Fermín fiestas in Pamplona, Spain, Sunday, July 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

AP Images Blog

After nearly 30 years as a photojournalist in Spain collaborating for The Associated Press, Álvaro Barrientos has covered his last running of the bulls in Pamplona before retiring later this month. The Medellín, Colombia native has called this northeastern Spanish city home for decades.

“I was always asked, ‘Where do you live?’… Pamplona. More than once, people didn’t even know where to locate it. … ‘And what’s your job?’ And I would say, ETA. That’s my job. Everything that happens around all the violence that the tragedy of ETA generated in Basque society and in Navarra,” Barrientos said in an interview in early July.

From the late 1990s until the early 2010s, Barrientos’ daily task was covering the heartbreaking toll of the Basque separatist group ETA, which left hundreds dead over more than four decades. Since peace was negotiated, the soft-spoken Barrientos, often sporting his trademark scarf, has shifted his focus to documenting unique traditions and ways of life that are fast disappearing.

He still remembers riding in his father’s car as a teen in the early 1970s in his native Colombia when the radio delivered a news bulletin about war breaking out in the Middle East. Bringing to the world unforgettable snapshots of history is what Barrientos has dedicated his professional life to.

He did get to cover conflicts in Lebanon and Israel. But the most indelible contributions of his nearly 30-year career as a contributor for The Associated Press in northeastern Spain -- from which he is just retiring at 67 -- have come from photographing both breaking news and timeless traditions in his adopted home region.

Whether it’s the intense face-off between a masked law enforcement officer and a protester, or a shepherd guiding his flock to greener pastures in the Pyrenees Mountains, Barrientos always got close enough – literally and metaphorically – to transcend the instant and photograph the essence that’s iconic and immemorial.

Read more here.

My play, ‘And I Ate a Pear,’ moves to second round of festival competition

Director Breindel Wood (left) and Beth Harpaz. Photo/Kirsten Braverman

Beth Harpaz - Like a lot of journalists, I write creatively on the side. During the pandemic, I took a playwriting course and fell in love with the idea of telling a story through dialogue. I'm thrilled to report that a play I wrote called "And I Ate a Pear," is part of a festival competition for short plays, and I've made it to the second round! It will be performed again Friday., Aug. 9, at 8 PM, and Sun., Aug. 11, at 2 PM, at the John DeSotelle Studio, 754 Ninth Av. (51st Street, 4th floor, no elevator), in Manhattan. Tix are $25. I'll be at the Sunday show. There are 5 plays in each staging; I'm asking friends who go to please stay to the end and vote for mine.

My play is about an encounter on the Staten Island Ferry between a tourist and a New Yorker. It was inspired in part by my volunteering as a Big Apple Greeter when I was AP Travel editor; being a Greeter was a way for me to talk to travelers about what would be useful to them in a travel story.

But the actors and director took my play to a whole new level; it was amazing to see my words performed on stage. It was also just a magical night of theater, to walk through a random door in Hell's Kitchen and see all these people devoting themselves to the arts for the sheer love of it.

PS If you are an Edna St. Vincent Millay fan, you will recognize my title as a line from her poem, "Recuerdo," which is about the ferry.

I'm quitting my current day job (as a reporter at the Forward) at the end of October and hope to do more creative writing. I'd love to know what creative pursuits and volunteering other former AP folks have taken up in retirement.

Name that donkey

We welcome your ideas for a byline for our new Cripple Creek Colorado Connecting Correspondent (CCCCC) and here is the first round after my call for suggestions in Tuesday’s issue. They are:

By DON K. SCRIBBLER (Norm Abelson)

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By DON KEE

Associated Press Rider (Bill Kole)

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B.C. Burro (Both Cycles Bureau), since he clearly is always on the job? (Mike Holmes)

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If you need a Bosnia correspondent for Connecting I can check and see if this guy is still available. He was pretty curious when he checked me out a couple of years back. He’s part of the herd of wild horses that roam near Livno, a must visit for anyone who goes to BiH.  (Jim Reindl)

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Wise Ass (John Travalent)

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The donkey scribe with the aggressive news tendencies has to be Nosy, no? (Dave Zelio)

Your vote?

A happy accident

Jim Spehar – in his Sunday column in Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:

It was a happy accident. And it was wonderful.

You should try it.

It happened during my favorite long weekend of the year when our extended family repeats a decades-old gathering along the Slate River near Crested Butte, the reason for my editorial page absence last Sunday.

But that annual reunion is not the “it” I’m writing about.

We’ve normally camped at our long-time gathering site. This year we opted for a king-size bed, the free morning breakfast and hot showers. Charge it off to age, a bit of necessity and MasterCard.

The “it” that’s the subject of today’s discussion is the television set included along with those amenities previously mentioned. A few hundred options beyond Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels (and Nothing On)” are normally available on the ubiquitous video screens that have become a centerpiece in most of our lives.

We availed ourselves of none of them. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

Four full days without CNN, Faux News or MSNBC. No ABC, CBS, NBC. Absent Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, Kamala Harris and whomever. No Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow and Wolf Blitzer. Were the Olympics on? “Saturday Night Live?”

We were a couple of days into our TV fast before I realized it was going on. By then, given other time-consuming demands and opportunities, it wasn’t hard to leave the remote alone.

That’s a curious admission for a former television reporter/anchor, someone who could accurately be described as addicted to local, national and international news as well as having entertainment on demand. Someone with fond memories of weekly journeys out to 21 Road to catch the Grand Ol’ Opry and the Cisco Kid on my aunt and uncle’s black and white television shortly after Rex Howell put KREX on the air 70 years ago. Someone who saved the black and white photo of a class visit to the old studios on Hillcrest Manor that helped spark a career in broadcasting, print and wire service journalism.

Read more here.

AP Sightings

Giovanna Dell'Orto - Greetings from Marseille, France, where I'm covering the Olympics -- AP life couldn't be better! One of my colleagues just spotted this "AP" sign ;-) from a US kitesurfing Olympian today ... for fun, wanted to pass along ... (in sailing, AP flags means a postponement in the race)

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Chris Connell - MLB.com’s video highlights of Sunday’s Arizona Diamondbacks-Pittsburgh Pirates game started with a shot of these two colorful initials.

Connecting sky shot

Malcolm Ritter - Cloudy with a chance of rainbow, as seen recently over New York City.

Stories of interest

Elon Musk’s X sues advertisers over alleged ‘massive advertiser boycott’ after Twitter takeover (AP)

WICHITA FALLS, Tex. (AP) — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac.

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Broadcasting & Cable to Shutter As This Year's Media Meltdown Escalates (Hollywood Reporter)

Story by Alex Weprin

This year's media meltdown chaos is picking up again.

Six month after layoffs, labor unrest and contracts began rocking the media sector, the business continues to face dramatic challenges. Tuesday saw a number of examples.

In a major deal, Ziff Davis cut a deal to acquire CNet from Red Ventures for about $100 million. CNet - which CBS acquired for $1.8 billion and subsequently sold to Red Ventures four years ago for $500 million - will join other tech outlets like Mashable, PCMag and LifeHacker in the Ziff Davis stable. But the sharp decline in value underscores the perilous media moment.

It is not immediately clear what will happen to CNet staff.

Meanwhile, two venerable TV trade publications, Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, will shut down, according to their owner Future Plc, citing the "rapid transformation" of the industry. The Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame will continue, even as the print magazines and newsletters of the trade outlets end.

Read more here. Shared by Doug Pizac, Mark Mittelstadt, Paul Albright.

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Meet the student journalists who report on Florida’s most influential and powerful elected officials (Poynter)

By: Gabrielle Russon

Silas Morgan, the 22-year-old son of Walmart employees and a first-generation college student, had an important call to make.

Morgan was part of an investigative news team at the University of Florida looking into the state’s most influential and powerful elected officials.

Weeks prior, after Morgan had pored over campaign filings, financial reports, property listings and voter registration records, he reported that state Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, had listed his home on official paperwork in District 40, not District 41, where he had been elected to serve.

“The discovery raises questions about whether Antone, elected seven times to the state House, was legally eligible to hold office,” Morgan wrote in his April piece, which pointed out the residency rules for Florida’s state House candidates and incumbents.

Read more here. Shared by our colleague and former AP journalist Ted Bridis, who directs the reporting program.

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Axios Lays Off 50 Staffers Amid Media Landscape Shift (The Wrap)

As the media outlet adapts to a shifting industry landscape, Axios is enacting layoffs, impacting around 50 staffers, CEO Jim VandeHei announced in an internal memo on Tuesday.

In the Axios signature “Smart Brevity” writing model, VandeHei informed the workforce that the outlet would be eliminating 50 positions to “get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology, and reader needs/habits.”

“This is a painful but necessary move to tighten our strategic focus and shift investment to our core growth areas,” VandeHei wrote. “We’re making some difficult changes to adapt fast to a rapidly changing media landscape.”

Read more here. Shared by Mark Mittelstadt.

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NYC journalist who documented pro-Palestinian vandalism arrested on felony hate crime charges (AP)

BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City journalist was arrested Tuesday on charges that he accompanied a group of pro-Palestinian protesters as they hurled red paint at the homes of top leaders at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this summer.

Samuel Seligson, an independent videographer, faces felony hate crime charges.

According to a criminal complaint written by a police detective, Seligson, 31, traveled with the group of vandals as they defaced the facades of two apartments belonging to the museum’s director and president. The activists are accused of spray-painting doors and sidewalks with messages that accused the two leaders of supporting genocide. A banner hung at the home of the museum’s Jewish president called her a “white-supremacist Zionist.”

Seligson’s attorney, Leena Widdi, said her client was acting in his capacity as a credentialed member of the media, describing the hate crime charges as an “appalling” overreach by police and prosecutors. She said police had twice raided his Brooklyn home before he turned himself in early Tuesday.

Read more here. Shared by Mark Mittelstadt.

AP classes, by the year...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a listing of Connecting colleagues who have shared the year and the bureau where they started with the AP. If you would like to share your own information, I will include it in later postings. Current AP staffers are also welcome to share their information.)

NEW ADDITIONS:

Jim Baltzelle, 2004, Dallas

1951 - Norm Abelson (Boston)

1953 – Charles Monzella (Huntington, WVa)

1955 – Henry Bradsher (Atlanta), Paul Harrington (Boston), Joe McGowan (Cheyenne)

1957 - Louis Uchitelle (Philadelphia)

1958 – Roy Bolch (Kansas City)

1959 – Charlie Bruce (Montgomery)

1960 – Claude Erbsen (New York), Carl Leubsdorf (New Orleans)

1961 – Peter Arnett (Jakarta, Indonesia), Strat Douthat (Charleston. WVa), Warren Lerude (San Diego), Ed Staats (Austin)

1962 – Paul Albright (Cheyenne), Malcolm Barr Sr. (Honolulu), Myron Belkind (New York), Dave Mazzarella (Newark), Peggy Simpson (Dallas), Kelly Smith Tunney (Miami)

1963 – Hal Bock (New York)

1964 – Rachel Ambrose (Indianapolis), Larry Hamlin (Oklahoma City), John Lengel (Los Angeles), Ron Mulnix (Denver), Lyle Price (San Francisco), Arlene Sposato (New York), Karol Stonger (Indianapolis), Hilmi Toros (New York)

1965 – Bob Dobkin (Pittsburgh), Harry Dunphy (Denver), John Gibbons (New York), Jim Luther (Nashville), Larry Margasak (Harrisburg), Rich Oppel (Tallahassee)

1966 – Shirley Christian (Kansas City), Mike Doan (Portland, OR), Edie Lederer (New York), Nancy Shipley (Nashville), Mike Short (Los Angeles), Marty Thompson (Seattle), Nick Ut (Saigon), Kent Zimmerman (Chicago)

1967 – Dan Berger (Los Angeles), Adolphe Bernotas (Concord), Lou Boccardi (New York), Linda Deutsch (Los Angeles), Don Harrison (Los Angeles), Frank Hawkins (New York), Doug Kienitz (Cheyenne), David Liu (New York), Bruce Lowitt (Los Angeles), Chuck McFadden (Los Angeles), Martha Malan (Minneapolis), Bill Morrissey (Buffalo), Larry Paladino (Detroit), Michael Putzel (Raleigh), Bruce Richardson (Chicago), Richard Shafer (Baltimore), Victor Simpson (Newark), Michael Sniffen (Newark), Kernan Turner (Portland, Ore)

1968 – Lee Balgemann (Chicago), John Eagan (San Francisco), Joe Galu (Albany/Troy), Peter Gehrig (Frankfurt), Charles Hanley (Albany), Jerry Harkavy (Portland, Maine), Herb Hemming (New York), Brian King (Albany), Samuel Koo (New York), Karren Mills (Minneapolis), Michael Rubin (Los Angeles), Rick Spratling (Salt Lake City), Barry Sweet (Seattle)

1969 - Ann Blackman (New York), Ford Burkhart (Philadelphia), Dick Carelli (Charleston, WVa), Dennis Coston (Richmond), Mary V. Gordon (Newark), Daniel Q. Haney (Portland, Maine), Mike Harris (Chicago), Brad Martin (Kansas City), David Minthorn (Frankfurt), Cynthia Rawitch (Los Angeles), Bob Reid (Charlotte), Mike Reilly (New York), Doug Tucker (Tulsa), Bill Winter (Helena)

1970 – Richard Boudreaux (New York), Richard Drew (San Francisco), Bob Egelko (Los Angeles), Steve (Indy) Herman (Indianapolis), Tim Litsch (New York), Lee Margulies (Los Angeles), Chris Pederson (Salt Lake City), Brendan Riley (San Francisco), Larry Thorson (Philadelphia)

1971 – Harry Atkins (Detroit), Jim Bagby (Kansas City), Larry Blasko (Chicago), Jim Carlson (Milwaukee), Jim Carrier (New Haven), Chris Connell (Newark), Bill Gillen (New York), Bill Hendrick (Birmingham), John Lumpkin (Dallas), Kendal Weaver (Montgomery)

1972 – Hank Ackerman (New York), Bob Fick (St. Louis), Joe Frazier (Portland, Ore.), Terry Ganey (St. Louis), Mike Graczyk (Detroit), Denis Gray (Albany), Lindel Hutson (Little Rock), Brent Kallestad (Sioux Falls), Tom Kent (Hartford), Nolan Kienitz (Dallas), Andy Lippman (Phoenix), Ellen Miller (Helena), Mike Millican (Hartford), Lew Wheaton (Richmond)

1973 - Jerry Cipriano (New York), Susan Clark (New York), Norm Clarke (Cincinnati), Jim Drinkard (Jefferson City), Joe Galianese (East Brunswick), Merrill Hartson (Richmond), Mike Hendricks (Albany), Tom Journey (Tucson), Steve Loeper (Los Angeles), Tom Slaughter (Sioux Falls), Jim Spehar (Denver), Paul Stevens (Albany), Jeffrey Ulbrich (Cheyenne), Owen Ullmann (Detroit), Suzanne Vlamis (New York), John Willis (Omaha), Evans Witt (San Francisco)

1974 – Norman Black (Baltimore), David Espo (Cheyenne), Dan George (Topeka), Robert Glass (Philadelphia), Steve Graham (Helena), Tim Harper (Milwaukee), Elaine Hooker (Hartford), Sue Price Johnson (Charlotte), Dave Lubeski (Washington), Janet McConnaughey (Washington), Lee Mitgang (New York), Barry Shlachter (Tokyo), Bud Weydert (Toledo), Marc Wilson (Little Rock) 

1975 – Peter Eisner (Columbus), Bill McCloskey (Washington), David Powell (New York), Eileen Alt Powell (Milwaukee)

1976 – Brad Cain (Chicago), Judith Capar (Philadelphia), Dick Chady (Albany), Steve Crowley (Washington), David Egner (Oklahoma City), Marc Humbert (Albany), Steven Hurst (Columbus), Richard Lowe (Nashville), Mike Mcphee (Boston), John Nolan (Nashville), Charlotte Porter (Minneapolis), Chuck Wolfe (Charlotte)

1977 – Bryan Brumley (Washington), Robert Burns (Jefferson City), Charles Campbell (Nashville), Carolyn Carlson (Atlanta), Dave Carpenter (Philadelphia), Jim Drinkard (Jefferson City), Ken Herman (Dallas), Mike Holmes (Des Moines), Brad Kalbfeld (New York), Scott Kraft (Jefferson City), John Kreiser (New York), Peter Leabo (Dallas), Kevin LeBoeuf (Los Angeles), Ellen Nimmons (Minneapolis), Dan Sewell (Buffalo), Estes Thompson (Richmond), David Tirrell-Wysocki (Concord)

1978 – Tom Eblen (Louisville), Ruth Gersh (Richmond), Monte Hayes (Caracas), Doug Pizac (Los Angeles), Charles Richards (Dallas), Reed Saxon (Los Angeles), Steve Wilson (Boston)

1979 – Jim Abrams (Tokyo), Brian Bland (Los Angeles), Scotty Comegys (Chicago), John Daniszewski (Philadelphia), Frances D’Emilio (San Francisco), Pat Fergus (Albany), Brian Friedman (Des Moines), Sally Hale (Dallas), Jill Lawrence (Harrisburg), Warren Levinson (New York), Barry Massey (Kansas City), Phillip Rawls (Nashville), John Rice (Carson City), Linda Sargent (Little Rock), Joel Stashenko (Albany), Robert Wielaard (Brussels)

1980 – Alan Adler (Cleveland), Christopher Bacey (New York), Jeff Barnard (Providence), Mark Duncan (Cleveland), Bill Kaczor (Tallahassee), Mitchell Landsberg (Reno), Kevin Noblet (New Orleans), Jim Rowley (Baltimore), David Speer (Jackson), Hal Spencer (Providence), Carol J. Williams (Seattle)

1981 – Paul Davenport (Phoenix), Dan Day (Milwaukee), John Flesher (Raleigh), Len Iwanski (Bismarck), Ed McCullough (Albany), Drusilla Menaker (Philadelphia), Kim Mills (New York), Mark Mittelstadt (Des Moines), Roland Rochet (New York), Lee Siegel (Seattle), Marty Steinberg (Baltimore), Bill Vogrin (Kansas City)

1982 – Dorothy Abernathy (Little Rock), Al Behrman (Cincinnati), Tom Cohen (Jefferson City), John Epperson (Chicago), Ric Feld (Atlanta), Nick Geranios (Helena), Howard Gros (New Orleans), Robert Kimball (New York), Rob Kozloff (Detroit), Bill Menezes (Kansas City), David Ochs (New York), Cecilia White (Los Angeles)

1983 – Donna Cassata (Albany), Scott Charton (Little Rock), Sue Cross (Columbus), Mark Elias (Chicago), David Ginsburg (Washington), Diana Heidgerd (Miami), Sheila Norman-Culp (New York), Carol Esler Ochs (New York), Jim Reindl (Detroit), Amy Sancetta (Philadelphia), Rande Simpson (New York), Dave Skidmore (Milwaukee)

1984 – Owen Canfield (Oklahoma City), Wayne Chin (Washington), Jack Elliott (Oklahoma City), Kelly P. Kissel (New Orleans), Joe Macenka (Richmond), Eva Parziale (San Francisco), Walt Rastetter (New York), Keith Robinson (Columbus), Cliff Schiappa (Kansas City), David Sedeño (Dallas), Andrew Selsky (Cheyenne), Patty Woodrow (Washington)

1985 – Beth Grace (Columbus), Betty Kumpf Pizac (Los Angeles)

1986 – Joni Baluh Beall (Richmond), David Beard (Jackson), Tom Coyne (Columbia, SC), Dave DeGrace (Milwaukee), Alan Flippen (Louisville), Jim Gerberich (San Francisco), Howard Goldberg (New York), Mark Hamrick (Dallas), Sandy Kozel (Washington), Arlene Levinson (Boston), Robert Meyers (London), David Morris (Harrisburg)

1987 – Donna Abu-Nasr (Beirut), Dave Bauder (Albany), Chuck Burton (Charlotte), Beth Harris (Indianapolis), Lynne Harris (New York), Steven L. Herman (Charleston, WVa), Elaine Kurtenbach (Tokyo), Rosemarie Mileto (New York), John Rogers (Los Angeles)

1988 – Chris Carola (Albany), Peg Coughlin (Pierre), Kathy Gannon (Islamabad), Steve Hart (Washington), Melissa Jordan (Sioux Falls), Bill Pilc (New York), Kelley Shannon (Dallas)

1989 – Ted Bridis (Oklahoma City), Charlie Arbogast (Trenton), Ron Fournier (Little Rock)

1990 – Frank Fisher (Jackson), Dan Perry (Bucharest), Steve Sakson (Baltimore), Sean Thompson (New York)

1991 – Amanda Kell (Richmond), Santiago Lyon (Cairo), Lisa Pane (Hartford), Ricardo Reif (Caracas), Bill Sikes (Buffalo)

1992 – Kerry Huggard (New York)

1993 – Jim Salter (St. Louis)

1995 – Elaine Thompson (Houston), Donna Tommelleo (Hartford)

1996 – Patricia N. Casillo (New York)

1997 – J. David Ake (Chicago), Pamela Collins (Dallas), Madhu Krishnappa Maron (New York), Jim Suhr (Detroit), Jennifer Yates (Baltimore)

1998 – Alan Clendenning (New Orleans), Guthrie Collin (Albany)

1999 – Melinda Deslatte (Raleigh)

2000 – Gary Gentile (Los Angeles)

2004 - Jim Baltzelle (Dallas)

2005 – Ric Brack (Chicago)

2006 – Jon Gambrell (Little Rock)

Today in History: Aug. 7, 2024

By The Associated Press

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 7, the 220th day of 2024. There are 146 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Aug. 7, 1974, French highwire artist Philippe Petit performed an unapproved tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, over 1,300 feet above the ground; the event would be chronicled in the Academy Award-winning documentary film “Man on Wire.”

Also on this date:

In 1789, the U.S. Department of War was established by Congress.

In 1942, U.S. and other allied forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II.

In 1960, Cote d’Ivoire gained independence from France.

In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.

In 1971, the Apollo 15 moon mission ended successfully as its command module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared the Love Canal environmental disaster in Niagara Falls, N.Y. a federal health emergency; it would later top the initial list of Superfund cleanup sites.

In 1989, a plane carrying U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland, D-Texas, and 15 others disappeared over Ethiopia. (The wreckage of the plane was found six days later; there were no survivors.)

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard the oil-rich desert kingdom against a possible invasion by Iraq.

In 1998, terrorist bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

In 2007, San Francisco’s Barry Bonds hit home run No. 756 to break Hank Aaron’s storied record with one out in the fifth inning of a game against the Washington Nationals, who won, 8-6.

In 2012, to avoid a possible death penalty, Jared Lee Loughner agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison, accepting that he went on a deadly shooting rampage at an Arizona political gathering in 2011 that left six people dead and 13 injured, including U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords.

In 2015, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes was spared the death penalty in favor of life in prison after a jury in Centennial failed to agree on whether he should be executed for his murderous attack on a packed movie premiere that left 12 people dead.

Today’s Birthdays: Singer Lana Cantrell is 81. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is 80. Actor John Glover is 80. Actor David Rasche is 80. Former diplomat, talk show host and activist Alan Keyes is 74. Country singer Rodney Crowell is 74. Actor Caroline Aaron is 72. Comedian Alexei Sayle is 72. Actor Wayne Knight is 69. Rock singer Bruce Dickinson is 66. Marathon runner Alberto Salazar is 66. Actor David Duchovny is 64. Actor Delane Matthews is 63. Actor Harold Perrineau is 61. Jazz musician Marcus Roberts is 61. Country singer Raul Malo is 59. Actor David Mann is 58. Actor Charlotte Lewis is 57. Actor Sydney Penny is 53. Actor Greg Serano is 52. Actor Michael Shannon is 50. Actor Charlize Theron is 49. Rock musician Barry Kerch is 48. Actor Eric Johnson is 45. Actor Randy Wayne is 43. Actor-writer Brit Marling is 42. NHL center Sidney Crosby is 37. MLB All-Star Mike Trout is 33. Actor Liam James is 28.

Got a photo or story to share?

Connecting is a daily newsletter published Monday through Friday that reaches more than 1,800 retired and former Associated Press employees, present-day employees, and news industry and journalism school colleagues. It began in 2013. Past issues can be found by clicking Connecting Archive in the masthead. Its author, Paul Stevens, retired from the AP in 2009 after a 36-year career as a newsman in Albany and St. Louis, correspondent in Wichita, chief of bureau in Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Kansas City, and Central Region vice president based in Kansas City.

Got a story to share? A favorite memory of your AP days? Don't keep them to yourself. Share with your colleagues by sending to Ye Olde Connecting Editor. And don't forget to include photos!

Here are some suggestions:

- Connecting "selfies" - a word and photo self-profile of you and your career, and what you are doing today. Both for new members and those who have been with us a while.

- Second chapters - You finished a great career. Now tell us about your second (and third and fourth?) chapters of life.

- Spousal support - How your spouse helped in supporting your work during your AP career. 

- My most unusual story - tell us about an unusual, off the wall story that you covered.

- "A silly mistake that you make"- a chance to 'fess up with a memorable mistake in your journalistic career.

- Multigenerational AP families - profiles of families whose service spanned two or more generations.

- Volunteering - benefit your colleagues by sharing volunteer stories - with ideas on such work they can do themselves.

- First job - How did you get your first job in journalism?

- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.

Paul Stevens

Editor, Connecting newsletter

paulstevens46@gmail.com