HOUSTON (KTRK) – On Saturday, an 8-year-old girl drowned after she was sucked into a pipe while she was swimming in a hotel pool.

It happened at the DoubleTree Hotel on the city’s northwest side.

The girl was initially reported missing, but after a search crew reviewed security footage, they found she went underwater and did not resurface.

That’s when they drained the pool and sent a camera almost 20 feet into one of the pool’s pipes.

“(It) appears right now the pump was put in there, and it was probably malfunctioning because of the open pipe that she ended up in was supposed to be pushing water out,” said Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch. “And right beside that pipe, there was another pipe that actually had a big plastic filter like screen on the front that’s supposed to be sucking water in. So I know there was one speculation last night from somebody that knows quite a bit and everything that that the pump was wired wrong. So it was sucking instead of pushing.”

The search crew said it took about 13 hours to recover the girl’s body.

An investigation is underway. The pool is temporarily closed.

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"The U.S. homeownership rate declined in the fourth quarter of 2023, sliding 0.3%from the third quarter to 65.7% at year’s end, according to the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey, as higher interest rates and a limited supply of inventory put homeownership out of reach for some buyers. The latest reading fell short of the 25-year average rate of 66.4%, with the less than 35 age group experiencing the largest quarterly decline in homeownership rate, at 0.6%."

But where shall we put alllllllllllllllllllll those wonderful ILLEGALS??

He’s headed to West Virginia
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Holy **** I am getting old.

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Let’s go get him

Just curious, does anyone in the ncca tournament run the motion offense like us? After watching all the games, I'm sadly convinced we'll never get far under Fran, he simply doesnt recruit the type of players needed to win. We'll beat bad/undisciplined teams but have no one that can win 1 on 1 or have the foot quickness to defend. We'll never be horrible but we'll never be great either.

Just since the market opened at 0830 sans BTC:

My Watchlist 3​

We're a women's wrestling school now.....

After watching most of games this week, it’s pretty evident basketball talent is down throughout the country. The blue bloods Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina are (as a whole) are weak. North Carolina ok. Also, the results have confirmed what I’ve said all this year: this may have been the worst the Big 10 has ever been. Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin….wow….very mediocre at best. Purdue and Illinois have looked good. I think the winner of the ISU-ILINOIS game makes it to the final four. The reason for this post is simple: the basketball, for the most part, has been painful to watch….so I’d rather spend my time on this forum….lol To add to the misery I’ll watch the Hawks tonight and just think: no wonder we got blown out by Purdue and Iowa State. Those teams play solid basketball….duh, like defense. Hmmm…what a novel idea, Fran.

I know they lost in double OT tonight but I am so envious of players on their roster. Very athletic, great defensive players, and fun to watch.

They had Creighton on the ropes and choked! Why the hell can Altman recruit those players year after year and Fran only gets tall, lanky, slow guards who can’t defend or slash!

WHO: Utah Utes (20-14, 9-11 Pac 12)
WHEN: 8:00 PM CT (Sunday, March 24, 2024)
WHERE: Jon M. Huuntsman Center (Salt Lake City, UT)
TV: ESPN2
RADIO: Hawkeye Radio Network (Gary Dolphin, Bob Hansen)
MOBILE: espn.com/app
ONLINE: espn.com/watch
FOLLOW: @IowaAwesome | @IowaHoops | @IowaonBTN
LINE: Utah -4.5
KENPOM SPREAD: Utah -4 (Utah 87, Iowa 83; Utah 64% chance of winning)

Iowa's journey through the NIT continues with a trip out west on Sunday night to face a Utah team that went 18-13 during the regular season this year and held off UC Irvine in the first round of the NIT earlier in the week. The Utes spent a lot of this season on or around the NCAA Tournament bubble, but losses in three of their final five regular season games (including a road sweep at Oregon State and Oregon at the end of the season) and a 1-1 showing in the Pac-12 Tournament left them on the wrong side of the bubble last Sunday.

Utah started the season well, going 9-2 in non-league play. The Utes picked up solid wins over BYU, Saint Mary's, and Wake Forest and their only losses were neutral court defeats to Houston and St. John's. The wheels fell off about halfway through the Pac-12 season; after going 5-3 to start league play, Utah lost five of six between January 24 and February 15. A 3-3 finish to Pac-12 action wasn't enough to fully right the ship.

Utah has been a volatile team this season -- the Utes got swept by Arizona State, one of the Pac-12's worst teams this season, but also took league champion Arizona to triple overtime (in an eventual losing effort). But the Utes have some talent and some matchups that could pose a big challenge for the Hawkeyes.

13 years ago, Iowa went out west to face a Pac-12 team on the road in the second round of the NIT. That opponent had a potent offense and didn't mind playing at a fast tempo, either (Utah averages 69.7 possessions per game this season and ranks 67th nationally in tempo). That team was Oregon and the Ducks scorched the Hawks 108-97 in a game that featured a blistering tempo and two red-hot offenses.

The vibe for this game feels a bit similar. Utah's offense isn't quite as efficient as that Oregon offense, but it's an offense with good ball movement (the Utes assist on 59.7% of their made field goals, which ranks 19th nationally) and the ability to shoot the ball well inside and out. The "inside" part of that equation could be particularly concerning for Iowa, given the fact that the Hawkeyes have been roasted by talented posts on a few occasions this season.

An Iowa win in this game probably comes down to two things: if Utah has an off night shooting the ball and if Iowa's own shooters are in good form.

MORE HERE:

....of himself on 60 minutes. Watch the online videos when they are posted

8pm ESPN
Utah -4.5
O/U 165.5

I think the session ends tonight with a 87-74 Utes victory.

My brother in law is retiring from the Navy after 30+ years of service. He is a Command Master Chief and currently stationed at the Naval War College in Newport, RI.

He's having a pretty big ceremony in May. I'd like to get him a nice gift. Any suggestions? He's not into golf or a big drinker. He served on a sub for probably 20 years, but has been in leadership development for the last part of his career, and is what he'll probably do in his post-Naval career.

Thanks!

How can Otzelberger win? He was horrible at UNLV.

What if we go back to Lickliter? We will be doomed.

How many tourneys in a row has ISU been in?

I hate the Cyclones and everyone who defends sticking with this coach.

The peace talks underway in Josh Paul’s classroom were doomed.
Israel was unyielding. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority traded accusations. Nobody paid attention to civic groups or tribal leaders. After two rounds of debate, the college students role-playing as negotiators were stuck with bleak prospects for the Gaza Strip.

The sole compromise was a watered-down rejection of “violence” that didn’t name perpetrators or victims.
“You’re the one group that got to some sort of agreement — by being so general that it was almost meaningless,” Paul said, to laughter from the students. “Congratulations, that’s how diplomacy works.”



That lesson in the frustration of Middle East policymaking came from bitter experience. Paul, 45, is a veteran civil servant who for more than a decade helped send weapons to foreign nations, including to Israel for the war it launched after Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostage during an Oct. 7 attack.
But on Oct. 18, when the death toll in Gaza had climbed past 2,000, Paul hit his breaking point. He announced his resignation from the State Department in a public LinkedIn post outlining concerns about U.S. weapons being used against Palestinian civilians. He described “rushing more arms to one side of the conflict” and other policies as unjust and “contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”
With those words, Paul had broken the ultimate taboo for a government official: publicly criticizing Israel, the top U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Four months later, he was on the wind-whipped plains of Iowa, leading a classroom simulation of the war that had cost him his State Department career.
Paul spent February teaching at Grinnell College, a tiny liberal arts school in the heart of Trump country, as his old life imploded and another took shape around his new identities as “dissident” and “whistleblower.” The brief exile gave him space to reflect on a question he’s wrestled with since his resignation: What, if any, was the impact?
Overnight, he had become radioactive in pro-Israel foreign policy circles. Prominent think tanks kept their distance. Some Senate staffers iced him out. Paul figured he’d have to look abroad for new work, maybe with defense firms in the Middle East or Europe.
“It is a third rail when you’re criticizing Israel and is, historically, career suicide,” Paul told The Washington Post during interviews in Iowa last month. “I thought I would get some expressions of support from friends and colleagues, and maybe a day or two of some sort of media coverage, and then I’d be looking for another job.”
The calculation changed, however, when Paul’s resignation letter went viral, boosted over several days by activist networks and social media.
Next came high-profile broadcast interviews — on CNN, “Democracy Now!” and “PBS NewsHour” — that racked up millions of views across platforms. A talk Paul gave at a D.C. restaurant known for supporting social-justice causes drew policy wonks and kaffiyeh-wearing activists who crammed into a main hall and two overflow rooms.



Strangers contacted him on LinkedIn — hundreds, then thousands, of messages that Paul categorizes by sender: government workers, veterans, Palestinians, Israelis, and people with no connection to the region who still felt compelled to write.
Paul allowed a Post reporter to skim through the messages, but asked that they not be quoted at length or the senders be identified out of privacy concerns. They contained unfiltered anger at Hamas and Israel, outrage and shame over the Biden administration’s response, and respect for Paul’s decision to take a stand when, as one person wrote, “the dialogue is uncomfortable and the stakes are immense.”
Accustomed to unseen, confidential work at the State Department, Paul said, he was overwhelmed by the response. His overflowing inbox signaled to him that “a conversation is bubbling up in America,” a nascent movement demanding a recalibration of U.S. policy as the death toll in Gaza soars past 32,000 — the majority of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The State Department did not respond to questions about Paul; previously, the department has declined to comment on the resignation, citing policy on discussing personnel matters.
Paul said he began to see a future where he remained in the United States, using his newfound platform in service of a lobbying effort to “rebalance” Middle East policy. He needed to hit pause and think strategically, he said, but that was difficult in the Washington fishbowl, where passersby had begun to recognize him from television.
When an invitation to visit Grinnell arrived, Paul said, it was the first — and, for weeks, the only — overture from a university as tensions over the war turned campuses into political battlegrounds.
He looked the school up on a map: an hour outside Des Moines. Perfect.
“It was a nice, out-of-the-way place where I could focus,” Paul said. “Theoretically.”

Rumbles of dissent​

For all the grass-roots support, Paul’s resignation did not spark a chain reaction.
More than five months into the war, only one other government official, Tariq Habash in the Education Department, has quit in a similarly public way. Defenders of the Biden administration’s Israel policy underline this to suggest that reports of internal strife over Gaza are overblown; one right-wing pundit accused Paul of having a “martyr complex.”
Some officials who have considered resigning say privately that they’re staying because they can better influence policy from inside, or because they’re worried about being replaced by people who will quash dissent and maintain the status quo. Others simply can’t afford it, saying they have family obligations and little savings.
Paul is divorced, financially sound, with no children at home — all factors he weighed in his decision. He also notes that he’s White, which he said means he’s been spared the online vitriol received by Habash, a Palestinian American presidential appointee.
The idea wasn’t to be “a pied piper,” Paul said, but he admitted to some frustration that others haven’t felt similarly compelled to leave. In Gaza, tens of thousands are dead. Homes, schools and hospitals are destroyed. Children have begun dying of malnutrition as top humanitarian officials warn of impending famine in what they call the broadest and severest food crisis in the world.
“I have asked myself, ‘What would it take if this isn’t it?’” Paul said.

His relationship with Tim Lester is definitely growing:

Netanyahu's Government continues to give Israel a black eye!:

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group.

“While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right over the Judea and Samaria area and the country in general,” Smotrich said Friday, referring to the territory by its biblical name, “we are promoting settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Still, Israel has used land orders like the one issued Friday to gain control over 16 percent of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank. The newly seized area includes parcels in the Jordan Valley and between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Keidar.


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The announcement came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the future of the war in Gaza. Blinken’s arrival followed meetings in Cairo with several Arab leaders, and amid calls from Democratic senators for President Biden to establish a “bold, public framework” for a two-state solution that recognizes a “nonmilitarized Palestinian state.”

Friday’s land order is particularly problematic for the prospect of a two-state solution, experts say.
“If Israel confiscates land around Jerusalem, all the way to the Dead Sea, there will be no future for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,” said Hamza Zubiedat, a land rights activist for the Ramallah-based Ma’an Development Center. “This is where a Palestinian capital was supposed to be located, according to the American and European talks.”



The land transfer will also cut across the West Bank, dividing the north and south.
“If the Israelis annex this area near Maale Adumim, it will be a catastrophe for Palestinians who live in the south,” Zubiedat said. “Palestinian traders, especially in the south, will be cut off, and it will become impossible to have any independent Palestinian ways of life.”




More than 40 percent of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers, according to the Israel-based rights group B’Tselem, and more than half-a-million Jewish residents now live in the West Bank. Israel’s government has also used incentive programs to move Jewish residents into West Bank settlements, where more than 200 settlements and unofficial outposts have fractured the Palestinian territory and displaced Palestinian residents. In recent years, the Housing Ministry has offered subsidized apartments in the West Bank through a lottery system.



Palestinians have little ability to stop the land transfers. After the 1967 war, Israel issued a military order that stopped the process of land registration across the West Bank. Now families lack the paperwork to prove that they have private ownership over their land. And tax records, the only other evidence of West Bank property rights, are not accepted by Israeli authorities.
In June, the Knesset waived a long-standing legal precedent that required the prime minister and the defense minister to sign off on West Bank settlement construction at every phase. Smotrich enjoys near-total control over construction planning and approvals in the West Bank, and approved a record number of settlements in 2023.
“Israel has reached the conclusion that they could get away with this huge land grab because of the lack of international action,” said Sarit Michaeli, international advocacy lead at B’Tselem. “There have been individual economic U.S. sanctions placed on violent settlers, but the greater violence of the occupation is this colossal land theft.”



Smotrich, a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, is a key leader in Israel’s settlement movement. Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, called the Friday land transfer announcement by Smotrich a “provocation,” but also the continuation of his pro-settler ideological project. “He entered the government with one overriding purpose: to annex all land conquered in 1967 and extend permanent Jewish sovereignty everywhere, no matter how and when it has to happen,” Scheindlin said. “The timing and provocation ahead of Blinken’s visit is a bonus.”
The Biden administration announced sanctions on two West Bank settler outposts earlier this month, the first use of such economic restrictions on Israeli outposts. While West Bank settlements are authorized by the Israeli government, outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law.

Is it just me or are women basketball players just getting more and more attractive?

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Quick preview and some info on visitors this weekend for Iowa spring football practice.

STORY:

Brock Heath took his first visit to Iowa this weekend. The three-star's roots go deep into the sport of football, and he's got some strong connections in Iowa City already -- but it won't be a cake walk to landing him.

STORY:

Instead of apologizing for her team’s part in that embarrasing fight, she has the nerve to tell reporters that she wishes Cardova would have pushed Angel Reese. WTF! That crazy bit&h is insane and not a good leader.

Don't wait for them to fall in your lap. Go get them. It's the only short-term solution. Next year will be more of the same otherwise. Other coaches will be doing it.