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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Casinos in the northeastern U.S. are dealing with numerous challenges as they brace for the arrival of new competitors in New York City. A potential smoking ban in Atlantic City, an ongoing debate over whether internet gambling hurts or helps the bottom line of physical casinos, and the loss of business to illegal online operations were among the challenges identified Wednesday during a major casino conference in Atlantic City. Panelists at the East Coast Gaming Congress at the Hard Rock casino discussed turmoil in the industry, particularly as it prepares for the influx of three downstate New York casinos widely expected to redefine the regional gambling market. New York is in the process of choosing casino sites and preparing to respond to hundreds of questions from potential casino operators before it moves closer to awarding licenses. Mark Giannantonio, president of Atlantic City’s Resorts casino and of the Casino Association of New Jersey, said his city has “a two-year window” to prepare itself for the new competition from its northern neighbor. “We see New York gaming in general clearly as a threat,” he said, expecting stronger competition for customers from the region and from other countries who will choose to visit and gamble in New York. He also said New York casinos will affect competitors in eastern Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Giannantonio said Atlantic City needs to improve its cleanliness, infrastructure and public safety in order to meet the challenge of new competition. “Casinos can only do so much,” he said. “We provide the jobs, the capital. Let’s match the streets with the beautiful aspects of the ocean. Let’s take care of our homeless population once and for all. There needs to be an investment and programs that will take a homeless person from the streets or under the Boardwalk and get them the help they need.” Mayor Marty Small did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon. Stacey Rowland, chair of the New York Gaming Association, said the upcoming new casinos in her state are looking to capture gambling dollars currently going to other states. “Competition is a good thing,” she said. “The competition from New York City will be a motivation (for rivals) to step up.” Atlantic City also is facing a relentless push by casino workers who want to end smoking on the gambling floor. They have been urging lawmakers to pass a bill to ban smoking, and they recently filed a lawsuit to overturn a state law that exempts Atlantic City’s casinos from the state’s indoor clean air law. Giannantonio called a smoking ban “one of the greatest threats to our business right now.” He predicted it would lead to the loss of as many as 2,500 casino jobs and millions in lost state tax revenue. He supports a compromise proposal to allow smoking to continue away from table games and in areas where no employee would be forced to work. Casino workers reject those claims and say the gambling halls will do better financially by attracting non-smoking customers who now avoid them. “Casino executives keep making the same discredited claims and are promoting a false compromise that will only continue to force us, their own employees, to breathe toxic air at our jobs every day,” said Lamont White, a Borgata dealer and a leader of the employee non-smoking movement. “They don’t give a damn about the cancer and heart disease and stroke and COPD and countless other diseases that result from this unacceptable work environment that every other New Jersey worker doesn’t have to face.” Some states are taking a renewed look at internet gambling as a way to raise new revenue. It currently is legal in New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Giannantonio said online gambling has helped Atlantic City’s physical casinos. Resorts has a successful online arm, and it is affiliated with the DraftKings sportsbook. But Rob Norton, president of Cordish Gaming Group and the Live! casinos, including properties in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida, said internet casino gambling has had a detrimental effect on brick-and-mortar casinos. “It is cannibalizing,” Norton said. Speaking for the industry in general, he said, “The approach we’re taking right now is pitting ourselves against ourselves.” His viewpoint is disputed by others in the industry, who say they have seen internet gambling complement their brick-and-mortar casino businesses. “For New Jersey, it has been additive,” Giannantonio said. Resorts, he said, has successfully integrated its customer loyalty program across its physical and online arms. Online sports betting has been “a funnel for i-gaming” and in-person gamblers, he said. “We get a lot of people who bet sports online who come into our physical location to place a bet,” Giannantonio said. The panelists all mentioned illegal offshore gambling sites and land-based unlicensed and unregulated slot machines as another threat to the casino industry. ___ Follow Wayne Parry on X, formerly Twitter, at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BERLIN, Vt. (AP) — Hundreds of Vermont farms are still recovering from last July’s catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather as they head into this year’s growing season. Dog River Farm, in Berlin, Vermont, lost nearly all its produce crops in the July flooding. The farm removed truckloads of river silt and sand from the fields before another round of flooding in December washed away more precious soils, wiped out the farm’s garlic planted in late fall and left behind more silt and several giant holes in a field, said owner George Gross on Wednesday. “We had 15,000 garlic heads — bulbs growing here which is a significant amount of retail dollars,” he said pointing to a section of field. “And now they’re gone. They’re somewhere down along the Winooski (River).” Goat farmers Jeremy and Jennifer Leather lost straw bales near the river that were washed away in the July flooding and others were saturated and unusable, Jeremy said. Their hay also got filled with silt that they are still cleaning up. They’ve had to buy feed to supplement what the goats are eating, which has been costly and challenging, he said. A grassroots fundraising campaign called Dig Deep Vermont announced Wednesday that it’s giving out its first grants to 32 farms to help with some of those expenses. It estimated farms suffered around $45 million in losses statewide from the flooding, extreme weather and persistent rains. “The urgency around the need for feed and access to fields for spring planting has reached critical levels,” said Vermont Farm Bureau President Jackie Folsom, who said the campaign is being extended. While the grants ranging from $200 to $1800 won’t make farms whole, they hopefully will help pay some of their expenses, said Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts. “So maybe it’s going to put fuel in a tractor, maybe it’s going to buy seed, it’s going to buy fertilizer, maybe it’s going to pay for supplies. That’s what the goal of these private donations are,” Tebbetts said at a Statehouse press conference. “It’s not going to cover everything but it does give farmers a little bit of hope and it hopefully will pay a bill or two.” The losses have been staggering from the severe weather, he said. “They’re into the millions of dollars, whether it’s crop loss, equipment, debris that needs to be removed from fields, Tebbetts said. Sand and silt are sitting in farm fields and corn has not been harvested in some sections along Route 2 on the 36-mile (57-kilometer) stretch between Montpelier and St. Johnsbury, said Folsom. “The silt, they’re going to have to dig it up and move it out. And unfortunately, that’s on the farmers’ dime because they can’t put it back into the rivers, they can’t put it at the end of the fields for buffers. They have to remove that silt before they plant anything,” she said. Many of them will also have to test their fields for contamination. Gross said he doesn’t know what the season holds but for now, his anxiety level will be very high until the harvest is complete in mid- to late-November. “That’s a long to wait and a lot of work to put forward in hopes that you’re going to have a pay out but that’s farming,” he said. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kenneth Almons says he began a 23-year sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions — for armed robbery — stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later. Now 51, Almons told lawmakers Wednesday that he has worked hard and remained law-abiding since his release, and he wants to be able to vote. “It would mean I am no longer considered a nobody,” Almons said. “Because when you don’t have a voice, you’re nobody.” Mississippi is among the 26 states that remove voting rights from people for criminal convictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Mississippi’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit. Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for 10 felonies, including bribery, theft and arson. The state’s previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking. In 1950, Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Attorneys representing the state in one lawsuit argued that those changes “cured any discriminatory taint,” and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court agreed in 2022. To have voting rights restored, people convicted of any of the crimes must get a pardon from the governor or persuade lawmakers to pass individual bills just for them, with two-thirds approval of the House and Senate. Lawmakers in recent years have passed few of those bills, and they passed none in 2023. Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court said in June that it would not reconsider the 2022 5th Circuit decision. The same appeals court heard arguments on the other case in January and has not issued a ruling. In March, the Republican-controlled Mississippi House voted 99-9 to pass a bill that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights for anyone convicted of theft, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, forgery, bigamy or “any crime interpreted as disenfranchising in later Attorney General opinions.” The restoration would occur five years after conviction or after release from prison, whichever is later. Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, killed the bill when she didn’t bring it up for consideration before a March 21 deadline. In response to questions Wednesday, Hill told The Associated Press she blocked it because “we already have some processes in place” to restore voting rights person by person. Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Democrat from Columbus, led a House hearing Wednesday and said restoring voting rights “is a fundamental human rights issue.” “Let us remember that the fight for voting rights is a fight for justice, equality and democracy itself,” Karriem said. Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, served as an election commissioner before winning a House seat in 2019. She said a constituent called her upset one year because he went to his longtime precinct and his name had been removed from the list of registered voters. Summers found out the man had been convicted of a disenfranchising felony. Democratic Sen. Hillman Frazier of Jackson filed a bill to restore the man’s voting rights, and the Legislature passed it. But Summers said some 55,000 Mississippians with felony convictions remain disenfranchised. “It shouldn’t matter if you have a relationship with your legislator that you can get your voting rights restored,” Summers said. More than 50 bills have been filed this year to restore voting rights for specific people. Legislators could consider those until the end of the four-month session, which is set for early May. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of young dancers in white tutus and tightly coiffed hair gathered in New York’s Plaza Hotel on Wednesday to break the world record for dancing on pointe in one place. The spectacle was organized by Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet scholarship program that is celebrating its 25th anniversary with three nights of performances at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The dancers included students aged 9 to 19 who are competing for scholarships as well as professional dancers who are alums of the program. Tchaikovsky music played as the ballerinas stood on tiptoes and switched their weight rapidly from one foot to the other — a step called bourrée — for a full minute. Tina Shi, an adjudicator for Guinness World Records, announced the results: “353, that is a new Guinness world record! Congratulations!” The New York-based Youth America Grand Prix has operated the world’s largest student ballet scholarship competition since 1999. The previous record for ballerinas on pointe en masse was 306. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

A Republican lawmaker has signaled plans to mount another effort to limit diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Kentucky’s public universities after GOP supermajorities failed to resolve differences on the issue during the recently ended legislative session. Kentucky lawmakers will convene again in January, and state Sen. Mike Wilson said he hopes lawmakers use the coming months to craft another version of DEI legislation for the 30-day session in 2025. “It’ll be something that we’ll work on in the interim and hopefully come to some sort of agreement with the House,” Wilson said Tuesday during a news conference featuring Senate Republican leaders. Debates around DEI efforts on college campuses have played out in statehouses across the country this year. Republicans in at least 20 states have sought to limit such initiatives, claiming they are discriminatory and enforce a liberal orthodoxy. Alabama and Utah enacted anti-DEI laws this year, and a ban enacted in Texas last year has led to more than 100 job cuts on University of Texas campuses. In Kentucky, the issue generated contentious debates when the Senate and House passed different versions of anti-DEI bills. Opponents warned that proposed restrictions on campuses could roll back gains in minority enrollments and stifle campus discussions about past discrimination. State Sen. Gerald Neal, the top-ranking Senate Democrat, said Tuesday that anti-DEI efforts were “a shameless attempt to reverse the progress that our commonwealth has made.” Wilson, who is the Senate majority whip, sponsored the bill passed by chamber Republicans in February. It would have prohibited “discriminatory concepts” in non-classroom settings, such as training sessions and orientations, and would have barred schools from providing preferential treatment based on a person’s political ideology. It also would have prohibited requiring people to state specific ideologies or beliefs when seeking admission, employment or promotions. About a month later, the House stripped away the Senate’s language and inserted a replacement that took a tougher stance by also defunding DEI offices and officer positions. Wilson’s original bill didn’t call for dismantling those offices. Senate Republicans had concerns about portions of the House version, Wilson said Tuesday without offering specifics. Both versions died when the legislative session ended Monday night. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear denounced anti-DEI efforts last month while commemorating the 60th anniversary of a landmark civil-rights rally in Frankfort, the state’s capital city. “DEI is not a four-letter word,” Beshear said. “DEI is a three-letter acronym for very important values that are found in our Bible. Diversity, equity and inclusion is about loving each other. It’s about living out the Golden Rule. … Diversity will always make us stronger. It is an asset and never a liability.” With supermajorities in both chambers, Republicans can easily override the governor’s vetoes. Neal, who is Black, said Tuesday that supporters of the anti-DEI bills want to “suppress that part of history that makes them feel uncomfortable” instead of acknowledging and learning from the past. During the Senate debate in February, Wilson said his bill would counter what he called a broader trend in higher education toward denying campus jobs or promotions to faculty refusing to espouse “liberal ideologies fashionable in our public universities.” He said such practices extended to students and staff. “Diversity of thought should be welcomed in our universities and higher education,” Wilson said. “But we’ve seen a trend across the United States of forcing faculty, in order to remain employed, to formally endorse a set of beliefs that may be contrary to their own, all in violation of the First Amendment.” Looking ahead to renewed work on the issue, Wilson said Tuesday that there were portions of the House bill that GOP senators “thought we could live with,” without offering details. Republican Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer predicted Tuesday that GOP senators will reach out to House Republicans to try to strike an agreement on DEI legislation that he hopes lawmakers could take up early in next year’s session. Thayer is retiring from the Senate at the end of 2024. “They will be back here in eight months, essentially, and they’ve got that amount of time to try to knock out a compromise on the DEI issue,” Thayer said. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com