In 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam began to systematically retain a portion of the flow of the Colorado River. In essence, this was the birth of Lake Powell. Seventeen years later, in 1980, the lake reached its “full” capacity.

Hoover Dam, built in 1936, was the force behind the creation of Lake Mead. Powell is roughly 93% the capacity of Mead, and between the two lakes they have been a significant source for fresh water, hydropower and recreation for the people of the southwest.

Soon after that 1980 “full” date, the tandem of Mead and Powell gradually began diminishing in volume. The declining trend-line for each lake has been similar for nearly four decades; as a pair they are now less than half full. Clearly, the demand upon these lakes is exceeding their capacity.

Taking that ominous trend into consideration, it is understandable that the Colorado River falls short of reaching the Gulf of California by approximately 50 miles. Other than an intentional “pulse flow” in 2014, the river last reached the sea in 1998.

While living in Kanab, I attended an informational meeting regarding the Lake Powell Pipeline held at the Kane County Courthouse roughly five years ago. I had a conversation with one of the men explaining the proposal, and he cited the Colorado River Compact of 1922 as “justification” to build the pipeline. Without getting into the rainfall-snowfall-climate conditions of 1922 as a predictor for then-future moisture/water conditions, and the questionable 1922 forecasting accuracy (projections in population, agriculture, industry, per capita usage, etc.) as to “what the conditions would be 92-100 years later,” it is now apparent that 1922 compact was “considerably off the mark” for today’s situation.

While talking with that gentleman in the Kanab courthouse, I cited the degrading water conditions and I appealed to the obvious, that perhaps a wiser tactic would be for the major Colorado River stakeholders to meet, do a reset, and address the greater water needs for all the people in the entire southwest region. He said, “I am tribal by nature, and I want to take care of my St. George community, and that 1922 compact is legally on our side.” He was not open to my reasoning.

The Colorado-Powell-Mead situation has worsened since that meeting in Kanab. When one reflects as to what has happened during recent decades, it is clear if people continue their typical water behavior, the situation will only deteriorate.

That alone causes me to have deep concern for water of the southwest, but drawing another 77 million gallons daily from Lake Powell will only accelerate the already declining water volume. Yet there are people who believe spending $1.8 billion for the pipeline is a great idea. To my analytical thinking, if that pipeline were to cost nothing, building it would still be a mistake.

Lake Powell is going down. Lake Mead is going down. Population is going up. Water consumption is going up. Climate change has been, and will be, a detrimental factor. Per-capita water usage in St. George is excessive and there are little-to-no signs of meaningful conservation. All the indicators are pointed in the wrong direction. As the old saying goes, “The handwriting is on the wall.”

Perhaps one of the most significant examples of the mindset of those who support the Lake Powell Pipeline occurred in Kanab during 2019. That city’s officials voted to sell a portion of its drinking water to be used for a nearby sand mine (hydraulic fracturing industry). Those officials unanimously agreed to a 50-year contract to release a quantity of their sparse and precious high desert drinking water and, in unison with that vote, they understood the water would be used to “wash” the frac sand with toxic chemicals, creating the potential to contaminate the very aquifers from which they acquire their drinking water.

Not only did their decision defy common sense, but it imposed a reckless double whammy risk on their citizens. Such action is not only disturbing and perplexing, but it is emblematic of the caliber of thinking of those most likely to support the pipeline.

Conscientious leaders must employ unbiased and independent analytical scientists, to provide true guidance on how to best deal with our water needs. I believe the heart of the solution lies in “matters of water conservation,” not only for the Southwest, but for the entire nation. It is essential that we protect and sustain our stressed fresh water!

Neither 1922 thinking nor a pipeline is the answer.

Steve Hogseth, Menomonie, Wis., has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, worked in design and product management for companies including Cray Research and Silicon Graphics and lived in Kanab from 2011 to 2018.

Vasilios Priskos was “a true champion” of downtown Salt Lake City, so erecting a larger-than-life statue of the real estate developer was “not only fitting, it was appropriate,” said the city’s mayor, Jackie Biskupski.

In one of her last acts as mayor before her term ends Monday, Biskupski on Friday took part in the unveiling of an 8-foot bronze statue of Priskos, near the entrance of a walkway named after him that links Main Street to the McCarthey Plaza by the Eccles Theater.

Priskos, who died in 2017, was the founder of InterNet Properties and a major property owner and developer in downtown Salt Lake City. Priskos was an advocate for historical preservation and for downtown’s continued development.

The statue and walkway, Biskupski said, will be “a place for Vasilios’ spirit to be a part of the comings and goings of the city he loved and nurtured.”

In a statement, Priskos’ family called the statue “a tremendous honor for our family. … This statue represents the vibrancy of downtown, Main Street and our community at large. When people see this statue, we hope they think of Vasilios’ vision for downtown and the role our city plays on a national scale.”

Utah sculptor Daniel Fairbanks said it was “a great privilege” to create the sculpture, which depicts Priskos standing bolt upright, arms crossed and smiling slightly. “His contributions to the renaissance of downtown Salt Lake City are legendary," Fairbanks said, “and this monument will ensure that his memory endures for generations to come.”

Priskos was born in 1964 in Evia, Greece, and he and his family moved to America in 1966. The family settled in Salt Lake City and opened the Royal Eatery at the corner of Main Street and 400 South. That building, the former New Grand Hotel (and now an Apollo Burger franchise), was one of many locations Priskos later owned as founder and principal broker of InterNet Properties.

The properties Priskos handled included the Neumont University site at 143 S. Main in the former headquarters of The Salt Lake Tribune, and the One/Main Plaza, the office tower at 111 S. Main, next to the Eccles Theater.

Priskos died Oct. 9, 2017, at age 53, after a long battle with cancer.

The depth in Utah’s defensive backfield got a little thinner on Friday afternoon.

Junior nickelback Javelin Guidry announced via Twitter his intention to enter the 2020 NFL Draft. Guidry was twice an All-Pac-12 honorable mention selection as a nickelback for the Utes.

Guidry was earmarked as the lone returning starter on the backend of Utah’s secondary. He would have been a reasonable choice to play outside as a cornerback, potentially across from high-profile 2020 recruit Clark Phillips III. Instead, the nickelback spot is now up for grabs, and a lot of unproven young guys to vie for it.

pic.twitter.com/LvQBZW2QSH

— *Javelin K. Guidry (@JavKFootball28) January 3, 2020

Aside from Guidry, Utah was already losing a ton in its secondary with Jaylon Johnson, Julian Blackmon, Terrell Burgess, Josh Nurse and Tareke Lewis. Johnson previously declared for the NFL Draft and opted not to play in the Alamo Bowl.

In the Alamo Bowl against Texas, with the secondary banged up, Guidry had a tough time dealing with Longhorns star Devin Duvernay, who finished with three catches for 92 yards and a touchdown.

Postgame, Guidry was asked about the future of the secondary, specifically about the guys returning in 2020. His answer was essentially balking, which may have been a sign that something might be up with his own future.

“I don’t know,” Guidry said. “I’m just going to celebrate with the seniors tonight and just focus on them.”

The University of Utah had one day to prepare between Thursday’s win over Oregon State and Saturday’s visit from No. 4 Oregon.

How much one can get done in that amount of time, and how they get it all in, is a topic of debate. Larry Krystkowiak has been at this coaching thing for a while now, so the Utes head coach didn’t hesitate when asked what his plan was with such a quick turnaround.

Assistant coach Andy Hill had the Oregon State scouting duties ahead of Thursday’s 81-69 win over the Beavers, but assistant Tommy Connor had been working on an Oregon scout for about a week. When Thursday’s game ended, Krystkowiak had an extensive video edit on the Ducks at his disposal.

“There’s certain teams in the league where you might have a new coach, new styles, but [Oregon head coach] Dana [Altman] has been doing it an awful long time,” Krystkowiak said. “They don’t change a whole lot, it’s a lot of similar stuff; but we’ve struggled with Oregon in certain capacities, dealing with pressure.”

On Friday afternoon, the Utes met at the practice facility for what Krystkowiak terms an “after-action review,” which is essentially decompressing and going over Thursday’s game, and a “before-action review,” which is a look ahead to Saturday.

In terms of actual practice, no coach worth his salary puts his kids through a full workout on a one-day turnaround. Instead, the Utes were slated to go over a few key Oregon-related items, then watch more film. Utah will shootaround Saturday morning ahead of the 3 p.m. tip-off.

“It’s going to be a lot of what’s between the ears,” said Krystkowiak, who pointed out the team’s fall GPA of 3.2 as a factor in them being locked in mentally on the quick turnaround. “This brings in all the different facets of getting ready for a game, and this is one where you have to be really sharp and you have to absorb the instructions. We can’t have any daydreaming.

“We’re not asking you to do a whole lot in the physical sense, but you better bring your brain.”

With a No. 4 ranking and the Pac-12’s best resume to this point, Oregon’s trip to Utah already held plenty of intrigue. Then, the Ducks’ lifetime losing streak at Colorado continued on Thursday via a 74-65 loss to the Buffaloes in Boulder.

The possibility of the Ducks starting 0-2 in league play once felt unrealistic, even with the struggles at Colorado, but now that feels very real if Utah comes out and plays at a high level. At 10-3 with a NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) of 50 through Thursday, that has been the case more times than not this season.

“They’re a high-octane group, I think on both ends of the floor,” Krystkowiak said. “They put pressure on you with different full-court-type of presses. Offensively, it really starts with [Payton] Pritchard, and they have a bunch of stars in the recruiting circle. High-flying guys, high-energy guys.”

“It’s going to come down to a lot of 1-on-1 defense. You have to guard your guy.”

The proposal to allow opponents of LGBTQ marriage and ordination to split from the United Methodist denomination and form their own group is “probably the best solution at this point,” Utah’s Rev. Rusty Butler said Friday.

Powerful representatives of traditional and progressive wings of the church have been meeting for several months and concluded it would be best to divide into separate denominations, said Butler, pastor at the 600-member Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, and “made a unanimous decision.”

If the proposal is approved at the faith’s General Conference in May, local congregations can choose to remain with the United Methodist denomination, which has approved same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. Those who oppose the positions can leave, taking their congregations, pastors and buildings with them to form a new group.

“For me, it is a happy day because the issue is semi-settled,” Butler said. “It is the best thing for churches like Christ United.”

His LGBTQ-friendly congregation is expected to stay with the United Methodists. Still, the pastor has empathy for colleagues who are “personally progressive but whose churches want to be conservative.”

The system going forward, he said, is “going to be messy.”

The Rev. Elizabeth McVicker — who pastors at two other LGBTQ-welcoming congregations, historic First United Methodist Church in downtown Salt Lake City and tiny Centenary United Methodist Church a few miles away — also applauds the move.

“I am in favor of the proposed agreement because it is supported by a large cross section of various stakeholders and allows a way forward from the intractable division within the United Methodist Church,” McVickers wrote in an email. “The protocol would enable the churches and pastors, who do not support same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ pastors, to leave the United Methodist Church and form a new denomination.”

At the same time, she said, it “would allow those who remain to rebuild and restore the core ethos of the Methodist approach to theology, which stems from gracious inclusion.”

McVickers is “hopeful,” she said, “that the General Conference delegates, who are the primary decision-makers in this matter, will approve the proposal.”

If it passes, the Rev. Marv Vose, the faith’s district superintendent over Utah and parts of Colorado, doesn’t expect any of the Beehive State’s 21 United Methodist congregations to withdraw.

“I think they would all stay,” Vose said. “They’re pretty solid.”

It is not a done deal, though.

“There is still a great deal of uncertainty,” he said. “Even if this were to pass at General Conference in May, it would still have to pass constitutional muster. If constitutional amendments are required, a two-thirds majority must approve at General Conference and across the entire church. That is a very high standard.”

Yet, Vose sees the agreement as “a valiant attempt to separate in a graceful and orderly fashion.”

He is “thankful” for that, he said, “but there is much to be done before it can be successful.”

Plain City • Talmage Mitchell still remembers a time he and three friends played against Dallin Hall. It was well before all five were teammates on the Fremont High School boys basketball team.

Mitchell, Tige Voorhees, Mitch Stratford and Harrison Stimpson — then in first or second grade — all played on the same Select AAU team. And they all rued the day Hall was on the opposite side of the court.

“He ate our lunch,” Mitchell recalled.

Hall is on their side now, leading the Silverwolves in scoring and assists as the team’s senior point guard. Behind his leadership and unselfish play, Fremont has started the season 9-0 (1-0 in 6A Region 1) and is ranked atop the classification’s RPI.

Hall is averaging 21.4 points and 7.6 assists per game on 49.6% shooting. He is a 3-star recruit, per 247Sports, and has yet to commit to a university for the 2020-21 season.

But it’s not only Hall that has the Silverwolves howling in unison. When asked what the driving force has been behind the undefeated start to the 2019-20 season, several players say it has nothing to do with basketball. Instead, it’s the bond created off the court that started at elementary-school age.

Nine of the 12 players on Fremont’s roster are seniors. Seven of those — Voorhees, Hall, Stimpson, Mitchell, Stratford, Baylor Harrop and Kipp Calder — played on the same club team during their elementary school years. The other two seniors, Bridger Smith and Judd Belnap, became acquainted with the seven during middle school.

Because so much of the team has that history, playing basketball together feels like second nature.

“A lot of times it just feels like we’re playing in the offseason just going to someone’s church and playing basketball,” Mitchell said. “It doesn’t ever feel like there’s these huge stakes. It feels like we’re just playing with the boys, just hanging out.”

This year, however, there may actually be huge stakes. Despite winning their region two years in a row, the Silverwolves have bowed out of the state tournament early. They lost in the semifinals last season, the quarterfinals in 2017-18 and the first round in 2016-17.

The group of seniors collectively believe that this could be the year they win it all. Harrop said there’s a sense of urgency around the team this season to do just that.

“This is our time,” Harrop said. “This is our last chance. … We’re going to do everything we can to be able to achieve that goal.”

So far, Fremont has made the case that it is worthy of at least making it to the 6A state championship game. In its 9-0 start, six of those games have been won by double digits, likely because the Silverwolves like to shoot 3-pointers. They have attempted more shots from beyond the arc than inside it since so far this season.

Coach Corey Melaney said Fremont’s penchant for long-distance shots is by design. He has the team practice drills that involve one player driving down the lane and then passing it to a shooter. Many of his set plays are also designed to end in a 3-point shot.

While some players — such as Voorhees and Hall, Mitchell said — have always been proficient outside shooters, others have had to develop that skill over the years. Melaney said this year’s team is at a higher level than previous iterations.

“We’ve never had a shooting team like this,” Melaney said.

The statistics confirm Melaney’s impression. Three players are shooting at least 40% from beyond the arc on at least 45 attempts. Hall has shot the most 3s (63), and is shooting 35%.

Part of the reason for Fremont’s good shooting is the team’s overall unselfishness. Several players said that starts with Hall, who has a high usage rate and is relied on to make the correct reads throughout the game.

“He makes the game easy for us,” Voorhees said of Hall. “We trust him that he’ll make plays and he’ll make the right play for sure.”

Hall said that his father taught him from an early age to read the defense and make the correct pass if that’s what was available to him. That lesson has certainly stuck. In Fremont’s most recent win over Bonneville, Hall amassed 12 assists to go with his 18 points.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the team,” Hall said. “So if I’m needed to score and shots aren’t falling from the rest of our guys, I’ll go score. But if the defense is helping because they’re going to close on me, I’m just going to make the right play and kick it out.”

Hall said he has narrowed his choices of schools to four. He has offers from several universities, including Brigham Young, Weber State and Utah State. He said he thinks about his recruitment constantly, and that sometimes it gets “tough.”

Calder said he has a few classes with Hall and asks him every day about his recruitment, trying to get any sliver of information he can about where Hall might be leaning. Mitchell asks him often as well.

But Hall has kept that information close to the vest.

“He’s not budging,” Calder said. “He’s not telling us, anyway.”

Mitchell said he and Stimpson want Hall to attend Utah State because that’s most likely where other Fremont players will end up attending. Calder, however, thinks BYU would make sense due to Hall’s membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hall said once he makes his decision, he will commit right then and there instead of waiting for the April signing period. But until then, he’s trying to focus on the Silverwolves and their quest for a state title.

After every huddle, the entire Fremont team yells, “State champs!” Hall believes it’s in the cards for the Silverwolves.

“We all believe it’s our year,” Hall said.

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Sunday, Dec. 5, 2019. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/30/bagley-cartoon-warriors/" target=_blank><u>Warriors for Democracy</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/27/bagley-cartoon-baring/"><u>Baring Witness</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/23/bagley-cartoon-santas/"><u>Santa’s Helper</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/21/bagley-cartoon-matter/"><u>A Matter of Scale</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/19/bagley-cartoon/"><u>Impeachment Pout</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/19/bagley-cartoon-trolling/"><u>Trolling for Christmas</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/17/bagley-cartoon-oh-my-heck/"><u>Oh My Heck!</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/17/bagley-cartoon-republican/"><u>Republican Rules of Impeachment</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/14/bagley-cartoon-you-might/"><u>You Might Have a Problem If...</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/12/bagley-cartoon-make/"><u>Make American Greta Gain</u></a>

Want more Bagley? Become a fan on Facebook.

Kearns • To say Ryan Pivirotto experienced a letdown after the 2018 Olympic games would be a gross mischaracterization. It felt more akin to a freefall.

The only USA Speedskating athlete on the Olympic team who didn’t get to compete — he served as an alternate in the men’s relay and the 1,000 meters — Pivirotto experienced a crisis of confidence in PyeongChang, South Korea, and beyond. Ten times last season, at least, the 24-year-old said he entertained notions of packing away his skates.

“I was asking myself, ‘Am I really that good? I can’t even skate at the Olympics,’” Pivirotto said. “I’ve asked that a lot: ‘Is this all I can really do? Am I done?’ I asked myself that a lot last season because I just wasn’t good. I still had the baggage from the Olympics.”

Yet Pivirotto showed up at the Utah Olympic Oval on Friday for the first day of the US Speedskating Short Track National Championships with basically just his carry-on. Propelled by an improved attitude and increased confidence, he won three heats and put himself in position to claim a World Championship berth. The two men and two women who accumulate the most points by the time the last ice shavings are swept off the Oval on Sunday will represent the United States at the ISU World Championships in Seoul, South Korea, on March 13-15.

Ryan Pivirotto races his 500.meter heat race at the @USSpeedskating short track national championships. It gets pretty exciting about halfway through. pic.twitter.com/qk4TsnpLp8

— Julie Jag (@julie_jag) January 3, 2020

Pivirotto believes he has a shot at a spot, which marks a serious turnaround from his outlook heading into nationals last season.

“He didn’t get to skate [in the Olympics] and that had a big, big effect on him,” Wilma Boomstra, who was hired as the short track coach for USA Speedskating shortly after the 2018 Olympics. “I think he was just lost a little bit for a little while.”

After that national championships, held almost exactly a year ago at the Oval, Pivirotto and Boomstra sat down for a long talk turned therapy session. Pivirotto unloaded on his new coach all his pent up emotions about his unfulfilling Olympic experience and his frustration over not making the 2018-19 World Cup team. She, in turn, offered him a sounding board and a shot of confidence.

That’s what exactly what Pivirotto had been missing. Shortly after, his coaches said he began smiling at practice again.

“I think my talk with Wil was the thing that really was the turning point. I was able to bury all my doubts, all my grudges, everything that happened to me at the Olympics and that season,” Pivirotto said. “I was able to bury it and just forget about it, or not have it affect me as a skater.”

In addition to visceral results, Pivirotto has hard evidence of his turnaround. He earned his way back onto Team USA’s Fall World Cup team in October by winning both the 1,000 and 1,500 in the qualifier. The next month in Japan, he achieved his best World Cup result of his career in the 1,000 when he placed 11th, missing the semifinals by .07 seconds. The result bumped him up to No. 29 on the circuit in the event, one position behind top American Aaron Tran.

View this post on Instagram

This past weekend I not only made the US world cup Team but I finished 1st overall. It feels emotional for me to be back to where I was because last year was the worst me anyone could have seen. My mindset wasn't good and it took me months to accept where I was in order for me to start growing and getting stronger again. I'm thankful for my amazing team and coaches to help me through that point and to help me get to a place where I am stronger than I have ever been in my career. So to all of you, thank you. I can't wait to see what I can do at the international level again and I cannot wait to see what Team USA can do. 📸:Thomas Di Nardo @usspeedskating @underarmour @kttape #usspeedskating #underarmour #teamusa #kttape #onehanddown #skatefastturnleft #speedskating #sickpivs

A post shared by Ryan Pivirotto (@ryanpivirotto) on Oct 7, 2019 at 9:32am PDT

Boomstra expects even more from him. She said she would like to see him reach at least the B final in the last two World Cup races of the season, in Germany and the Netherlands in February. She also understands it will take him time to get there — just as it has taken time to climb back up from rock bottom.

He understands that, too. But now armed with Boomstra’s faith and support and bolstered by his growing self-confidence, Pivirotto is no longer is packing a parachute.

“My goal is to be the best,” he said, matter-of-factly.

It’s a big goal — even bigger than reaching the 2022 Olympics in Beijing (and skating in them). And he’s chasing it down just as he does his competition: at top speed.

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• User-Generated Content. “User-Generated Content” refers to information that you provide when you interact with our Services that may be associated with your profile, such as comments on articles, voting preferences for projects and features, or other types of voluntarily submitted information. You can provide User-Generated Content through posting comments on interactive webforms or through communications with Tribune staff (e.g., a letter to the editor, or an email to a reporter regarding an article).

• Usage Information. “Usage Information” means information that tells about your interactions with and use of our website. We automatically collect this information from you whenever you use the Services. Usage Information includes your IP address, which may indicate the location from which you are accessing our website. Usage Information also might include information about the device(s) you use to access our website. One of the primary reasons we collect Usage Information is implement our limited free article access program and paywall requirements. Users who do not subscribe to the Tribune may view a limited number of full articles each month. After they view the maximum number of free articles allowed, a subscription is required to gain full access to additional articles. Maintaining the ability to encourage subscription through limited access is absolutely critical to remain viable. Usage Information also enables us to, among other things, improve our Services and your experience, see which areas and features of our Services are popular and count visits, administer our website, track how you engage with our websites and other Services, learn about the systems, browsers, and apps you use to interact with our Services, and gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. This includes how often the Services are used, the events that occur within the application, aggregated usage, performance data, any exceptions that occur within the software and the source from which the application was downloaded.

• Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies. Usage Information is gathered primarily through the use of cookies similar technologies, such as web beacons. Cookies are pieces of information or data sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies tell our computer that you’ve visited before and can help to make your visit more personal so you don’t have to re-enter information on a return visit. Certain cookies – known as “session cookies” – keep track of your activities during a particular visit so that your experience with our websites can be enhanced and unified, rather than disjointed. “Persistent cookies” track a user over time and allow us to implement our limited free article program. Cookies also allow us to count the number of unique and return visitors who use our website. Web beacons are web page elements that can recognize certain types of information on your computer or mobile device, such as the time and date you viewed a page, which emails are opened, which links are clicked, and similar information.

Information that may be collected by cookies and web beacons when you use the Services may include, without limitation:

• web pages you visit;

• date and time of your visit to or use of the Services;

• usage and activity data related to the Services;

• websites you visit before or after visiting the Services;

• browser type;

• Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer or mobile device to the Internet;

• your computer or mobile device and connection information, such as your browser type and version, operating system, and platform; and

• your device identifier.

Some components of our Services – including cookies or other tracking technologies – are delivered through service providers. These include content providers, application providers, and platforms that help us provide limited free use of our Services and administer our paywall program. These may also include advertisers, ad networks, and ad servers. This practice allows us and other websites to show you products that might be of interest to you. Although we do not receive information from these sources about you, these sources may use cookies or other tracking technologies to develop a profile of you that includes data about your behaviors and activities from our Services and others to provide interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content. Such advertising and content are clearly marked so that if you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you can contact the responsible provider directly.

The information collected through cookies includes standard information from your browser, your IP address, and the actions you take including the pages you view and the links you click. These cookies do not necessarily personally identify you and can be controlled in your Internet browser including the “Do Not Track” option. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can reset your browser to notify you when you’ve received a cookie or, alternatively, to refuse to accept cookies. It is important to note that you may not be able to use certain features like checking out (and participate in certain offerings) on our website if you choose not to accept cookies. You can read more about this type of data-driven marketing and your options for opting-out of such marketing on the Network Advertising Initiative website at https://www.networkadvertising.org.

We also use the services of Piano, which allows us to provide non-subscribers with a limited amount of content. Piano’s use of information capable of identifying you that it collects through supporting our Services is limited to providing its services to us. Piano’s privacy notice, available at https://piano.io/privacy-policy/, provides further information about how Piano uses information.

5. How We Use The Information We Collect

We may use information collected from or about you for any of the following purposes:

• developing, providing and improving the SL Trib products and Services;

• assisting with fulfillment of product orders;

• managing and verifying your account and the identity of users of the Services;

• contacting you when necessary about your account or your use of the Services;

• sending you information and promotional materials about our products and Services as well as our company in general;

• responding to support requests;

• maintaining records;

• conducting internal reviews of our Services to help us better understand visitors’ and customers’ uses of our Services;

• protecting the security and integrity of our Services;

• complying with court orders, legal process and third-party requests, and to enforce our Terms of Service and this Notice; and

• any other legal, business or marketing purposes that are not inconsistent with the terms of this Notice.

SL Trib also uses your Personal Data for interest-based advertising, retargeting, and contextual advertising. Interest-based advertising involves the collection of data across different web domains so we can deliver ads that are tailored to your interests. Our retargeting practices allow SL Trib to show you products we think you would be interested in based on your activity on the Services. Contextual ads are customized based on the content you are viewing at any particular time. Again, you can read more about this type of data-driven marketing or to opt-out on the Network Advertising Initiative website, http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp. For additional information about disabling cookies, visit: www.aboutads.info/choices.

We may combine information we collect about you through the Services with other information about you that we receive from third-party sources. By way of example and not limitation, we may use a change of address or other list service to ensure that our records for your account are accurate.

6. How We May Share Your Information with Other Parties

We may share the Personal Information collected through your use of the Services with service providers and other parties, as described below:

• Our Service Providers. As noted above, we rely on service providers to run our organization, including the operation of our website and limited free article access program. We may share your Personal Data with our third-party distributors, vendors, suppliers and others who provide services to us or on our behalf, such as operating and supporting the Services, hosting the Services, providing payment processing services, performing marketing or consulting services, and with processing and fulfillment functions. Usage Information is automatically provided to the services providers that power our website and help us administer the limited free article access program, and they are restricted from using information that could identify a particular user or household outside of the provision of services to us. Similarly, we may share your Personal Data with project creators, who may use the information to fulfill product orders, develop and improve their products, and contact you about product orders, future products, or their company in general.

• Public Content. If you post comments, images, and other content to a project page, that information (associated with your user name) will be publicly viewable.\

• Third-Party Analytics Provers. We may share your information and Personal Data with our advertising and analytics partners, such as Google Analytics. The privacy policy of these providers applies to their collection, use and disclosure of your information. These third parties may combine your information with the information of other consumers for purposes of conducting these studies and/or analytics. You can learn more about Google Analytics’ processing of your personal information at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

• Our Affiliates. We may share some or all of your information with our subsidiaries and corporate affiliates, joint venturers, or other companies that are or may become under common control with us. We will require these entities to comply with the terms of this Notice with regard to their use of your information.

• Transfer or Assignment in Connection with Business Transfers or Bankruptcy. In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy or other sale of all or a portion of our assets, we may transfer the personal information we hold to a successor business. Except as otherwise ordered by a court or required by law, the use and disclosure of all transferred user information will be subject to this notice. However, any information you submit or that is collected after this type of transfer may be subject to a new privacy policy adopted by the successor entity.

• Response to Subpoenas, Court Orders, Third Party Requests or Protection of Our Rights. We may disclose your information to government authorities or third parties if:

• you have given us permission to share your information;

• we are required to do so by law, or in response to a subpoena or court order;

• we believe in our sole discretion that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect against fraud, or to protect our property or other rights, or those of other users of our Services, third parties, or the public at large, or to resolve or avoid disputes; or

• we believe that you have abused our Services through conduct that violates applicable laws or our Terms of Service.

7. Your Choices

We provide the opportunity to opt out of receiving communications from us and our partners when we request information about you. In addition, you may unsubscribe or opt out of receiving communications from us by clicking the unsubscribe link on marketing communications you receive. You may not opt out of email that we need to send to you regarding your account and use of our Services.

You may also change certain details in your profile by logging in and revising or deleting your account information.

You may have the right to access the personal information we collect about you or to request the correction of any errors in that information. For details, please contact us at the address above.

8. California Privacy Rights

A. We Do Not Sell Personal Information

We provide personal information collected from customers under strict restrictions to our service providers. Our service providers are restricted from making use of customer information outside of providing services to us.

B. California Residents’ Rights of Access to Specific Information

California residents have the right to request that we disclose certain information to them about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Consumer Rights, below), we will disclose to you:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you.

• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.

• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.

• The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.

• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you.

C. Deletion Request Rights

California residents have the right to request that we delete any of your personal information that we collect from them, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Consumer Rights, below), we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

• Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.

• Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.

• Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.

• Exercise of free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.

• Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).

• Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.

• Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.

• Comply with a legal obligation.

• Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

D. The Right to Opt-Out – The Right to Stop the Sale of Personal Information

California residents have the right to opt out of any sale of your information to a third party, i.e., to prevent a transfer of information to a third party that is not restricted in certain ways from making use of the information. But as we explained above, we do not sell your information.

E. Exercising Consumer Rights

To exercise the rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by one of the following methods:

• Emailing us at webmaster@sltrib.com;

• Calling us at 801-257-8742; or

• Writing to us at Salt Lake Tribune, Attn: Privacy Office, 90 S. 400 W., Suite 700, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

You may also use this webform to submit a request.

We are also in the process of securing a toll-free number to handle privacy-related inquiries. When we have this capability, we will update this Policy.

Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period.

To verify the identity of an individual making a request, a two-step process will need to be completed. A verifiable consumer request must:

• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

• Separately provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.

Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

F. Response Timing and Format

We will endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Any disclosures we provide will cover only the 12-month period preceding the verifiable consumer request’s receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

G. Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.

• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.

• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.

• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

However, we may offer you certain financial incentives permitted by the CCPA that can result in different prices, rates, or quality levels. Any CCPA-permitted financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to your personal information’s value and contain written terms that describe the program’s material aspects. Participation in a financial incentive program requires your prior opt in consent, which you may revoke at any time. However, we do not currently provide any financial incentives.

H. Shine the Light Disclosure

Under California Civil Code sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice that identifies the categories of Personal Data we share with affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes, and provides contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please write to us at the address at the top of this privacy notice.

9. How We Protect Your Information

We have implemented commercially reasonable measures designed to secure personal information from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. However, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure and we cannot guarantee the security, integrity, or privacy of information exchanged between us. As we state in our terms of service, we do not assume any responsibility or liability beyond what is imposed on us by law for the security of personal information transmitted via the Internet.

10. How You Can Protect Yourself

Even the best policy can’t protect your online privacy and security in all circumstances. Unscrupulous advertisers, hackers, and scam artists are constantly searching the Internet looking for new targets. Your best protection is to understand the limits to privacy on the internet and use common sense in all of your on-line activities.

Be aware that email is an inherently insecure form of communication. Remember that third parties are sometimes able to illegally intercept your unencrypted messages, including online greetings.

Anytime you visit a chat room or post a message to an online bulletin board, your email address can be accessed by advertisers looking to compile lists for unsolicited commercial email (also known as spam). Be sure that you only disclose your email address in circumstances in which it is safe to do so. Beware of scams in which persons unknown to you request your screen name, password, or credit card information. Make sure you verify the identity of anyone asking for personal information. Always monitor your children’s online activities and educate them as to the rules for safe Internet use.

11. No Use by Children

We do not knowingly collect contact information from children under the age of 13 without verifiable parental consent. If we become aware that a visitor under the age of 13 has submitted personal information without verifiable parental consent, we will promptly delete the information.

12. Changes to This Privacy Notice

We may change this notice from time to time. If we decide to make a material change in this notice, we will post it on this page. Your continued use of our Services after the posting of changes to this notice will mean you accept these changes. In some cases, we may attempt to contact you through an email or other address you have provided, so we can give you choices about our using your information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection. If we make any material changes in our privacy practices that affect personal information already in our systems, we will apply those changes to that older information only with your consent or as otherwise allowed by law.

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I. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Notice or our use of the information we collect from you in connection with the Services, email us at webmaster@sltrib.com.
Telephone is (801) 257-8742.

Address:
The Salt Lake Tribune
90 South 400 West, Suite 700
Salt Lake City, Utah
84101

Ten booming years in Utah has resulted in … more.

There are more people and that means houses cost more. The state’s biggest tourist sites are more crowded than ever. More teens are puffing on a vape pen, though was vaping even a thing 10 years ago?

Salt Lake Tribune reporters are telling the story of the 2010s through numbers that show big changes in our state. There’s far too much that happens in 10 years to cover it all, so we’re focusing on these areas — people, the economy, health and the environment.

Read about what those changes were here.

Looking back at the 2020s from our vantage point in 2030, the first great event was the complete destruction of Donald Trump’s Republican Party. As the former Republican consultant Mike Murphy had noticed, there were roughly 300 state and federal elections during the Trump years and Republicans did horribly in most of them. The 2020 vote was a continuation of that trend. Trump’s landslide defeat left him humiliated, and the Republicans lost their Senate majority.

Trump cried fraud and tried to whip up his followers, but they turned their backs. He went from idol to scapegoat in an instant. It seemed they could forgive him everything but losing. Many temporarily retreated from political life, the way evangelical Christians did after the ignominy of the Scopes trial.

President Joe Biden faced an interesting dynamic in his party. The political power was with moderates. The intellectual power was with the left. People of color, whose views were largely more moderate, became the crucial swing faction.

As president, Biden resisted the interest groups that wanted him to address health care first. Instead, he did child and earned-income tax credits, infrastructure, expanded early childhood education, expanded prison reform, and so on — what some writers called “reparations by any other name.” He gave regulatory czar Elizabeth Warren a special portfolio to take on Big Tech.

The major events of the decade were cultural, not political. The Trump era had witnessed a crisis of connection at the bottom of society and a crisis of authority at the top. Social repair was the top order of the day once a new president took office.

The first whiff of the cultural restoration was the “Accountability Clubs” that spread across the nation’s campuses. College students realized that America stinks at accountability. Either there is no accountability (Wall Street after the financial crisis) or people have their lives destroyed for a “problematic” tweet.

The Accountability Clubs bore the motto “Truth and Mercy.” Students wanted to restore a culture in which facts mattered. They were also searching for a way to judge others in a graduated and humane manner, allowing for repentance, forgiveness and restoration. Marshall McLuhan once remarked that “moral indignation is a technique used to endow an idiot with dignity.” Suddenly indignation, the keystone emotion of the Trump years, was lame. Empathy made a comeback.

The second cultural trend of the decade was the rise of the urban church. Suburban megachurch attendance fell, because the pastors had disgraced themselves under Trump. But suddenly there was a surge in church plants in places like Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Chicago and San Francisco, as highly educated people found homes for their spiritual longings.

The churches were liturgically highly charismatic (Bethel music) and highly universalistic and intellectual (Richard Rohr). Their politics were an odd mix — pro-LGBTQ, pro-life, active on climate change, pro-animal rights (one of the signature moral causes of the decade). The religious left gained on the religious right.

At the same time, the racial justice conversation went intimate. America is involved in a multigenerational process of truth and reconciliation. In the teens, the truth-telling had generally revolved around historic events — slavery, lynching, redlining. In the 2020s, a series of writers, artists and directors gave us vivid descriptions of the subtleties of contemporary black life.

The profusion of video streaming networks allowed a new generation of artists to take audiences inside the psychological lives of people of color. These artists realized that structural change would happen when people learned to see one another whole.

The most important cultural change came to be known as the Civic Renaissance. During the first two decades of the century, hundreds of thousands of new civic organizations came into being — healing political divides, fighting homelessness, promoting social mobility and weaving communities. But these organizations were small. They did not grow into the big national chapter-based structures that had repaired America’s social fabric a century earlier — the YMCA, the Rotary, the Boy Scouts.

By the 2020s, philanthropists and community builders realized the only way to change culture and weave the social fabric was by creating an AFL-CIO of civil society, with big national voices and large, decentralized national organizations so that people across America had easy and practical pathways to get involved in community revival.

In the 2010s, it seemed like the liberal order was cracking up. In the 2020s, that feeling vanished. The decline of the Chinese economy delegitimized the authoritarian model. It turns out you can’t run a centrally controlled economy without a lot of waste, corruption and riot police.

Meanwhile, the American political system began to work better. The GOP re-emerged under Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio as a better version of a working-class party — socially right, economically left. Democrats remained dominant through the decade. Their party’s biggest accomplishment was in foreign affairs — the repair of America’s alliances and the restoration of global American leadership.

Americans were more collaborative in the 2020s. And the New York Mets won the World Series every single year.

David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times.

A few years ago, Angela Evans decided she wanted to test the DNA of her 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. She was interested in knowing whether they had a mutation of the MTHFR gene, as she does. The mutation is linked to a number of disorders — women with the mutation may have a higher risk of having babies with defects like spina bifida — and Ms. Evans wanted to make life changes for her children based on the results.

When doctors told her they didn’t think there was a medical need to test her children, she decided to use 23andMe, the direct-to-customer genetic testing company.

To use 23andMe’s services, the user simply sends in a saliva sample. Within five weeks the company returns the results, without the mediation of a doctor or genetic counselor.

Along with finding out that both her children had a mutation of the MTHFR gene, she also received 23andMe’s analysis of her children’s genetic susceptibility to a number of adult-onset diseases, including Parkinson’s. Ms. Evans shared the results with her children, family members and friends.

Then she uploaded their DNA data to MyHeritage and GEDmatch hoping to learn more about the family’s genealogy. Sites like GEDmatch and others are “open-source databases” on which people freely share their DNA online, usually in the hopes of finding long-lost relatives.

Ms. Evans is not alone in testing her children’s DNA. While 23andMe does not track how many of its kits have been used to test children, there’s a growing interest in genotyping children. And though 23andMe says its service is intended for adults, with its ads featuring animated characters, it appears to be marketing to children too. Similarly, the home testing companies Orig3n and Map My Gene market test kits specifically for testing children.

The problem with these tests is twofold. First, parents are testing their children in ways that could have serious implications as they grow older — and they are not old enough to consent. Second, by sharing their children’s genetic information on public websites, parents are forever exposing their personal health data.

[If you’re online — and, well, you are — chances are someone is using your information. We’ll tell you what you can do about it. Sign up for our limited-run newsletter.]

Upon a finding that they are at high risk for a disease, children may face negative consequences in school, the workplace and the insurance market — not to mention experience fear and anxiety about their impending fate.

“Not every child has the maturity to understand what things mean, and that could be an unfair burden on a kid whose whole life is ahead of him,” Dr. Naomi Laventhal, a neonatologist at the University of Michigan, has said.

Put simply, when parents test their children’s DNA before they are old enough to truly consent, those children lose their right not to know certain information. This is significant because, as Justice John Paul Stevens articulated in his 1977 Whalen v. Roe decision, there are two key components of the right to privacy: “the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters,” and “the interest in independence in making certain kinds of important decisions.”

In keeping with this standard, children should have the autonomy to decide to learn more about their genetic sequence only when and if they are interested.

In addition to the right to know or not to know the information in the first place, the corresponding right to prevent disclosure is a key issue in the case of home testing kits.

“Sharenting” — the phenomenon of sharing photographs, embarrassing stories and other personal information about one’s children online — has become commonplace. But in countries like France and Austria, children can sue their own parents for putting their childhood on display without their permission.

While this may seem extreme for mere pictures or stories, there is nothing more intimate and personal than a person’s DNA. Yet parents innocently share this information online — on the DNA sites, but also through blogs or Facebook groups — and often when their children’s results turn up something unexpected, like a surprising paternity result.

Dr. Louanne Hudgins, a geneticist at Stanford, cautions parents to consider the long-term privacy of their child’s health information collected through home genetic kits. Their children’s DNA and other health data, she has warned, could be sold to other companies — marketing firms, data brokers, insurance companies — in the same way that social media sites and search engines collect and share data about their users.

Furthermore, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics strongly discourage the use of home-kit genetic testing of children.

The sharing of DNA results on open-source genealogy databases to find long-lost relatives poses another privacy risk: When parents share their children’s DNA on these sites, they are effectively sharing it with the world, including with the government and law enforcement investigators.

For example, law enforcement officials can compare DNA from crime scenes with DNA pulled from open-source websites. Even if parents attempt to keep their accounts anonymous, it is often not difficult for investigators to identify them and their children if anyone — even a relative as distant as a third cousin — has made a personal profile public.

Genetic privacy is just one part of a larger conversation about children’s privacy. While we have laws to protect children from third parties sharing children’s personal information online, these laws don’t apply when a parent does the sharing, or consents to allowing someone else to do it. This is because we have a legal tradition of allowing parents to determine what is in the best interests of their children.

But we find ourselves in a new era in which technology is outpacing most parents’ digital literacy. When parents upload their children’s test results to third-party sites, they likely do not consider the many possible consequences — some of which are listed only in the fine print of privacy policies most people never read.

Changing our laws to police parents or increase lawsuits, as in France and Austria, is most likely not the answer. Most parents share information online because they are proud of their children, not because they don’t care about their privacy. Rather than punishing parents with court battles, we should mount an educational campaign that would make disclosing children’s DNA information less socially acceptable.

The job of parents is to protect and nurture their children to the best of their ability. This should mean protecting the privacy of their DNA as well.

This article is part of The Privacy Project, an ongoing examination of privacy by The New York Times.

Nila Bala, a former teacher and juvenile justice attorney, is the associate director of criminal justice policy and civil liberties at the R Street Institute.

The hunt for one of 14 licenses to operate a medical cannabis pharmacy in Utah is over.

State health officials on Friday announced the 10 companies that are on track for permission to operate the retail locations, more than half of them strung along the Wasatch Front.

Three cannabis retailers are proposed for Salt Lake City, with others slated for Provo, Park City, Ogden and West Bountiful, the Utah Department of Health announced. The agency sorted through more than 130 applications submitted by about 60 companies, winnowing the list down to the handful of businesses now slated to win licenses.

“We feel like that was a good thing for the state of Utah that there was so much competition,” said Richard Oborn, who directs the Center for Medical Cannabis at the state Health Department. “We feel like we’ve got a good set of applicants that come to us with a lot of confidence in what they’re doing and a lot of knowledge and expertise.”

Desiree Hennessy, executive director of the Utah Patients Coalition, said the launch of the state’s full-fledged medical cannabis program finally feels close with the announcement of the pharmacy operators.

“I’m hopeful that this is one of the last pieces of the puzzle that we’re putting in place to get Utah patients the medications that we’ve been fighting for for years,” she said in a phone interview.

The licenses are separated into two groups — eight of the awardees are permitted to open March 1, while the remaining six must hold off until July 1. While Oborn sounded optimistic that cannabis would be available for sale in three months, Hennessy pointed to the challenges of opening a business on such a compressed timetable.

“I will be very impressed if they’re ready by March,” she said. “But more than I want to see us hit March, I want to see us do it right.”

The agency divided the licenses between four geographic regions in the state to create a more even distribution of pharmacies and better access for cannabis patients. Still, vast swaths of the state will be without a pharmacy.

Oborn pointed out that to address the needs of these rural residents, patients will be able to order cannabis treatments online for delivery at their homes. All of the license winners have expressed an interest in providing home delivery services, he said.

And state officials can continue adapting the program to meet patient needs once the system is up and running, he said.

“It could be that in the future, there is demonstrated a need to have additional locations of additional pharmacies,” Oborn said.

A couple of the awardees landed licenses to operate two locations, the maximum allowed by state law.

Here are the companies slated to receive cannabis pharmacy licenses:

• Beehive’s Own, with one pharmacy located in Salt Lake City and a second in Box Elder, Morgan, or Rich County.
• Bloom Medicinals, located in Cedar City.
• Columbia Care, located in Springville.
• Curaleaf, located in Lindon.
• Deseret Wellness, with one pharmacy located in Park City and a second in Provo.
• Dragonfly Wellness, located in Salt Lake City.
• Justice Grown Utah, with one pharmacy located in Salt Lake City and a second in St. George.
• Pure UT, located in Vernal.
• True North of Utah, with one pharmacy in Logan and another in Ogden.
• Wholesome Therapy, located in West Bountiful.

Utah residents have full or partial ownership of seven of these companies: Beehive’s Own, Columbia Care, Deseret Wellness, Dragonfly Wellness, Justice Grown Utah, True North of Utah and Wholesome Therapy, state health officials reported in a news release. And three of the companies — Dragonfly Wellness, True North of Utah and Wholesome Therapy — also hold state licenses to cultivate cannabis.

There are several more steps before the state actually awards the licenses to these businesses. For one thing, individuals with a financial interest in the companies must pass a criminal background check, Oborn said. The companies also have to submit an operating plan to the state, and some still have to secure local approvals for their proposed site.

The companies also must pay a fee to the state; the annual cost of each license ranges between $50,000 and $69,500, depending on whether the pharmacy is in a rural or urban area and if it offers home delivery.

Jordan Lams, the principal for Pure UT, predicted that his Vernal pharmacy would be one of the first to open, since his company has already been building relationships with cultivators. His California-based enterprise will bring its experience with home delivery to a rural part of Utah that can benefit from it, he noted.

“This is a good region for us to flex the muscles that we’ve exercised the most,” Lams said in a phone interview.

All cannabis distribution in the state will be in the hands of these private pharmacies — a departure from Utah lawmakers’ original vision for the program. The Utah Medical Cannabis Act passed by the Legislature in December 2018 called for seven private retail sites but also tasked the state’s health departments with dispensing the substance.

There were concerns about the feasibility of asking public employees to handle a federally illegal medical treatment, and lawmakers last year eliminated the state-run distribution system, simultaneously increasing the number of private pharmacies from seven to 14.

Although BYU is riding a five-game winning streak, the Cougars aren’t ready to ease up on the gas. If anything, they’re ready to go harder now that the West Coast Conference portion of their schedule is starting.

On Saturday, BYU will host Loyola Marymount to open WCC play.

However, this won’t be the first WCC game for the Lions. LMU played its first conference opponent Thursday, beating San Diego 64-58.

Senior Yoeli Childs wished his Cougars could have been among the WCC teams that already started playing conference games.

“We're so hungry, man,” Childs said. “We're so hungry to go in. A lot of times, when a team is on a five-game losing streak, seven-game losing streak, you know they're hungry for a win. But we're so hungry. It's 0-0 now. Let's go. Tomorrow's going to be a battle.”

Although BYU has routinely beaten LMU since joining the WCC, the wins haven’t come as easily as they appear on paper.

BYU coach Mark Pope said the Lions present unique challenges. They’re also a long team — four of the five starters measure at 6-foot-6 or taller.

“They’ve had some really magical way right now of, especially in the second half, letting the game be really messy — where teams are having a tough time scoring against them,” Pope said.

Senior TJ Haws would describe the Lions as a scrappy team — and one that fights hard. And he expects it to continue being that way in Saturday’s game.

The Cougars will have to protect the ball to make sure the Lions don’t take control of the game.

“When you're driving down the lane, you've got to be strong with that thing because they're one of the leading fouling teams in the country,” Haws said. “They're going to be hacking and they're going to be fighting hard all night. It's going to be a battle and I think we're ready for it.”

Even though BYU is one of two WCC teams yet to start conference play, it allowed the Cougars to watch Thursday night's conference openers. And what they saw has excited them for what's to come.

However, Childs understands that the team’s success will come from the players’ ability to focus only on what they can do. It doesn’t matter what other teams are doing, the Cougars will need to come out and win every game.

Rankings and wins — or lack of — also don’t matter. Everything changes during conference play.

Haws also believes the level of veteran experience on the BYU squad will help the Cougars be successful this year.

“It’s going to be a battle,” Haws said. “This conference is very talented. We have a lot of great teams and it truly doesn’t matter who you’re playing — every game is a battle. I believe that we’re right there at the top and can really make a run at this league. I think it just takes coming into every game with the right mentality and being locked in, ready to go. But I believe we can beat anybody. I’m excited for this thing.”

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iran promised to seek revenge for a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport that killed the mastermind of its interventions across the Middle East, and the U.S. said Friday that it was sending thousands more troops to the region as tensions soared in the wake of the targeted killing.

The death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, marks a major escalation in the standoff between Washington and Tehran, which has careened from one crisis to another since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions.

Almost 24 hours after the attack on Soleimani, Iraqi officials and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq reported another deadly airstrike.

An Iraqi government official reported a strike on two vehicles north of Baghdad but had no information on casualties. Another security official who witnessed the aftermath described charred vehicles and said five people were killed. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Iraqi state television and the media arm of the Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces also reported the strike. The group said its medics were targeted.

An American official who spoke on the condition on anonymity denied the U.S. was behind the reported attack.

The targeted strike against Soleimani and any retaliation by Iran could ignite a conflict that engulfs the whole region, endangering U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and beyond. Over the last two decades, Soleimani had assembled a network of heavily armed allies stretching all the way to southern Lebanon, on Israel's doorstep.

“We take comfort in knowing that his reign of terror is over,” Trump said of Soleimani.

The United States said it was sending nearly 3,000 more troops to the Middle East, reflecting concern about potential Iranian retaliation. The U.S. also urged Americans to leave Iraq immediately following the airstrike at Baghdad's international airport that Iran's state TV said killed Soleimani and nine others.

The State Department said the embassy in Baghdad, which was attacked by Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters earlier this week, is closed and all consular services have been suspended.

Around 5,200 American troops are based in Iraq to train Iraqi forces and help in the fight against Islamic State militants. Defense officials who discussed the new troop movements spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision not yet announced by the Pentagon.

A Pentagon official who was not authorized to speak publicly said the U.S. also had placed an Army brigade on alert to fly into Lebanon to protect the American Embassy. U.S. embassies also issued a security alert for Americans in Bahrain, Kuwait and Nigeria.

The announcement about sending more troops came as Trump said Soleimani's killing was not an effort to begin a conflict with Iran.

“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” Trump said, adding that he does not seek regime change in Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed “harsh retaliation" after the airstrike, calling Soleimani the “international face of resistance.” Khamenei declared three days of public mourning and appointed Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani's deputy, to replace him as head of the Quds Force.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the killing a “heinous crime" and said his country would “take revenge.” Iran twice summoned the Swiss envoy, the first time delivering a letter to pass to Washington.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the U.S. attack a “cowardly terrorist action” and said Iran has the right to respond “in any method and any time.“

Thousands of worshipers in Tehran took to the streets after Friday prayers to condemn the killing, waving posters of Soleimani and chanting “Death to deceitful America.”

However, the attack could act as a deterrent for Iran and its allies to delay or restrain any potential response. Trump said possible targets had been identified and the U.S. was prepared. Oil prices surged on news of the airstrike, and markets were mixed.

The killing promised to further strain relations with Iraq's government, which is allied with both Washington and Tehran and has been deeply worried about becoming a battleground in their rivalry. Iraqi politicians close to Iran called for the country to order U.S. forces out.

The U.S. Defense Department said it killed the 62-year-old Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region." It also accused Soleimani of approving orchestrated violent protests at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The strike, on an access road near Baghdad’s airport, was carried out early Friday by an American drone, according to a U.S. official.

Soleimani had just disembarked from a plane arriving from either Syria or Lebanon, a senior Iraqi security official said. The blast tore apart his body and that of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces. A senior politician said Soleimani's body was identified by the ring he wore.

Others killed include five members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard and Soleimani's son-in-law, Iranian state TV said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The attack comes at the start of a year in which Trump faces both a Senate trial following his impeachment and a re-election campaign. It marks a potential turning point in the Middle East and represents a drastic change for American policy toward Iran after months of tensions.

They are rooted in Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, struck under Barack Obama.

Since then, Tehran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers. The U.S. also blames Iran for other attacks targeting tankers and a September assault on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry that temporarily halved its production.

Supporters of the strike against Soleimani said it restored U.S. deterrence power against Iran, and Trump allies were quick to praise the action.

“To the Iranian government: if you want more, you will get more,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted.

“Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran,” Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, wrote in a tweet.

Others, including Democratic presidential hopefuls, criticized Trump's order. Joe Biden said Trump had “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox," saying it could leave the U.S. “on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East."

Trump, who was vacationing at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, said he ordered the airstrike because Soleimani had killed and wounded many Americans over the years and was plotting to kill many more.

“He should have been taken out many years ago," Trump added.

The potential for a spiraling escalation alarmed U.S. allies and rivals alike.

“We are waking up in a more dangerous world,” France’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin, told RTL radio.

The European Union warned against a “generalized flare-up of violence.” Russia condemned the killing, and fellow Security Council member China said it was “highly concerned.”

Britain and Germany noted that Iran also bore some responsibility for escalating tensions.

While Iran’s conventional military has faced 40 years of American sanctions, Iran can strike in the region through its allied forces like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on “the resistance the world over” to avenge Soleimani's killing. Frictions over oil shipments in the Gulf also could increase, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has built up a ballistic missile program.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council said in a statement Friday that it had held a special session and made “appropriate decisions” on how to respond but didn't elaborate.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett held a meeting with top security officials Friday, but the Israeli military said it was not taking any extraordinary action on its northern front, other than closing a ski resort in the Golan Heights near Lebanon and Syria as a precaution.

The most immediate impact could be in Iraq. Funerals for al-Muhandis and the other slain Iraqis were set for Saturday.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi condemned the strike as an “aggression against Iraq.” An emergency session of parliament was called for Sunday, which the deputy speaker, Hassan al-Kaabi, said would take “decisions that put an end to the U.S. presence in Iraq.”

___

Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Lolita C. Baldor and Zeke Miller in Washington; Jon Gambrell and Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Bassem Mroue and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; and Joseph Krauss and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Regarding our current crisis in U.S. democracy, let’s step back and take a global view.

We set the pace in many or most things political and moral, even when we get it wrong. As motivated students of Western Empire, Japanese nobility and intelligentsia of the late 1800s closely followed art movements of Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles, imported architects, philosophers and professors from the West and studied best practices for infrastructure and public utilities (such as factories, railroads and military occupation).

But, despite every effort to comply, in the end the U.S. rejected the Japanese as “too different from us.” If not for this racist twist of fate, Japan would almost certainly have been our ally instead of Germany’s.

The Cuban constitution came after the U.S. had permanently insinuated itself even as it, technically speaking, allowed Cuba nominal independence. Spain abused Cuba for four centuries, as it had the Philippines, where we also awaited our chance to take advantage. In both cases, we fostered and supported rebellion, then betrayed the revolution, systematically assassinated its leaders and subjugated its people. That says volumes about the depth of our authentic regard for democracy.

When Bautista illegally seized power during Cuba’s 1952 elections, the U.S. already possessed virtually all of Cuba’s resources and treated the island as a weekend get-away to enjoy casinos, celebrity and a cornucopia of products and services from the Mafia. There was discussion about bringing Cuba and Puerto Rico into the umbrella of 48 states, but they were considered too black and brown and, like Japan, “too different from us.”

The Pacific and the Caribbean comprise some of the most strategic parts of U.S. empire, militarily. South America is the colossus of U.S. empire, guaranteeing a whole hemisphere of interference-free real estate, protected by oceans on both sides, and all its resources are not only free, but we make them pay us to take them via predatory banking and financial prizes given to the local bourgeoisie in colonial capital port cities.

The private debt of a few padrones transforms and becomes commonly held national debts of laborers, farmers and Indians, safely buffered far away from the magisterial port cities, quarantined within the interior where infrastructure, public safety and opportunities are minimal. (See the classic ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ by Eduardo Galleano and the recent ‘True Flag’ by Stephen Kinzer regarding empire and it mechanics.)

Colonies need not be external. There are plenty of colonies inside the U.S. homeland, such as ghettoes and reservations. Massive incarceration is a colony, unconstitutional when it’s been given to private hands not accountable to any democratic processes or norms. Public land is a colony for its dependents and victims. You may even say the resources, integrity and sustainability of the planet have been colonized and maimed by profit-hunger and the continuous growth of its capitalization and marketability.

The U.S. launched itself into empire both to compete with and to obstruct the predation of other empires, and doing so required our willful predation on the vulnerability and sovereignty of many lands. Empire’s most vocal opponents were Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington and their message: “Empire and our constitution are profoundly incompatible.”

We bequeathed something irreducibly destructive when we became a world power always at war, and that is the sorrow and tragedy of our own cherished democracy demeaned, stained and ripped. (See “Kellogg-Briand” to learn what a world without war looks like. Google it.)

If we’re going to do this struggle for democracy, let’s step up to a global stage, revitalize internationalism, re-emphasize the vital necessity of allies and a world court whose jurisdiction is above that of nuclear-armed nations, and hone the ability to recognize what an enemy is.

Jesse Cox, West Valley City, is a retired writer and life-long activist currently working with several local Salt Lake City groups such as Warm Springs Alliance and Elders Rising.

A 37-year-old man died Thursday after he was found unconscious and unresponsive on a black diamond-rated run at Alta Ski Area.

Authorities found the man in deep snow near a tree in the Sunspot trail-area, according to a Friday news release from Alta Marshal’s Office.

Ski patrol rescued the man from the mountain and took him to Alta Medical Clinic, where he later died.

Police have not yet notified the man’s family of his death and didn’t release his name.

The state medical examiner will determine the cause of death. Alta officials noted that “there is no reason to believe any other person was involved and the incident appears to be accidental in nature.”

The man is the second skier to die at a Utah resort this week. Charles “Charlie” Noxon, 20, died Tuesday at Park City Mountain Resort.

Noxon was the son of Jenji Kohan, who created the television shows “Weeds” and “Orange is the New Black," and journalist Christopher Noxon.

With all the newness surrounding the 2020 Utah gymnastics team, it was a familiar face who led the fifth-ranked Utes past No. 12 Kentucky on Friday at the Huntsman Center.

Senior Kim Tessen won both the vault (9.9) and the uneven bars (9.925) and tied teammate Sydney Soloski for the floor honors (9.9) as the Utes defeated the Wildcats 196.425-195.35 in front of 14,417 fans.

The Utes return just 10 of the routines from their 2019 NCAA Championships lineup and have begun the post-Marsden era of coaching, so it was hard to predict what kind of performance the Utes would have.

While they have plenty of room to improve, it was still a solid opener for the Utes. The gymnasts were more critical of themselves than anyone else was, mindful that the expectations aren’t what they usually are for a Utah team.

“We practiced a lot better than what you guys saw tonight and I thought the Red Rocks preview was better than our performance tonight,” Tessen said. “The only thing we can do is learn from it and not lower standards and keep them high and work toward that every day.”

Utah coach Tom Farden was a little easier on his team, acknowledging the Utes seemed tight but overall liking what he saw.

“It was a nice opening score and we hit all our routines without major errors,” he said. “I do think this team is hungry for more and they can do more than what they showed tonight.”

Tessen said she kept the thought of ‘confidence,’ in her mind for her efforts, cognizant that as one of the few upperclassmen she had to set a good example.

“That is something I have to work on as an individual every single day,” she said. “I told myself to be confident for myself and my team. I was hoping that would carry over to the rest of the team members.”

Vault isn’t supposed to be a strength this year, but the Utes put together a 49.125 effort led by Tessen’s 9.9 and 9.825s from Cammy Hall and Alexia Burch.

It was a solid score for any circumstance, but particularly since three gymnasts, Soloski (9.8), Hall and Maile O’Keefe (9.775) were competing in the event for the first time.

Surprisingly bars, which is supposed to be a solid event this year, had some issues with Cristal Isa (9.375) having a big break and O’Keefe (9.6) stumbling on her dismount. But Hunter Dula (9.875) and Missy Reinstadtler (9.825) helped negate the lower scores with solid routines along with Tessen.

The highlight for the Utes on balance beam was Isa’s 9.925. She was effortless on the beam with her crisp tumbling and dancing. Freshman Abby Paulson made her debut with a 9.9 and O’Keefe added 9.8.

“It wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I thought it was going to be,” she said of her first meet. “I personally love beam so it’s easy to stay confident up there.”

Tessen and Soloski led the Utes on the floor with 9.9s.

The finishing score might not be as high as many fans are accustomed to from the Utes, but it was still solid.

“I’m not going to let them get off the hook completely, but we are relying on athletes who haven’t competed much in the past and freshmen so there is going to be some growing pains this year with the youth of our team and the new staff,” Farden said. “We are still trying to figure out which combinations we want to work with to build momentum.”

Nevertheless, Soloski said the Utes want to get back in the gym and keep pushing for improvements.

“No one expects us to be national champions but that is something we expect of ourselves,” Soloski said. “That is all that matters. Our goals and dreams stay within the team but we will take tonight and not settle for what we did and get in the gym and work harder. We want to prove a lot of people wrong this year.”

The Utes stay in state for their next meet, competing in the Best of Utah meet at the Maverik Center along with Brigham Young, Southern Utah and Utah State on Jan. 11.

Questions for Sen. Mitt Romney:

Do you want to be one of the frightened sheep or a principled and thoughtful leader?

Do you want the legacy to your grandchildren to be an autocracy or a democracy?

What has happened to the Republican Party? I heard someone say recently that it is rotten to the core. You are proving that every day that you do not demand that Sen. Mitch McConnell hold a fair and open impeachment trial with credible witnesses and documents that the president has blocked.

We already know where Sen. Mike Lee stands. He is one of the rotten, smelly ones that is putting his career above our democracy and national security.

I had high hopes for you taking an honorable stand and putting our democracy ahead of your party but so far you are proving yourself to be corrupt, just like all of the other Republicans.

Phyllis Pope, Salt Lake City

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In his Dec. 29 letter to The Salt Lake Tribune, Ken Miller writes of feeling underrepresented by The Tribune’s Public Forum publishing an “avalanche” (his word) of letters from the Trib’s readers concerning, no, “demanding” (his word again) the impeachment, conviction and removal of President Donald Trump from office. He describes these letters as “impassioned hate mail.”

An interesting interpretation. Now I’ll be impertinent and point out that those letters which he so decries increasingly represent the majority of the American people, as evidenced in countless surveys of how to deal with the president’s negative and possibly illegal job performance.

The Utah senators and congressmen sent to Washington do indeed need to be reminded that they were sent to represent the majority opinion of those Utahns who they represent. Those who hold different opinions are of course welcome to debate and try to defend their minority opinion.

Just don’t expect The Tribune or its readers to reflexively defend it.

Sallie Phelps, Salt Lake City

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