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TEMPE — The Arizona State Sun Devils officially have their backs up against the wall now when it comes to bowl eligibility.

At 3-6 (2-4 in the Pac-12), ASU must win out against Washington State (5-4, 2-4), Oregon State and Arizona in order to be playing in the postseason.

The first battle comes in a cold road test in Pullman against a rather one-dimensional Cougars offense, which relies heavily on the arm of quarterback Cameron Ward, as WSU has the fourth-fewest total rushing attempts in the country.

“Here we go again, another quarterback,” ASU defensive coordinator Donnie Henderson said Monday.

Ward transferred to Washington State this offseason from FCS school Incarnate Word in San Antonio, joining his former head coach Eric Morris after traded his spot in charge of the program for the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach job in Pullman.

The QB takes over for former Cougars signal caller Jayden de Laura, who transferred his dual-threat talents to join the Arizona Wildcats.

“They’re almost similar but they do some things different than they did last year,” Henderson said. “They’ll be in (four wide receiver looks) a lot, spread you out, throw the ball around.”

In nine career appearances at the FBS level, Ward is averaging 262.2 yards per game while completing 64% of his passes. That’s largely due to the Cougars having the 16th-most pass attempts in the nation with 342 while being tied for 26th with 20 passing touchdowns.

Meanwhile, WSU’s 107.9 rushing yards per game rank 114th in the country, with the team’s leading rusher Nakia Watson averaging 70.1 per contest. Luckily for Henderson and Co., they won’t have to worry about Ward’s legs too much, as he has only mustered a total of 34 yards on the ground on 67 attempts to average 0.5 per rush and 3.8 per game this season.

“This is what they do, they throw the ball around,” Henderson said. “So having and putting a game plan together now and some of the things we’re looking at is trying to make sure we don’t give the same looks in the secondary and disguise a little bit more. I think those things come into play a lot when you have those quarterbacks who can throw the ball around.”

The weather also isn’t shaping up to be as bad as it could be for desert dwellers traveling up to the Pacific Northwest, as the forecast calls for sunny skies, 5 mph winds and a high of 37 degrees.

Kickoff is set for 1:30 p.m. on Arizona Sports 98.7, the Arizona Sports app and ArizonaSports.com.

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Air pollution is often described as an “invisible problem” which is hard for many people to grasp, compared to other issues.

Part of the problem is that some people see it as an environmental problem, while others argue it is a health issue.

Whatever the demarcation, it can be hard to get decision makers to take action without data and proper insights into what is actually happening in a particular location.

Wiktor Warchałowski, the CEO and co-founder of Airly, admitted the subject of air quality is not as high on political and commercial agendas as it could be.

But he added with a growing demand for clean air in highly polluted areas around the world, its time is coming.

“It's hard to bring people around the table to talk about this,” Warchalowski told Forbes. “But we believe platforms like ours can create a huge change in how people perceive air pollution. We are helping to move the conversation along.”

He said actionable data and insights in particular are key to helping community groups and politicians grasp the complexities of the issue.

“Having the data and seeing trends over time will help councils and cities take bold action to remove air pollution,” said Warchałowski.

The Airly platform already provides solutions for air quality monitoring to local governments, companies and local communities in over 40 countries.

The cleantech startup has just announced it has secured a $5.5 million series A funding round to launch an improved data dashboard with actionable insights, which it claims will translate into effective actions to improve air quality and understand their impact on health and well-being.

The dashboard offers multiple features including a report generator, insights, impact tracker and the city ranking.

“With the funding round we are going deeper with our users,” he added. “We believe this will be the catalyst that helps move measures and policies into place to repair the air we breathe.”

The company recently launched the largest air quality monitoring network in a European city by installing 165 sensors in Warsaw.

Similarly large networks have also been launched in the UK, specifically in Birmingham and the London boroughs of Lambeth, Haringey and soon Southwark.

Airly has also strategic partnerships with the likes of JCDecaux, NHS, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research and is a key partner in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 funded DivAirCity project.

It has also published impact studies that show how cities with a dense network of air quality sensors are achieving faster reduction in air pollution.

Since 2019, four cities from the C40 global network - Jakarta, Lisbon, London and Warsaw - have seen their overall air quality improve by 16% after installing such air quality sensor networks.

Airly is also the first platform worldwide to include the World Health Organization air quality guidelines index in its analytical tools and free-to-use community tools.

The latest funding round was led by firstminute capital and Pi Labs with participation from existing investors including. Sir Richard Branson Family Office, AENU, Untitled and new investors including Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowski, as well as institutional investors Semapa Next and TO Ventures.

With the money secured, Airly has now raised $8.8 million from investors since March 2021.

Stefania Ponzo, partner at Pi Labs, said they believe Airly’s solution will become an “essential tool in cities around the world”.

“We are excited at the prospect of partnering with a team that can truly go global with its impact,” she added.

By Mike Scarcella

(Reuters) -A state court in Washington on Thursday said it will extend a temporary block that has prevented Albertsons Companies Inc from paying a $4 billion dividend to its shareholders before the grocery chain closes its proposed deal with rival Kroger Co.

Judge Ken Schubert of King County Superior Court set a hearing for Nov. 17 to further consider whether to prolong an existing order prohibiting the dividend payment. The judge said at a hearing on Thursday that he anticipated live testimony next week. A temporary restraining order was set to expire on Thursday.

Lawyers for Albertsons and Washington state, which sued over the dividend, agreed at a hearing on Thursday to allow the temporary hold to run at least until Schubert's hearing.

Schubert said in court that he believes the state faces an "uphill" legal fight to block the dividend. He said he was not aware of a case in which a court granted an injunction in a similar dispute.

A lawyer for Washington state, Eric Newman, said on Thursday that the court was moving too quickly. "If we lose next week, the party is over. They are going to spend the money. It's gone. It's too important not to do it right."

Attorney Michael Rosenberger, representing Albertsons, told Schubert, "We believe it is not in the public interest to delay this hearing any further."

Kroger said in October it was buying Albertsons in a $25 billion deal that would merge the No. 1 and 2 standalone grocers. The U.S. grocery industry leader is Walmart Inc.

Albertsons, which had been scheduled to pay the special dividend on Nov. 7, was also sued by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia, California and Illinois, who argued that such a payment would weaken the company's ability to compete as the antitrust reviews proceed. That court was asked to put another temporary stop on the payment but declined to do so.

The state attorneys general have also raised concerns that a dividend payout would leave the retailer too cash-strapped to price competitively and maintain staffing and staff wages and benefits.

Albertsons has called the lawsuits "meritless," and reiterated that it had limited debt and significant free-cash flow and was in a strong position financially.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella, Peter Henderson and Diane Bartz; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)

The Utah State Flag Task Force has approved a final design, with a beehive in a hexagon as its central symbol.

A beehive and a mountain range are the prominent features of the design a state task force is recommending to be the new Utah state flag.

The final design, announced Tuesday by the Utah State Flag Task Force, is a combination of two of the top five finalists, submitted by Mark Brooks of Bountiful and Sarina Ehrgott of South Jordan. (Ehrgott works for the state, in the Department of Heritage and Arts.)

Those designs were selected from 5,703 submissions — more than 3,200 from adults and 2,500 from students. The final design takes elements from two of the designs the public ranked highest, the task force members said.

Public support was key in designing the new flag, said Gov. Spencer Cox. “This is the first time in history that we have a flag that has public input. A lot of public input. The public built this flag,” he said.

The final decision won’t be up to the public, but to the Utah Legislature, when it meets in early 2023, whether to approve the design as the official Utah state flag.

(Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement) The proposed new Utah state flag, a design approved by the Utah State Flag Task Force and announced on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.

At the flag’s center is the state’s symbol, the beehive, a nod to progress and hard work, the task force said. It’s also maintaining the symbolism of the state seal, which is featured in the current state flag.

The beehive is embedded in a hexagon, called a symbol of strength and unity. Below the beehive is an 8-point star, which the task force said recognized the eight Indigenous tribes of Utah.

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson called the star a symbol of hope, and “a symbol a lot of people who came to Utah, people who lived here before the pioneers and early settlers.”

Henderson added that she has heard criticism that placing the beehive above the star “is somehow taking away from our Native Americans. … To me, that star is the foundation. It’s the first thing that everything else is built on top of.”

The top of the flag takes the traditional blue color also carried over from the current flag. The color, the task force said, points to natural resources, freedom and optimism.

Across the middle, behind the hexagon, is a white mountain range, symbolizing the Wasatch Mountain landscape, as well as peace, the task force said. The red stripe across the bottom, the task force said, is a nod to the red rocks of southern Utah.

During the meeting, state Sen. Jacob Anderegg, R-Lehi, said he got a call from an angry constituent, who thought the task force was “cancel culturing our flag.”

Henderson countered that comment, and said the new flag design is “contributing to our united identity as Utahns.”

“[It’s] a flag that has a little piece of everything for everyone, a flag that everyone can look at and see themselves in,” said state Sen. Dan McCay, R-Lehi, who co-sponsored — with Rep. Stephen Handy, R-Layton — the original bill to start the process to seek a new flag design.

The proposal followed criticism that the current flag — with the state seal, with its beehive, eagle and draped flags, centered on a blue field — is boring. Vexillologists, people who study flags, refer to the design as an “SOB,” or “seal on a bedsheet.”

The same critics point to Utah’s neighboring states and their iconic flags: Colorado’s big “C,” Arizona’s star-and-sunrise design, and New Mexico’s stylized sun.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) ​ Flags from the four corner states show the contact in flag designs, during discussion of one of two bills that could lead to the adoption of a new state flag to the House Government Operations committee, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019.

McCay celebrated the new design by having it put on T-shirts, which were then taped under the chairs of the task force members at Thursday’s meeting.

The process to design a new flag started in January, with the public invited to submit their ideas. The task force was formed, led by Cox and Henderson, and including McCay, Handy, Anderegg, as well as Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City; Rep. Robert M. Spendlove, R-Sandy; Rep. Elizabeth Weight, D-Salt Lake City, and Jill Remington Love, executive director of the Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement.

In September, the Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement announced 20 semifinalists, as part of the ongoing “More Than A Flag” initiative — and those semifinalists were unfurled outside the Utah State Capitol.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) State flag designer finalist Angelina Nading of Vernal poses with her design after a press conference that revealed the 20 semifinal designs for the creation of the new state flag, Sept. 22, 2022, at the Utah Capitol. The Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement unfurled the 20 semifinal designs.

Utahns were given a month to submit feedback on the semifinalists via an internet form, which asked how well each design represents Utahns. The feedback process drew 44,169 survey responses, according to the Department of Cultural & Community Engagement — and, at Thursday’s meeting, the task force was told the survey reached 90% of the zip codes in Utah.

Those designs were further considered by a staff designer and a freelance designer, and then presented to the task force.

State Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, said the process has spurred people “to remember a little bit of our history, through the exercise of thinking about the flag, since it created conversations about Utah’s history.”

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Some interesting calls will surely be made for this Saturday.

The punishment many of Ireland’s frontliners will have shipped in seeing off South Africa should have been of sufficient ferocity that Andy Farrell opts for some rotation for Fiji.

Testing squad depth ahead of the World Cup is now the mantra even though Farrell might still be tempted to minimise the tweaking for the middle weekend of autumn games with the announcement that Tadhg Furlong as captain for Saturday hinting that the coach is maybe edging towards another strong-enough selection.

Even so, it is hard to avoid Iain Henderson being handed a role for this weekend as he has been training with the squad and retained for the Fiji clash while Jacob Stockdale would appear to be another reasonable bet to surely make the left wing.

Without any match-time since last June, Henderson needs involvement and, though he has already pointed out that this season will likely be more managed for him than is usually the case, both is province and Ireland need him with games in his legs.

He could easily be packing down with Kieran Treadwell against Fiji with Gavin Thornbury the other available lock.

Whether Tom O’Toole gets the bench spot behind Furlong, or it goes again to Finlay Bealham remains to be seen — Marty Moore, of course, having been released from camp after featuring for Ireland ‘A’.

At least Rob Herring should be handed the No.2 shirt for this one and Nick Timoney — doubtless hurting from Ireland A’s heavy defeat — ought to be named in the back-row alongside Jack Conan and possibly Cian Prendergast if it is thought prudent to rest the ever-combative Peter O’Mahony.

In the backline, it is not inconceivable that Farrell will decide on an all-Ulster back three of Michael Lowry, Robert Baloucoune and Stockdale though it would still not be surprising if Hugo Keenan runs again at 15 for more game time .

The only other consideration Ulster-wise is whether Stuart McCloskey, who played notably well before injury finished his game early against the Springboks, is deemed to be fit enough to start again and, if so, he will likely line out alongside Robbie Henshaw.

Jimmy O’Brien’s showing last weekend may well bring him into the equation here though, from an Ulster point of view, it is unavoidably disappointing that James Hume has been allowed home for this one.

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