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NFL kicker Justin Tucker suspended 10 weeks for violating league's personal conduct policy

NFL kicker Justin Tucker suspended 10 weeks for violating league's personal conduct policy

CTV News21 hours ago

Justin Tucker has been suspended by the NFL for 10 weeks. (/File via CNN Newsource)
Former Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker has been suspended without pay for 10 weeks of the upcoming season, the NFL announced on Thursday. The league said the suspension is based on Tucker violating the NFL's personal conduct policy.
Tucker is currently a free agent after playing 13 seasons with the Ravens.
'Tucker's suspension will take effect on roster cutdown day, August 26, and he will be eligible for reinstatement on Tuesday, November 11,' the league said in a statement.
'As with any free agent, Tucker may serve his suspension while not being under contract with a club. Tucker remains free to try out and sign with a club; if he is signed during the offseason, he may attend training camp and participate in preseason games.'
Tucker has been accused of inappropriate sexual misconduct by multiple massage therapists, according to the Baltimore Banner, in alleged incidents between 2012 and 2016.
Tucker has previously denied the accusations, calling them 'shocking and heart-breaking.'
Following Tucker's suspension, the kicker's representative, Rob Roche, said he is 'disappointed with the NFL's decision,' per ESPN's Adam Schefter.
'In order to put this difficult episode behind him and get back on the field as soon as possible, we have advised Justin to accept this resolution and close this matter.'
CNN has reached out to Tucker's representatives for comment.
Tucker signed with the Ravens as a rookie free agent in 2012 and has played his entire career in Baltimore.
Known as one of the league's best placekickers, Tucker owns the highest career field goal percentage (89.1%), making him the most accurate kicker in NFL history.
He won Super Bowl XLVII with the Ravens in 2013.
By Thomas Schlachter, CNN

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Confessions of a gun smuggler: How I brought weapons into Canada
Confessions of a gun smuggler: How I brought weapons into Canada

CBC

time2 hours ago

  • CBC

Confessions of a gun smuggler: How I brought weapons into Canada

Social Sharing Everyone knows guns used by Canadian criminals are often smuggled from the U.S. Not everyone knows how — not like Naomi Haynes does. That's because she did the smuggling. A native Montrealer who's been living in the U.S. for decades, she helped traffic dozens of weapons into Canada, some linked directly to drug gangs. "I wasn't thinking about the havoc I was causing in my birth land," she told CBC News last week. "I've got my kids, I've got bills. The only thing I [was] thinking about is monetary gains. I wasn't thinking about the people who are going to be affected." CBC News established contact with Haynes while she was in prison — at first communicating by email, then with a glitchy prison video app and then in a lengthy interview following her release last year. Her story helps shed light on the thousands of guns a year in Canada that police trace to the U.S. She described, in detail, tricks of the smuggling trade. And how she managed to move drugs, cash and, eventually, guns, for many years, depending on the product — either into the U.S., between U.S. states or into Canada. Rule No. 1: Only one person per car. If the vehicle gets stopped at the border, you don't want two partners tripping over each other's story during secondary questioning. "There's only one story this way," said Haynes, 45. "If you have two drivers, there's conflicting stories and that's when you have problems. … 'Oh, you're coming from Virginia, but your friend says [she's] coming from Baltimore.'" "So just one driver, so they can stick with their one lie." I wasn't thinking about the people who are going to be affected.​​​​​​ - Naomi Haynes Rule No. 2: Find a good hiding spot. She would stash items in hidden compartments under seats; in door panels; in the trunk. She'd also move drugs in a gas tank — in triple-sealed, vacuumed bags. Rule No. 3: Get drivers who won't arouse suspicion. Haynes didn't transport guns herself; she got pulled over too often. She'd ride in a separate vehicle. "I started paying white girls and guys to move stuff for me," she said. Especially white women. They never got pulled over, she said. Until one did. Haynes was arrested in 2019, charged with smuggling, and with conspiracy to make false statements; she pleaded guilty, was sentenced, and served just under five years in prison. Hers is an unusual story. She's a vegan, millennial, Jamaican Canadian political science grad in South Florida who supports Donald Trump, became a grandma and wound up in an international conspiracy. Then again, her life story was atypical from the start. Escaping Montreal "At the end of the day, you become what you know," Haynes said. She grew up around drug dealers. Her late father dealt crack, then smoked it. In a book she's writing about her life story, Haynes describes a period when he became meaner, zoned out and indifferent, his eyes bloodshot. Her book describes one sister jailed for selling ecstasy. Another sibling, her brother, led a local street gang, according to the Montreal Gazette. She grew up in the area just south of the old Montreal Forum; her grandmother worked in the hallowed hockey shrine. From childhood, Haynes earned money in unconventional ways. Her half-complete memoir, entitled The Runner: Tripped by the Feds, begins with the words: "For as long as I can remember I have had a hustle." She ran store errands for adults and got to keep the change; collected beer bottles from their parties and returned them for cash; and, later, resold contraband cigarettes. "I made my first $1,000 in the seventh grade," she writes. She was desperate to escape the scene, to flee the bad influences. Haynes harboured a childhood dream of living in the States, and in 1997, she made it happen. She enrolled in college. She got a bachelor's degree from Florida Atlantic University, according to court documents, and also studied criminal science. She started smuggling to pay for school. And she made poor choices, she says, about whom she surrounded herself with. The man who became her husband made a $5,000 down payment on a Jeep Cherokee for her; she used that vehicle and received thousands of dollars more to move hashish, hash oil and marijuana into Canada. Over the years, she shipped contraband countless times: ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, hash and cash, occasionally driving on her own, but usually hiring someone. She'd move products from buyer to seller, often across international lines, but also domestically, say, from Florida to Chicago. It was only many years later that she started selling guns. Around 2016, Haynes was desperately low on cash — she was divorced, with a baby, not working and with an older boy playing intercity baseball. "Everybody that I always did business with always said, 'No guns, no guns, no guns,' because there's a trail," she told CBC News. But it was great cash, about $4,000 Cdn per gun. On a nine-millimetre handgun that costs a couple of hundred bucks in South Florida, it's an astronomical profit. She'd ship about 20 at a time, and there were multiple shipments. She admits to two of them, which she figures generated about $160,000. Subtracting the cost of the purchase, the driver and her partner's share, she estimates she kept about $30,000, which helped her live comfortably for a few months. And then it cost her everything. WATCH | Major Toronto gang busts connected to Hayes's network: Law enforcement closes in Police started closing in on Haynes from different angles — arresting associates, seizing phones, recording conversations and catching her in lies. It started after she purchased 20 weapons from different Florida gun stores in February 2018. On March 1, a day after her last purchase, she crossed into Canada through New York. She was stopped re-entering the U.S. two weeks later at Champlain, N.Y., carrying $4,300 in cash, and multiple cell phones. Border officers seized her phones and downloaded the contents. According to court filings, they found fraudulent or counterfeit IDs for several associates and shared that with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. On the morning of April 27, two ATF agents arrived at her home in Boca Raton, Fla. She lied to them, insisting she'd been buying and selling guns to friends with legal permits. She insisted she had a storage unit. She took them to a CubeSmart facility and professed to be shocked when she found her unit empty. "You remember Martha Stewart?" ATF agent Tim Trenschel asked her, according to court documents. "The lady on TV that does fancy crafts. Do you remember that she spent some time in prison? Do you remember why?" Haynes replied: "Because she lied." The agent said: "Exactly." Haynes added: "About insider trading." The agent said: "You're way ahead of most people I talk to." Majority of firearms coming into Canada are from the U.S., data shows 4 months ago Duration 3:22 Donald Trump is targeting Canada with punishing tariffs over concerns about border security. But as CBC's Talia Ricci reports, data from GTA police shows Canada has to worry about what's coming in from the U.S, too. Haynes insisted upon her truthfulness. "Listen, I get it, and I respect the law… I am being a thousand per cent honest." She was not, in fact, being 1,000 per cent honest. Far from it. The agent's observation about the risks of lying to a federal officer proved prescient. A couple of weeks later, guns she'd bought started turning up in police investigations in the Toronto area, identified despite attempts to deface the serial number. 'I knew I was cooked' One loaded Taurus 9mm was found hidden in the panel of a car, alongside approximately $300,000 worth of cocaine. Days later, a Ruger .380 was found in another drug bust. The suspect tossed it aside while attempting to flee police. In September of that year, a friend she'd hired was stopped while crossing into Canada from New York state, carrying 20 hidden guns. Haynes was recorded following right behind her — crossing the border 62 minutes later. A number of the seized guns traced back to her circle. By this point, police had gained an informant. They were secretly recording conversations within her circle, even one involving Haynes's daughter. On Feb. 27, 2019, her daughter's boyfriend, Mackenzie Delmas, was caught. The informant delivered guns to him and Delmas was arrested immediately. Agents searched his home — and Haynes's. That's when Haynes knew she was done for. She was visiting her parents' home in the Montreal area. Her daughter called from Florida in the middle of the night with the news, and Haynes collapsed on the family couch. "I've never experienced a panic attack before in my life, but at that point, I started shaking. I couldn't talk, I couldn't breathe," Haynes said. "I was trying to gasp for air." Her mother tried calming her down, rubbing her back. She recalled her mother asking: "What's going on?" Haynes confessed what she'd been up to. The whole story. "My mother was so disappointed." At that point, Haynes made a decision: To give herself up. "I knew I was cooked," she said. "[I thought], I'm not gonna live on the run. I've got to face it. My time has come." Court documents confirm what happened next: She called the ATF in the wee hours of Feb. 28, and promised to return to the U.S. and speak with investigators. In subsequent recorded interviews on March 13 and April 3, she confessed everything: the fake identities, the illegal gun purchases, the shipments to Canada, the sales to known Canadian gangsters, her own trips north to collect cash and, crucially, her lies to police. She was arrested, and spent four years, nine months in prison, serving time in a low-security prison in Alabama. It was predictably miserable. She recalled guards treating inmates cruelly and arbitrarily — being decent to some of the meanest inmates, and mean to decent ones, people who got mixed up, in some cases accidentally, in bad situations. The worst was during COVID-19. After testing positive, she was sent to solitary confinement. "I was in the shoe for 13 days," she said. "I felt like a dog in a kennel. … The room was filthy. It was disgusting. The sinks — the water was brown. The toilet, it was disgusting." Her main diet in prison consisted of peanut butter. She gave up meat and dairy years ago, grossed out by it. Given the choice between baloney and peanut butter, she'd take the latter. She recalls paying $7 for a cauliflower once and air-frying it with a blow-dryer. Is there a sense of guilt? But the absolute worst thing about prison? Her parents dying, and being unable to see them or attend their funeral. Her beloved mom slowly died of cancer while Haynes was in jail. By the time her father died, she was out, but she had to attend the funeral on Zoom. Haynes can't leave and re-enter the U.S. because she's fighting deportation. A Canadian citizen, she's a green-card holder in the U.S., and of her three kids, they're either living there or hoping to live there with her. She now works an office job at a landscaping company. "My mom was sick with cancer and I failed," Haynes said. "My choices and the things I was doing caused me to not be there for the person that was always there for me." What about potential gun victims: does her sense of guilt extend to them? As a vegan who avoids hurting animals, does she ever wonder whether any humans were harmed by those chunks of steel she trafficked? Initially, no, she said. As she got into the business, the only thing on her mind was money — paying the bills. Then she had four years, nine months in prison to think. And she started thinking about other people's pain, about other families and whether her guns killed any young kids in a drive-by. She now prays that those guns are confiscated.

Orioles make history by turning a 6-0 deficit into a 14-run win against Tampa Bay
Orioles make history by turning a 6-0 deficit into a 14-run win against Tampa Bay

Winnipeg Free Press

time6 hours ago

  • Winnipeg Free Press

Orioles make history by turning a 6-0 deficit into a 14-run win against Tampa Bay

BALTIMORE (AP) — No lead is safe this year when the Baltimore Orioles face the Tampa Bay Rays. Certainly not with seven innings still to play. On June 18, Tampa Bay beat Baltimore 12-8 after the Orioles had taken an 8-0 lead in the top of the second. Then on Friday night — nine days later — it was the Rays who opened the scoring with six runs in the second. Only for Baltimore to storm back and rout Tampa Bay 22-8. 'I'm proud of our hitters,' Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino said. 'We were on the other side of this not too long ago.' According to information released by the team from the Elias Sports Bureau, Baltimore became the first team in either the American or National League to win by at least 14 runs after trailing by six. On a drizzly night at Camden Yards, the Orioles produced an offensive deluge, falling one run shy of the team record since moving to Baltimore. Gunnar Henderson and Gary Sanchez each had four hits and a homer. Colton Cowser doubled three times. He and Ramón Laureano each scored four runs. With the Orioles down 6-0 in the second, Coby Mayo delivered a two-run double to start the comeback. When he came to the plate in the eighth, Baltimore led 20-8 and the Rays had infielder José Caballero pitching. Mayo took him deep for his first career homer to complete the scoring. 'An awesome moment obviously, no matter who it's off of,' Mayo said. 'Really cool thing.' The last time two teams overcame deficits of at least six runs against each other was in 2023, according to Sportradar. Those two games also involved the Rays and happened in even closer proximity. On May 7 of that year, Tampa Bay trailed 6-0 before beating the New York Yankees 8-7 in 10 innings. On May 13, the Yankees fell behind 6-0 but came back to beat the Rays 9-8. Baltimore's 14 extra-base hits (nine doubles, a triple and four homers) set a team record since 1954, when the Orioles began playing in Baltimore. Thursdays Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter. This game came after Tampa Bay allowed one run total in a three-game sweep of Kansas City. And after the Orioles had been no-hit at least into the seventh inning in three of their previous five games. They had 21 hits in this one. 'It was a lot of fun,' Cowser said. 'That's what this team's capable of, and being able to go out there and have a game like that hopefully continues that motivation and confidence.' ___ AP MLB:

Jets take Swedish defenceman Boumedienne with 28th pick at NHL draft
Jets take Swedish defenceman Boumedienne with 28th pick at NHL draft

CTV News

time6 hours ago

  • CTV News

Jets take Swedish defenceman Boumedienne with 28th pick at NHL draft

Sascha Boumedienne, left, stands with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman after being drafted by the Winnipeg Jets during the NHL hockey draft Friday, June 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) LOS ANGELES — The Winnipeg Jets took Swedish defenceman Sascha Boumedienne with the 28th overall pick in the NHL draft Friday. The six-foot-one, 175-pound Boumedienne registered three goals and 10 assists in 40 games with Boston University last season. Winnipeg won the Presidents' Trophy last season after posting the NHL's best regular-season record. After a miraculous seven-game series win over the St. Louis Blues, the Jets lost in six games to the Dallas Stars in the second round. When free agency opens Tuesday, the Jets will sign Winnipeg native and longtime Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews to a one-year contract. Talented winger Nikolaj Ehlers is expected to test the open market. Rounds two through seven at the draft take place on Saturday. The Jets have four remaining draft picks, one for each round except the second and fourth. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 27, 2025. The Canadian Press

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