SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - Visiting Rancho Verde put on a shooting clinic at the Thunderhut.

The Mustangs went 15-of-22 from the three-point line as San Marcos was eliminated in the second round of the CIF-Southern Section Division 2 playoffs 84-69.

Guards Charles Knight and Ivan Don-Willies each made six 3-pointers as Rancho Verde advances to the CIF-SS quarterfinals where they will host Hesperia.

The Royals led 35-31 at halftime as junior Aidan Conlan scored 16 of his team-high 25 points before the break.

But the Mustangs scored the first 15 points of the second half to lead 46-35 midway through the third quarter.

Knight, who finished with a game-high 28 points, outscored the Royals in the third quarter himself 15-14 as Rancho Verde led 64-49 and never were threatened.

Samaj Carter added 21 points and Don-Willies tallied 20 for the winning Mustangs.

San Marcos seniors Koji Hefner and Brody Green scored 21 and 16 points respectively in the final high school basketball games of their outstanding careers.

(Green (above) and Hefner helped lead the Royals to a 22-7 record this year. Entenza Design).

The post San Marcos knocked out of CIF D2 playoffs by hot-shooting Rancho Verde appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - There was no panic with Santa Barbara High School girls water polo, not with the best player in the pool on their side.

Super-sophomore Jules Horton scored back-to-back highlight-reel goals late in the third quarter to give the Dons an 11-10 lead and they never trailed again.

Santa Barbara edges Temple City 13-12 in a home CIF-Southern Section Division 2 quarterfinal game.

The Dons will host Murrieta Valley in a semifinal on Tuesday.

The visiting Rams jumped out to a 5-2 lead late in the first quarter but the Dons only trailed 6-5 at half after freshman Violette Bailey scored with just seconds remaining before the break.

Another talented Dons freshman Luna Morancey got rolling in the second half.

Her second goal of the third quarter tied the game at 9.

After the Rams went back in front 10-9 Horton displayed her skill.

She turned her defender and then turned another defender who came over to help and got off a point blank shot in front of the cage that she buried in the back of the net to tie the game at 10.

Moments later Horton turned her defender again and then unleashed a rocket that skipped past the keeper for an 11-10 lead.

Horton finished with 4 goals.

Luna Morancey also had 4 goals, scoring two more in the fourth quarter.

Her final goal put the Dons up 13-11 with 1:53 to play.

Temple City responded with an outside goal with 1:30 remaining.

The Rams had the ball in the closing seconds but they never got off a shot as Rose Nelley poked away an entry pass to the set and Morancey swam over and grabbed the ball.

The Dons celebrated the win that puts them into the final four of Division 2.

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Por Sean Lyngaas y Jennifer Hansler, CNN

James Luckey-Lange ha pasado mucho tiempo mirando los nombres que talló en una barra de jabón que sacó de contrabando de una prisión venezolana en ropa interior.

El nativo de Nueva York, de 28 años, pasó poco más de un mes detenido por funcionarios venezolanos, quienes, según él, lo golpearon, lo privaron de alimentos y solo lo liberaron el 13 de enero después de la captura por parte de Estados Unidos del derrocado presidente del país, Nicolás Maduro.

En cierto momento, dijo: “Pensé que simplemente me iban a ejecutar. Ese fue el momento más aterrador. Además, estaba muy frustrado, muy molesto y enojado”.

Ahora de regreso en la casa de su tía en Nueva Jersey, Luckey-Lange está revisando los nombres de sus antiguos compañeros de prisión en su jabón y buscando a sus familias en Facebook para hacerles saber que podrían estar vivos.

Estuvo recluido en régimen de aislamiento durante largos periodos y no pudo ver bien a muchos de sus compañeros de prisión. “Nunca he visto muchas de las caras de estas personas. Es difícil encontrar a sus familias si no sabes cómo son”, declaró Luckey-Lange a CNN.

“Espero que no piensen que estoy ahí arriba siendo torturado ahora mismo”, manifestó sobre quienes lo acompañaban. “Espero que sepan que salí”.

Decenas de estadounidenses han sido arrestados y detenidos en Venezuela en los últimos años, como parte de una larga campaña de Maduro para utilizarlos como peones políticos.

Pero la detención y liberación de Luckey-Lange se produjo en un momento sin precedentes en las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Venezuela.

El presidente Donald Trump envió fuerzas de operaciones especiales para detener a Maduro a principios de enero. Su administración ahora ejerce una enorme influencia sobre el Gobierno interino venezolano, liderado por antiguos acólitos de Maduro.

Al igual que muchos estadounidenses detenidos en Venezuela, Luckey-Lange fue acusado de espionaje y sometido a las duras condiciones de las infames cárceles del país.

Estas experiencias tienen un impacto físico en los reclusos que puede durar meses, si no años, y un impacto psicológico que podría no desaparecer jamás.

Pero Luckey-Lange no se arrepiente de haber viajado a Venezuela. “Aprendí algo” y “vi qué está pasando realmente” allí, comentó con ironía en una reciente videollamada por Zoom desde una cafetería de Nueva Jersey.

El gobierno de Estados Unidos insta a los estadounidenses a no viajar a Venezuela en parte debido a “un riesgo muy alto de detención injusta”.

La advertencia no resonó en un espíritu viajero como el de Luckey-Lange.

“No soy el tipo de persona que realmente quiere estar confinado”, afirmó.

Luckey-Lange es hijo de la fallecida Diane Luckey, cantante conocida como Q Lazzarus, cuyo sencillo apareció en la película “El Silencio de los Inocentes”.

Tras su fallecimiento en 2022, Luckey-Lange viajó por Latinoamérica, aprendiendo español y escribiendo un blog sobre sus aventuras. Venezuela iba a ser su última parada en ese viaje.

Luckey-Lange quería visitar el Monte Roraima, una meseta al este de Venezuela con vistas a Guyana y Brasil. Las autoridades lo detuvieron, según contó, en diciembre tras cruzar la frontera desde Brasil para solicitar una visa.

Fue trasladado en avión varios cientos de millas desde una base militar en el este de Venezuela a la capital, Caracas, donde, según narró, estuvo detenido en la sede de la Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar, conocida como DGCIM.

Las cárceles venezo

By Christopher Lamb, CNN

(CNN) — Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.

Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.

Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.

“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”

Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.

Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.

Francis, meanwhile, was a counterweight to the Trumpian worldview, strongly critiquing nationalism and making advocacy for migrants a hallmark of his pontificate.

The recently released DOJ files reveal Bannon messaged Epstein on several occasions in his efforts to undermine the late pope.

In his messages with Epstein, Bannon references “In the Closet of the Vatican,” a 2019 book by French journalist Frédéric Martel that lifted a lid on secrecy and hypocrisy at high levels of the church. Martel created a storm with his book by claiming 80% of the clergy working in the Vatican are gay, while exploring how they keep their sexuality secret.

The whole question of homosexuality in the church has been a lightning rod for some conservatives, who see it as evidence of a deeper, systemic crisis in the church, with some linking it to the wider sexual abuse scandals. Most experts and researchers view any conflating of sexual orientation with abuse as scientifically inaccurate.

Bannon showed an interest in turning Martel’s book into a film after meeting the author in Paris at a five-star hotel. In the messages, Bannon appears to suggest that Epstein could be the film’s executive producer. “You are now exec producer of ‘ITCOTV’ (In the closet of the Vatican),” Bannon wrote.

It is not clear how serious the proposal from Bannon to Epstein was, and, in the exchange, Epstein doesn’t mention the offer and asks about Bannon filming Noam Chomsky, the philosopher and public intellectual. Martel said when he met Bannon at the Hotel Le Bristol he told him that he could not agree to any film deal as his publishers controlled the film rights and had already signed a deal with another corporation. He told CNN that he thinks Bannon wanted to “instrumentalize” the book in his efforts against Pope Francis.

The Epstein files show Epstein, on April 1, 2019, emailed himself “

By Sean Lyngaas, Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — James Luckey-Lange has been spending a lot of time looking at the names he carved on a bar of soap he smuggled out of a Venezuelan prison in his underwear.

The 28-year-old New York native spent just over a month detained by Venezuelan officials, whom he says beat him, deprived him of food and only released him on January 13 following the US capture of the country’s then president, Nicolás Maduro.

At one point, he said, “I thought they were just going to execute me. That was the scariest time. Besides that, I was just really frustrated, really aggravated [and] angry.”

Now back at his aunt’s home in New Jersey, Luckey-Lange is looking up the names of his former prison mates on his soap and searching for their families on Facebook to let them know they might be alive.

He was held in solitary confinement for long stretches and didn’t get a good look at many of his prison mates. “I’ve never seen a lot of these people’s faces. It’s hard to find their families if you don’t know what they look like,” Luckey-Lange told CNN.

“I hope they don’t think I’m up there getting tortured right now,” he said of those he was held with. “I hope they know I got out.”

Dozens of Americans have been arrested and detained in Venezuela over the last several years — part of a long campaign by the former Venezuelan leader to use Americans as political pawns. But Luckey-Lange’s detention and release came at an unprecedented moment in US-Venezuela relations. President Donald Trump sent special operations forces to snatch Maduro in early January. His administration is now exerting huge amounts of influence on the interim Venezuelan government led by former Maduro acolytes.

Like many Americans detained in Venezuela, Luckey-Lange was accused of espionage and subjected to the harsh conditions of Venezuela’s notorious prisons. The experiences take a physical toll on the inmates that can last for months, if not years, and a mental toll that may never go away.

But Luckey-Lange has no regrets about traveling to Venezuela. “I got to learn something” and see “what’s really going on” there, he said wryly on a recent Zoom call from a coffee shop in New Jersey.

‘I’m not the type of guy that really wants to be confined’

The US government urges Americans not to travel to Venezuela in part because of “a very high risk of wrongful detention.”

The warning didn’t resonate with a wanderlust like Luckey-Lange.

“I’m not the type of guy that really wants to be confined,” he said.

Luckey-Lange is the son of the late Diane Luckey, a singer known as Q Lazzarus whose single was featured in the film “The Silence of the Lambs.” Following her death in 2022, Luckey-Lange traveled throughout Latin America, learning Spanish and blogging about his adventures. Venezuela was meant to be his last stop on that trip.

Luckey-Lange wanted to visit Mount Roraima, a plateau in the east of Venezuela with views of Guyana and Brazil. The authorities detained him, he said, in December after he crossed the border from Brazil to ask about a visa.

He was flown several hundred miles from a military base in eastern Venezuela to the capital of Caracas, where he said he was held at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, known as the DGCIM.

Veneuelan prisons generally don’t meet “the minimum rules for the treatment of international inmates,” much less “the national standards of hygiene, sanitation, care, nutrition, etcetera, that should be met in our prisons,” Gonzalo Himiob, vice presi