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Wild first season in expanded Big 12 comes down to final weekendThe Detroit Lions have been one of the best teams in football this year, as Dan Campbell's squad is 12-1 and has a one-game lead over the Philadelphia Eagles for the No.1 seed in the NFC through 14 weeks. Detroit will host the Buffalo Bills in Week 15 at Ford Field in a potential Super Bowl preview. The Lions' offense is having another successful season under offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, as the unit leads the league in points per game (32.1) and is second in yards per game (394.8) behind the Baltimore Ravens . Though Detroit's offense has been dynamic in 2024, tight end Sam LaPorta is having a disappointing sophomore campaign. LaPorta had a historic rookie season in 2023, totaling 86 catches for 889 yards and ten touchdowns. In 12 games this year, the 23-year-old has hauled in just 36 receptions for 445 yards and five touchdowns. LaPorta has yet to garner over seven targets in a single game this season and hasn't been an integral part of the team's passing attack. Though the former Iowa standout is still one of the most promising young tight ends in the NFL, CBS Sports' Chris Trapasso predicts the Lions will select Penn State tight end Tyler Warren in the 2025 NFL Draft to pair with LaPorta. "Warren and Sam LaPorta would be a tremendous combination in Detroit catching passes from Jared Goff," Trapasso says. Warren has had a breakout 2024 campaign with Penn State, posting 88 catches for 1,062 yards and six touchdowns in 13 games. The senior has totaled 17 touchdowns in his collegiate career but didn't see significant playing time until 2023. Though tight end isn't a pressing need for the Lions, the team doesn't have many weaknesses, and general manager Brad Holmes has a history of taking the best player available instead of drafting based on need, as Holmes took running back Jahmyr Gibbs with the No.12 overall selection in the 2023 NFL Draft despite signing David Montgomery to a three-year deal that offseason. Overall, Tyler Warren would bring a nice mix of physicality and big play ability to the Lions' offense, and a tight-end duo of LaPorta and Warren would be lethal. MORE DETROIT LIONS NEWS Lions injury updates on Alim McNeill, D.J. Reader, Levi Onwuzurike, Josh Paschal Lions cornerback has stern message for NFL analyst predicting big game for Bills WR Lions $14 million defender predicted to depart Detroit for Rams

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Having dominated English football under Pep Guardiola, Manchester City is suddenly winless since October and all but out of the Premier League title race after a 2-0 loss to arch rival Liverpool . Watch every ball of Australia v India LIVE & ad-break free during play in 4K on Kayo | New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer. City trail the Reds by 11 points after just 13 games. So how — the loss of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri aside — did it come to this? Here is what the UK press is saying, amid widespread shock over the club’s downfall. Writing for The Times , Martin Samuel said that: “Shorn of their protector Rodri, Guardiola’s City have aged quicker than pears left adjacent to a bunch of bananas.” Yet he primarily blamed the ageing of the team, singling out Kyle Walker’s loss of pace, and criticised City’s failure to retain young talent. He said the team was clearly in downturn despite the mighty Premier League achievements that Guardiola referred to with his six-finger gesture at Anfield . “...The decline of certain individuals is obvious. As are some missteps by Guardiola himself. With age an increasing problem, the young talent that has been allowed to leave the club is regrettable. Cole Palmer is the most obvious loss, although Guardiola’s champions might argue no one was saying that the year he departed and City went on to win a fourth straight title,” Samuel wrote. “But, actually, they were. Palmer’s form on his immediate arrival at Chelsea always suggested he could have found a place at City and just because a team win the league doesn’t mean they cannot be improved. Equally, could City have fought harder to keep 24-year-old Julián Álvarez, who, while a club-record sale, was such an important part of the success last season? Even if Atletico Madrid’s £81.8million was too good to turn down, why also allow Liam Delap to join Ipswich Town? Guardiola’s preference for a small squad is well known, but the burden heaped on Erling Haaland looks increasingly unsustainable.” Writing for talkSPORT , Henry Winter said that City had gone from “Invincibles to Invisibles ... riddled with self-doubt”. He said that a squad clear-out was needed. “This is Guardiola’s greatest challenge: reviving City,” Winter wrote. “Time has caught up with some like Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva. A relentless workload has temporarily drained others like Phil Foden. “City need new blood, new energy. The winds of change may only be felt positively through an open transfer window and Guardiola’s coaching and man-management. “Too many of his players look stuck in quick-sand and he’s struggling to pull them out. “City weren’t beaten by moments of sublime skill. They were beaten in the application of the basics. Liverpool wanted the ball more. They wanted victory more. And that should embarrass City. “Yes, they’re missing Rodri, their most important player, but they have so much talent, so many serial title winners, but all underperforming, barring honourable exceptions like Nathan Ake, Ruben Dias and Rico Lewis.” Writing for the Daily Mail , Sami Mokbel said that Crystal Palace and England midfielder Adam Wharton was at the top of Man City’s shopping list for the January transfer window - but would be hard to get. “Crystal Palace have no intention of selling Adam Wharton in January amid growing interest in the England midfielder,” Mokbel wrote. “Manchester City are among the Premier League clubs monitoring Wharton’s situation closely ahead of the winter transfer window. “The 20-year-old’s season has been dogged by a groin injury that eventually required surgery which won’t see him return until Palace’s clash versus Brighton on December 15 at the earliest.” Speaking on the latest episode of his The Rest Is Football podcast, England great Gary Lineker and former Man City defender Micah Richards questioned whether all was well between Guardiola and superstar midfielder Kevin De Bruyne. “De Bruyne came on again with not long to go when the game was pretty much done. Yeah, he nearly got a goal because of [Virgil] van Dijk’s error, but is there something going on there, do you think? Because he’s been coming on for five or 10 minutes, what, for about a month now?” Lineker said. “You would imagine he’s getting fitter, even though I saw both of them - Pep Guardiola and De Bruyne - make interesting statements in the week, where it seems like all’s not well between those two? I don’t know. I’ve got no inside information whatsoever. The ambassador of Manchester City might, though... Micah?” Richards laughed off the segue but said: “I think you’re right. There’s got to be some context to it... this goes back [to] before the international break. De Bruyne got some minutes, but after the international break, he didn’t start and then hasn’t started again. But he’s one who can unlock a door. “We know with Kevin De Bruyne, you’ve got to wrap him in cotton wool ... but a big game like this, I thought [Guardiola] was sort of saving him for this game. But even just the talks, [De Bruyne] potentially going to Saudi at the end of the year ... it looks to me like there’s some sort of rift gong on between them.” Writing for The Telegraph , Oliver Brown said that Guardiola cut a Jose Mourinho-like figure with his six-finger salute to Reds fans. “Engulfed by strife, Pep Guardiola can do little but resort to the antics of a man who is his antithesis. The six-fingered salute Guardiola performed as a rebuke to Liverpool fans, denoting six titles in seven years to confound their taunts that he would be “sacked in the morning”, was taken straight from the Jose Mourinho playbook. For good measure, he did it again for the City supporters’ benefit, even as they stood reeling at the sudden fallibility of a figure whose wisdom they worship. “There could scarcely be a more striking illustration of the turmoil in Guardiola’s mind. As another limp, gaffe-riddled performance by his team ate away at his soul, he looked as if he had no idea how to arrest the slide. And so he channelled classic Mourinho, the preening rival he used to disdain as “el puto jefe, el puto amo” (“the f------ boss, the f------ master”). True, the six fingers were held up with a smile rather than a Jose-esque snarl. But the subtext was similar: first he showed that the Kop’s chanting was ruffling his feathers, then he urged even his own disciples to remember his body of work.” Writing for The Guardian , Jonathan Wilson delved into what it might take for the unthinkable to happen, while alluding to the looming outcome of 115 Premier League charges regarding alleged breaches of league financial rules. “Could Guardiola be sacked? It seems unthinkable. For most of the past 16 years he has been obviously the best coach in the world. Long before he got to City, the club was built to his vision. To break from that would be a seismic act for the club’s owners, far greater than, say, Leicester offloading Claudio Ranieri or Chelsea dismissing José Mourinho in the months after they won a title, especially as City fight the Premier League charges. “But equally, history shows that once the magic has gone in football, it is very hard to get it back (look at Inter in 1966-67, dominant and seemingly en route to a Treble only, abruptly to lose form, winning only two of their final 11 games of the season to end up with nothing; Helenio Herrera was given another season, in which they finished fifth). “In a month, City’s aura has vanished, but who realistically looks a better candidate than Guardiola to restore it? So long as he feels sufficiently energised, he will surely be afforded that opportunity. But what resources he has to do that will probably depend, like so much else, on the outcome of the Premier League charges against the club.”

Maryland sues maker of Gore-Tex over pollution from toxic 'forever chemicals'By MICHELLE L. PRICE WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer’s comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.” Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump’s world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift, and his presidential transition team did not respond to a message seeking comment. Musk, the world’s richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump’s movement but his stance on the tech industry’s hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Related Articles National Politics | Should the U.S. increase immigration levels for highly skilled workers? National Politics | Trump threat to immigrant health care tempered by economic hopes National Politics | In states that ban abortion, social safety net programs often fail families National Politics | Court rules Georgia lawmakers can subpoena Fani Willis for information related to her Trump case National Politics | New 2025 laws hit hot topics from AI in movies to rapid-fire guns Trump’s own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump’s businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he told the “All-In” podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump’s budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.Panic among spectators at soccer game kills at least 56 in the West African nation of GuineaMaryland is suing the company that produces the waterproof material Gore-Tex often used for raincoats and other outdoor gear, alleging its leaders kept using “forever chemicals” long after learning about serious health risks associated with them. The complaint, which was filed last week in federal court, focuses on a cluster of 13 facilities in northeastern Maryland operated by Delaware-based W.L. Gore & Associates. It alleges the company polluted the air and water around its facilities with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances , jeopardizing the health of surrounding communities while raking in profits. The lawsuit adds to other claims filed in recent years, including a class action on behalf of Cecil County residents in 2023 demanding Gore foot the bill for water filtration systems, medical bills and other damages associated with decades of harmful pollution in the largely rural community. “PFAS are linked to cancer, weakened immune systems, and can even harm the ability to bear children,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement. “It is unacceptable for any company to knowingly contaminate our drinking water with these toxins, putting Marylanders at risk of severe health conditions.” Gore spokesperson Donna Leinwand Leger said the company is “surprised by the Maryland Attorney General’s decision to initiate legal action, particularly in light of our proactive and intensive engagement with state regulators over the past two years.” “We have been working with Maryland, employing the most current, reliable science and technology to assess the potential impact of our operations and guide our ongoing, collaborative efforts to protect the environment,” the company said in a statement, noting a Dec. 18 report that contains nearly two years of groundwater testing results. But attorney Philip Federico, who represents plaintiffs in the class action and other lawsuits against Gore, called the company’s efforts “too little, much too late.” In the meantime, he said, residents are continuing to suffer — one of his clients was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer. “It’s typical corporate environmental contamination,” he said. “They’re in no hurry to fix the problem.” The synthetic chemicals are especially harmful because they’re nearly indestructible and can build up in various environments, including the human body. In addition to cancers and immune system problems, exposure to certain levels of PFAS has been linked to increased cholesterol levels, reproductive health issues and developmental delays in children, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Gore leaders failed to warn people living near its Maryland facilities about the potential impacts, hoping to protect their corporate image and avoid liability, according to the state’s lawsuit. The result has been “a toxic legacy for generations to come,” the lawsuit alleges. Since the chemicals are already in the local environment, protecting residents now often means installing complex and expensive water filtration systems. People with private wells have found highly elevated levels of dangerous chemicals in their water, according to the class action lawsuit. The Maryland facilities are located in a rural area just across the border from Delaware, where Gore has become a longtime fixture in the community. The company, which today employs more than 13,000 people, was founded in 1958 after Wilbert Gore left the chemical giant DuPont to start his own business. Its profile rose with the development of Gore-Tex , a lightweight waterproof material created by stretching polytetrafluoroethylene, which is better known by the brand name Teflon that’s used to coat nonstick pans. The membrane within Gore-Tex fabric has billions of pores that are smaller than water droplets, making it especially effective for outdoor gear. The state’s complaint traces Gore’s longstanding relationship with DuPont , arguing that information about the chemicals’ dangers was long known within both companies as they sought to keep things quiet and boost profits. It alleges that as early as 1961, DuPont scientists knew the chemical caused adverse liver reactions in rats and dogs. DuPont has faced widespread litigation in recent years. Along with two spinoff companies, it announced a $1.18 billion deal last year to resolve complaints of polluting many U.S. drinking water systems with forever chemicals. The Maryland lawsuit seeks to hold Gore responsible for costs associated with the state’s ongoing investigations and cleanup efforts, among other damages. State oversight has ramped up following litigation from residents alleging their drinking water was contaminated. Until then, the company operated in Cecil County with little scrutiny. Gore announced in 2014 that it had eliminated perfluorooctanoic acid from the raw materials used to create Gore-Tex. But it’s still causing long-term impacts because it persists for so long in the environment, attorneys say. Over the past two years, Gore has hired an environmental consulting firm to conduct testing in the area and provided bottled water and water filtration systems to residents near certain Maryland facilities, according to a webpage describing its efforts. Recent testing of drinking water at residences near certain Gore sites revealed perfluorooctanoic acid levels well above what the EPA considers safe, according to state officials. Attorneys for the state acknowledged Gore’s ongoing efforts to investigate and address the problem but said the company needs to step up and be a better neighbor. “While we appreciate Gore’s limited investigation to ascertain the extent of PFAS contamination around its facilities, much more needs to be done to protect the community and the health of residents,” Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain said in a statement. “We must remove these forever chemicals from our natural resources urgently, and we expect responsible parties to pay for this remediation.”