Aussie weightlifter Kyle Bruce was in tears after he had the gold medal taken off him following a controversial review.
It appeared Bruce had set a new Commonwealth record in the 81kg category with a final lift that was given the all-clear by all three judges.
However, on slow-motion review, officials judged that Bruce’s arms did not fully extend.
The ruling saw him relegated to the silver medal.
England’s Chris Murray eventually set a new Games record after lifting a combined 325kg from his snatch and clean and jerk lifts.
Bruce looked absolutely shattered as the decision was announced and was seen being consoled by a member of the Australian team.
He was also in tears when interviewed by Channel 7 as he spoke about wanting to do his father proud.
Kyle Bruce was in tears when interviewed after the ceremony. Photo: Channel 7.Source: Supplied
Bruce wears his father’s compression top every time he competes following his dad’s death in 2015.
“It got overruled for a press out, I haven’t seen the video so I’m not sure but sometimes it’s just how the sport goes and congratulations to Chris on winning it. He was the good lifter on the day and I just got a bit unlucky there.”
He said he was “devastated”.
“My only focus and goal coming into these Games was winning that gold medal for Australia and coming away with that silver. Not going to lie, is quite disappointing. I set my standards very high but that’s just how sport goes sometimes and I’ll be ready for 2026 and I’ll come back and have some redemption I think.”
He was briefly overcome with emotion and needed several moments to compose himself when speaking of his dad.
“My dad actually passed away in 2015 and I just wear his shirt because… so he’s always there with me,” he said after a long pause.
“Just so he’s always there for me. This one’s for him.”
Silver medalist Kyle Bruce of Team Australia. Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images.Source: Getty Images
The commentators on Channel 7 were heartbroken for him.
“Oh no. He got the three green lights and now the jury has had another look at that and decided that is a no lift,” one commentator said.
“A tragedy for Kyle Bruce. He goes back to the silver medal position. The silver that he won four years ago.
“There’s tears backstage.
“What about the emotion? Then this man (Murray) has got to come out and try and steal it.”
When cutting away from the action to move to the netball, Sevens host Mel McLaughlin described the result as “heartbreaking”.
Aussie netball legend Cox summed it up perfectly: “Sport is horrible. It is also good in the same package.”
Washington— A federal judge on Monday sentenced Guy Reffitt, the Texas man convicted of bringing a handgun to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, to 87 months in prison, the longest sentence so far related to the 2021 assault.
A member of the far-right militia group the Texas Three Percenters, Reffitt was the first defendant to stand trial on charges stemming from the attack. He was found guilty in March of five criminal counts, including obstructing Congress’ certification of President Biden’s Electoral College win.
The 7.25-year sentence was far shorter than the 15 years sought by prosecutors, who argued that the punishment should be more severe since Reffitt’s actions amounted to terrorism. At a sentencing hearing on Monday in federal court in Washington, DC, Judge Dabney Friedrich disagreed, citing another Jan. 6 cases in which prosecutors did not seek such an enhancement.
Still, the sentence is the lengthiest handed down for a Jan. 6 defendant to date. Two other defendants received sentences of 63 months earlier this year for their roles in the attack. Reffitt’s defense team had urged the judge to sentence him to no more than two years behind bars.
Reffitt will also be on probation for three years upon his release, and must pay a $2,000 fine.
Addressing the court during Monday’s hearing, Reffitt admitted he acted like a “f***ing idiot” on Jan. 6 and said he regretted his actions, apologizing to Congress and the officers he encountered that day.
Guy Refitt addresses a federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday, August 1, 2022, ahead of his sentencing for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
William J. Hennessy, Jr.
“I was a little too crazy,” he said to a skeptical Friedrich. “I was not thinking clearly.”
The judge said it was difficult not to see the apology as anything but “halfhearted,” particularly given some conspiratorial statements he has made about the events of Jan. 6 since his arrest.
“What he and others who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 did is the antithesis of patriotism,” the judge said before handing down the sentence.
In seeking the lengthier sentence, prosecutors said in court filings that Reffitt played a central role as part of the mob on Jan. 6, and intended “to use his gun and police-style flexicuffs to forcibly drag legislators out of the building and take over Congress.”
Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Nestler told Friedrich that Reffitt “puffed himself up” as the leader of the mob, waving the rest of the rioters on as he confronted police on the Capitol’s west front.
“He didn’t just want President Trump to stay in power,” Nestler said. “He wanted to physically and literally remove Congress.”
The prosecutor alleged that Jan. 6 was “the beginning” for Reffitt. “He wanted the rest of his militia group to start taking over state capitols all around the country,” Nestler said.
Former US Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff, who confronted Reffitt outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, implored the judge to sentence Reffitt to the maximum sentence possible under the law.
“His actions weren’t acts of patriotism. They were acts of domestic terrorism,” Kerkhoff said.
Prosecutors said Reffitt also threatened his children when they wanted to report him to authorities.
At his trial, Reffitt’s 19-year-old son Jackson — who turned his father in to law enforcement — told the jury that he had learned of his father’s membership in the mob when he saw his mother and sister watching news coverage of the events that day. jackson described the threat his dad had made against him and his sister, Peyton, when they tried to turn him in: “If you turn me in you’re a traitor, and traitors get shot.”
In court on Monday, prosecutors read a letter from Jackson to the judge, in which he described the “painful, slow story” of his father’s descent into conspiracy theories. He said his father needed mental health care, which Friedrich said she would require as part of the sentence.
During the trial, Reffitt’s attorney at the time called no witnesses, and Reffitt did not testify in his own defense.
F. Clinton Broden, Reffitt’s new attorney, disagreed with prosecutors’ characterization of his client. He argued in written memos and in court that Reffitt never actually entered the Capitol, never removed the handgun from his holster and “never gave any indication he would actually harm his children.”
Peyton, the defendant’s daughter, spoke emotionally in court on Monday in support of her father and explained that his mental health was a real issue.
Wiping away tears, Peyton said, “My father’s name wasn’t on the flags that were there that day, that everyone was carrying. It was another man’s name,” referring to former President Donald Trump, who addressed his throngs of supporters near the White House before they marched on the Capitol.
Friedrich, the judge, appeared most concerned with Reffitt’s mental health and prospects once he is eventually freed, at one point asking, “What is this man going to do after he is released from prison?”
“It’s really disturbing that he repeatedly persists with these views that are way outside the mainstream,” she added, “His claims [about attempts to overthrow the government] are wrong.”
Friedrich also took issue with Reffitt’s violent threats against lawmakers like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“To this day, he has not disavowed those comments,” she said.
Since Reffitt’s conviction by a 12-person jury, five more defendants have been found guilty by juries. Five others have been convicted by judges at bench trials. One defendant, matthew martinwas acquitted of multiple misdemeanor counts by a judge.
Outside of court on Monday, before the sentence was imposed, Reffitt’s wife Nicole told CBS News she believed prosecutors’ representation of her husband was a “misrepresentation.”
Ecologists won’t always need expensive and bulky equipment to measure vegetation in the wild. Rice University scientists have discovered a modern heads-up display works pretty well.
Rice researchers set up a Microsoft HoloLens as a mixed-reality sensor to feed VegSense, their application to measure understory vegetation, plant life that grows between the forest canopy and floor.
A proof-of-concept study by graduate student Daniel Gorczynski and bioscientist Lydia Beaudrot shows VegSense could be a suitable alternative to traditional classical field measurements at a low cost.
Their study in Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows the hardware-software combination excels at quantifying relatively mature trees in the wild, which is one measure of a forest’s overall health.
Gorczynski came up with the idea to try HoloLens, commonly marketed as a productivity tool for manufacturing, health care and education. I have developed the open-source software for the device and noted that while the combination is less effective at picking up saplings and small branches, there’s ample room for improvement.
Gorczynski said he was introduced to mixed-reality sensing while an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University and recognized its potential for biological studies. “It seemed sort of like a natural fit,” he said. Gorczynski brought the idea to Beaudrot in 2019 shortly after his arrival at Rice.
The combination of stock hardware and custom software cost far less than systems based onlidar (for “light detection and ranging”) most often used in three-dimensional field studies, said Gorczynski, who developed VegSense on a platform geared more toward 3D games and interactive experiences than hard science.
Field tests at Houston’s Memorial Park showed that at least for mature trees, the smaller solution is just as good. In their case study, VegSense easily detected 48 of 50 such trees in the target area, a circle about 30 feet in diameter that Gorczynski walked, looking up, down and around to build the 3D database. (“Imagine an asterisk with a circle around it,” he said, describing the data-capture pattern.)
“For this study, we wanted to be really deliberate in trying to replicate more traditional understory vegetation structure measurements,” Gorczynski said. “We tried to get that level of detail.”
What he sees as he scans the environment is a holograph-like grid pattern that tracks the surfaces of vegetation. “What’s really cool about that is you can see what the scanner is picking up, but also the spots you missed,” Gorczynski said. “The idea is to get the mesh to cover as much of the vegetation as possible because that’s what gets you the best scan.”
“The results were so nice that Dan quickly wrote it up for publication,” Beaudrot said, noting that Gorczynski expanded his validation of the gear during a subsequent field trip to Tanzania, the focus of one of 15 tropical forests in a recent rainforest study by the Rice group.
“This device can facilitate a lot of great ecological research, particularly because it’s so cost-effective,” she said. “Collecting vegetation information on the forest floor right now is really hard to do without a lot of manual labor, or a really expensive lidar system.”
“So this is a groundbreaking, cost-effective device,” Beaudrot said. “It’s not going to give you the same resolution data that lidar will, but this is just the first application. We hope making VegSense open-source to the ecological research community will spur all the potential ways it can be developed.”
Northrop Grumman, Conservation International and Rice supported the research.
Video: https://youtu.be/dBHfxvhMChU
StorySource:
Materials provided by Rice University. Originally written by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
A former nurse says she was forced to start a risky but high-paying job – after discovering her boyfriend had a secret family that she had been paying for.
Dara, 37, from Brooklyn in New York, regularly shares sexy snaps with her 271,000 followers on Instagram.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Dara joined OnlyFans after learning boyfriend had secret family
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But the pursuit morphed into her joining OnlyFans, and she now makes more than 16 times what she previously earned as a newborn intensive care unit nurse.
Dara needed the money after finding out her partner had another, secret girlfriend – who was eight months pregnant.
Even more shockingly, she claims her ex had been using her money to cover his budding family’s expenses.
Dara, who learned her boyfriend had a secret family – and she was paying their bills. Credit: Jam Press/@moneybirdette
In June 2019, Dara was working as a NICU nurse.
Although living pay to pay, she was also supporting her boyfriend – even agreeing to move across the US to live with him.
A month after moving to the Big Apple, Dara uncovered the truth about her boyfriend.
Not only did he have a heavily pregnant girlfriend, but Dara was financing them both.
“I found out through Facebook,” she told JamPrime.com.
“We were about to go and meet his mum, who lives abroad, and I went to follow her and noticed she was ‘friends’ with a profile of his that I didn’t know about.
The former nurse joined OnlyFans. Credit: Jam Press/@moneybirdette
“When I clicked on this alternative profile, I saw photos from a baby shower for his other girlfriend.
“I was so shocked, hurt and angry.”
Stuck in a lease in a swanky New York flat, Dara ditched her boyfriend.
But she soon found herself struggling to pay her bills.
Dara’s now glamorous life has been hard-earned. Credit: Jam Press/@moneybirdette
Looking for new ways to make ends meet – and wanting to show her ex what he was missing – she decided to try OnlyFans, launching her account in 2018.
Within her first month, she made $US30,000 ($A43,100) – the equivalent of her yearly nursing salary.
Now, she makes more than $A722,500 per year – and it’s all thanks to her cheating ex.
“I have a lot of pride and decided to just figure my financial situation out, rather than let a man take advantage of me,” Dara said.
“When I fell into debt, I ditched him, then got rid of my car, which was a money guzzler, and started an OnlyFans.
“The rest is history.”
In the beginning, she mostly posted behind-the-scenes images from photo shoots, but she couldn’t believe how much money was coming in.
“I remember thinking ‘I’m going to post whatever makes me as much money as possible’ and now I’m debt-free,” she said.
Dara had been living pay to pay while supporting her boyfriend. Credit: Jam Press/@moneybirdette
“For the first time, I can actually save money.”
Dara’s new job means she has turned her back on 13 years in health care but she has not looked back.
“I don’t plan to return to nursing as long as I keep making good money,” she said.
“I loved watching my patients grow and go home.
“But the job started to take a toll on my mental health.
“Being a nurse is emotionally taxing when you work in the intensive care unit, and I wasn’t making enough to make ends meet.
“I don’t regret my decision.”
As for her former partner, Dara reveals he still tries to contact her and he knows about her OnlyFans career.
She said: “He still contacts me to this day but I’ve blocked him.
“I want nothing to do with him.”
For more engaging lifestyle content, visit 7Life on Facebook.
“It’s good to review things but I also feel like it brings up a bit too much technicality in the sport and it deters people wanting to do the sport.
“I just want to be respectful but deep down I’m extremely disappointed. I wanted to win that gold.
“To have it and then 30 seconds to a minute later not, it’s absolutely gut-wrenching. I’ll probably turn my phone off for a few hours and just bring some humbleness back. I’m pretty gutted.”
Asked whether the crowd may have influenced the judges’ decision, Bruce bit his tongue but cheekily suggested he was looking forward to a home Commonwealth Games in Australia in four years’ time.
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“If it was a home crowd, maybe [I would have won], maybe not. I hate going into the whole politics of it,” Bruce said. “The decision was the decision. I did the best I could for myself and Australian weightlifting.
In a separate interview with a group of reporters, Bruce was blunt. “My next big goal is the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Bendigo which is home soil,” he said. “Maybe I will have the advantage there.”
Murray was asked whether he felt he deserved the gold medal, considering Bruce was adamant he had made the superior lift. After a short pause, he said weightlifting needed to look at how it reviewed lifts.
“I haven’t seen it. I feel for him,” Murray said. “Do we need referees and courts? It’s something that a lot of the weightlifting community have been arguing about for a while. It’s great they’ve got video review.
“I feel for him because he’s a strong guy. He put the weight on the bar and he got it overhead. It’s a shame the referee has called it. He did phenomenally well.”
Bruce owns a gym in Parramatta and got into weightlifting to get stronger as a rugby back-rower. His father of him passed away from cancer a few years ago, which inspired him to take up weightlifting full-time.
“There will be some redemption,” Bruce said. “There is a good incentive and motivation to really train hard and come back and get that gold. I had that gold. It got taken away. That’s pretty hard to handle. I’m a strong and motivated person. I’ll bounce back from this and I’ll get there.”
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Reffitt, a recruiter for a right-wing militia known as the Three Percenters, was the first Capitol rioter to go to trial rather than take a plea agreement.
“Mr. Reffitt’s reluctance to admit early that his behavior is illegal is concerning,” District Judge Dabney Friedrich said before handing down the 87-month sentence. “And I want to be very clear… under no legitimate definition of the term ‘patriot’ (does) Mr. Reffitt’s behavior on and around January 6 fit the term. It is the antithesis of the word.”
Friedrich added: “The officers at the Capitol are the patriots, as well as those who fought and even died to protect our democracy, our rule of law… those in the mob are not. Not only are they not patriots, they’ re a direct threat to our democracy and will be punished as such.”
Reffitt was convicted by a DC jury in March and convicted earlier this year of five felonies, including transporting and carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds, interfering with Capitol Police and obstructing an official proceeding. He had driven to DC with several firearms, one of which he carried with him on the steps of the Capitol during the early hours of the riot.
“I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f**king stair on the way out. … And (Republican leader) Mitch McConnell too,” Reffitt said, according to a video recording he made of himself on January 6.
The hefty sentence, paired with the fact that every January 6 defendant to face a jury has been convicted, could determine some of the hundreds of January 6 defendants awaiting trial to instead take plea deals offered by the Justice Department.
The 87-month sentence is two years longer than any other Capitol riot prison term handed down so far.
Reffitt’s wife and two daughters were in the courtroom when the sentence was handed down. Reffitt’s younger daughter, Peyton, told the judge that her father was “not a threat to my family,” and that her family “turned a blind eye” to his mental health issues.
“My father’s name wasn’t on all the flags that were there that day, that everyone was carrying that day. He is not the leader,” Peyton said through tears, at times pausing with her hand on her heart.
The mother of Ashli Babbitt, the pro-Trump rioter who was shot and killed by police on January 6, was also in the courtroom at times on Monday.
Reffitt’s son Jackson, who testified against his father during the trial, was not in the courtroom. In a statement read aloud by prosecutors, Jackson said that his father “slowly lost himself over the last five years,” but that “whether you view him as a father, a family member or friend, using these labels to justify anything he has done is completely wrong.”
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of almost a decade longer than the most severe sentence to date by adding enhanced penalties to his sentence for terrorism. Prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler told the judge that Reffott “wanted to physically and literally remove members of Congress from power” and that the government believes “what he was doing that day was terrorism.”
“We do believe he is a domestic terrorist,” Nestler said Monday.
Friedrich did not add additional penalties for terrorism, however, saying that it would create an “unwarranted disparity” between Reffitt’s sentence and that of other rioters convicted of bringing weapons or threatening lawmakers.
Wi-Fi 7 may not exist in devices today, but that isn’t stopping Intel from forging ahead with it. Intel is planning to introduce Wi-Fi 7 sometime in 2024 just as Apple turns to Wi-Fi 6E for its upcoming devices. Intel will be doubling down on Wi-Fi 7 development efforts over the coming year, according to Eric McLaughlin, Intel’s vice-president of wireless solutions.
“We are currently developing Intel’s Wi-Fi ‘802.11be’ in order to obtain the ‘Wi-Fi Alliance’ certification, and it will be installed in PC products such as laptops by 2024,” McLaughlin said in a press conference earlier today. “We expect it to appear in major markets in 2025.”
The newest and fastest Wi-Fi available right now is Wi-Fi 6E. It supports the 6GHz spectrum, which allows a ton more bandwidth over previous Wi-Fi 6. It quadruples the number of airwaves available and increases speed to 2.6GBps from 2GBps available on Wi-Fi 6. The technology was recently rolled out in late 2020 after a year of development and FCC approval in the United States. Apple has embraced Wi-Fi 6E for its upcoming devices, such as the iPhone 14.
But Wi-Fi 7 is an entirely different beast. Intel claims Wi-Fi 7 will stabilize 6GHz bandwidth while providing 5.8Gbps speeds. That’s blazing fast and more than double what’s available with Wi-Fi 6E. Furthermore, Wi-Fi 7 is future-proof as it will be ready to embrace an increase in bandwidth up to 7GHz, if and when the FCC opens it up in a few years.
“Wi-Fi 7 almost doubles the frequency bandwidth of 802.11ax (170 MHz) to 320 MHz and doubles the speed of Wi-Fi,” McLaughlin told reporters. “Since there is more than a year left before the release of 802.11be, there is still a chance that we could improve the processing speed even further.”
For context, the average Wi-Fi speed in the US in 2021, when connected to 1GBps broadband internet, was less than 20MBps. Most Wi-Fi routers and receivers utilize less than 50% of their capabilities for various reasons, such as multiple users on the same network, firewalls, and other bottlenecks. So, households and offices with high-speed internet connections are probably not getting the full speeds they are paying for due to Wi-Fi constraints.
Intel hopes to change that with Wi-Fi 7. High speed Wi-Fi can take advantage of high-speed internet and improves gaming, media streaming, video calls, and overall data processing speeds.
Qualcomm was the first company to talk about its plans for Wi-Fi 7 support earlier this year.
An author who gained fame for writing a book about the Duchess of Sussex and her time in the royal family is set to release his second work.
Omid Scobie shared the news on Twitterrevealing he could “finally share” details – but he refrained from announcing exactly what the book would be about.
Publishers say the forthcoming book will focus on a “new chapter of the royal story.”
The yet-to-be named book is due for release in 2023, two years after the publishing of Finding Freedomwhich he co-authored with Carolyn Durand.
READMORE:Duchess of Cambridge helps Team GB claim victory in sailing
The Duchess of Sussex pictured in 2018 in London. (Getty)
The news has prompted Scobie could focus his second book on Meghan, due to the reported speculation close working relationship he has with the duchess.
FindingFreedom, to bestseller, was sympathetic towards Meghansparking speculation she collaborated with its authors – something the duchess’s team denied when it was published in 2020.
But in 2022 the couple’s former communications secretary, Jason Knauf, testified in a London court that he gave the writers information and discussed it with Harry and Meghan.
In response, Meghan apologized for misleading the court about the extent of her cooperation with Scobie and Durand.
Publisher Dey Street said Scobie’s new book will focus “on a new chapter of the royal story and feature unique insight, deep access, and exclusive revelations.”
READMORE:The 10 most controversial, and thought-provoking, royal books
Some reports are suggesting the book could counter claims made by Tom Bower in his book, revenge.
Bower paints a scathing picture of Meghan and Prince Harry, and their rift with the Windsors.
It includes a number of allegations about Meghanincluding that she rejected a suggestion by the Queen and the Prince of Wales that she fly to the US to reconcile with her father months after the royal wedding.
Bower says Prince Harry “inflamed emotions by repeatedly drawing comparisons between his wife and Diana,” adding, “The more Harry drew parallels with his mother, the more Meghan must have been convinced of her importance to the monarchy.”
Later this year the Duke of Sussex is set to release his memoirs, due out by Christmas.
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A federal judge on Monday sentenced the first Capitol rioter convicted at trial to 87 months, or just over seven years in prison — the longest term of incarceration thus far for a defendant in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the Jan. 6 assault on Congress .
Guy Wesley Reffitt, 49, of Wylie, Texas, was convicted by a federal jury in March of five felony counts, including obstruction of justice as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm.
Federal prosecutors with the US Department of Justice had asked that Reffitt be sentenced to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors had also — for the first time — asked a federal district court judge to apply a terrorism enhancement, which would effectively define under law that a rioter’s actions amounted to domestic terrorism.
“We do believe that what he was doing that day was domestic terrorism and we do believe that he’s a domestic terrorist,” Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said Monday.
But the judge overseeing Reffitt’s case, Dabney Friedrich, turned down the request, saying that there have been multiple other defendants since the Jan. 6 attack where DOJ chose not to pursue the terrorism enhancement, despite their conduct appearing to be much more serious and threatening. than what Reffitt was convicted of at trial.
Reffitt’s attorney, Clinton Broden, argued the DOJ was unfairly seeking to make an example of Reffitt simply because he took his case to trial.
“This is the only case where the government has asked for the terrorism enhancement, and this is the only case where the defendant has gone to trial,” Broden said. “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Reffitt is among the more than 850 people who have been charged in connection with the deadly breach of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, which disrupted a joint session of Congress agreed to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election . Over 200 defendants have already pleaded guilty to a variety of misdemeanors and felony charges, with some being sentenced to years in federal prison.
Reffitt’s attorney, Clinton Broden, asked that his client be sentenced to no more than two years. He said he was shocked by the prosecution’s recommendation, since his client was not accused of entering the Capitol or assaulting any police officers that day.
“It’s absolutely absurd,” Broden told The Associated Press during a telephone interview last month. “I certainly don’t condone what Mr. Reffitt did. And I think everybody realizes the seriousness of the offenses. But at the same point, there has to be some proportionality here.”
Federal sentencing guidelines in Reffitt’s case called for a prison sentence ranging from nine years to 11 years and three months.
During the trial, prosecutors sought to cast Reffitt, a member of the Texas Three Percenters militia group, as a ringleader of one of the first waves of the mob that breached the Capitol from the building’s west side.
Videos played in court showed Reffitt climbing a stone banister near where scaffolding had been put up in advance of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, and Reffitt confronting US Capitol Police officers who warned him to back down before they fired less-than-lethal ammunition and pepper spray to stop his advance. Other videos presented in court showed Reffitt gesturing to the crowd behind him in what appeared to be an attempt to get them to move up the stairs toward multiple entryways that lead into the building.
At one point in the trial, prosecutors played first-person footage that Reffitt had recorded with a 360-degree camera mounted on his helmet while in the crowd at the “Save America” rally prior to the attack.
“We’re taking the Capitol before the day is out,” Reffitt says in the video. “Everybody is in the same harmony on that… dragging ’em out kicking and f***ing screaming.”
“I didn’t come here to play games… I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f***ing stair on the way out,” he says later. “I think we have the numbers to make it happen… without firing a single shot.”
The Justice Department’s case also relied on two key witnesses: Rocky Hardie, a former member of the Texas Three Percenters, who testified against Reffitt in exchange for immunity to cooperate, and Reffitt’s 19-year-old son, Jackson, who submitted an online tip to the FBI first alerting them to his father’s plans weeks before the riot, ultimately leading to Reffitt’s arrest on Jan. 16, 2021.
During an interview with ABC News from jail last December, Reffitt said he “never expected anything like this to happen.”
“This has been disastrous for me and my family, especially for my girls, my son — actually, all of my family,” Reffitt told ABC News
Volvo’s largest SUV has gained new model names and a handful of new features – but some comfort and convenience items have been removed, as prices have risen by up to $4500.
0
2023 Volvo XC90 pricing and specifications
New model names in line with wider Volvo range
Extra features added – but others deleted
Priced from $92,990 plus on-road costs, up $3,000 to $4,500
the 2023 Volvo XC90 has received minor changes for the new model year, with new names and features – but higher price tags.
In line with the rest of the Volvo Australia range, all versions of the XC90 have been renamed, dropping the familiar Momentum to R-Design range structure for ‘Plus’ and ‘Ultimate’ tags.
The B5 Momentum becomes the Plus B5, the B6 Inscription becomes the Ultimate B6 Bright (referencing its bright chrome trim), the B6 R-Design becomes the Ultimate B6 Dark (with black trim and a sports body kit), and the Recharge Plug- in Hybrid is now the Recharge Ultimate T8 Plug-in Hybrid.
Prices have risen by 2023, increasing by $4500 for the mild-hybrid ‘B’-series petrol models – introduced as part of an update last year – or $3000 for the plug-in hybrid (PHEV).
Accounting for part of the price rise are standard power-folding second-row headrests (previously $350 extra), and USB-C charging ports (replacing USB-A). There are also new graphics for the instrument cluster.
The key addition is Volvo’s latest infotainment software, based on Android Automotive tech, with in-built Google Maps and Google Assistant. Apple CarPlay is included, after a recent software update – but Android Auto is made redundant, given the whole infotainment system is Google designed.
However, alongside the price rise, semi-automated parking – which can automatically steer the car into select parking spaces – has disappeared from the equipment list. Drive is awaiting confirmation from Volvo Australia on the reasoning for this.
The crystal gear selector has been cut from the standard equipment list of the Ultimate B5 Bright (formerly the B5 Inscription), while sports pedals are no longer fitted to the Ultimate B6 Dark (B6 R-Design).
Standard features on the entry-level Plus B5 model include a 9.0-inch touchscreen (carried over from 2022, but with the new software), heated electric front seats, wireless phone charging, a power tailgate, head-up display, four-zone climate control, LED headlights, and a full suite of advanced safety features.
Powering the Plus B5 is to 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine offering 183kW and 350Nmaided by a mild-hybrid system claimed to cut fuel use under low throttle, and restart faster from a set of lights than a normal start-stop system.
B6 models add an electric supercharger to the 2.0-liter hybridised enginefor outputs of 220kW and 420Nm. Both B5 and B6 models use eight-speed automatic transmissions and standard all-wheel drive.
Volvo claims 0-100km/h acceleration times of 7.7 and 6.7 seconds for the B5 and B6 models respectively, and claimed fuel consumption of 8.2 liters per 100km (in mixed driving) across all mild-hybrid variants.
The hero plug-in hybrid combined a 233kW/400Nm 2.0-liter turbo engine driving the front wheels with a 107kW/309Nm electric motor powering the rears, with an eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive and a 18.8kWh battery pack.
Volvo claims combined power and torque outputs of 340kW and 709Nm – but this is (incorrectly) derived from simply adding the peak outputs together, even though the engine and electric motor produce their maximum outputs at different points in the rev range.
All-electric driving range is claimed to sit at 77km on a charge, the 0-100km/h time at as little as 5.3 seconds, and claimed combined fuel economy (in lab testing) of 1.8L/100km.
A full list of the standard features, optional extras and available paint colors are included below.
the 2023 Volvo XC90 range is now on sale in Australia.
the Lifestyle Package can be had with a panoramic sunroof and Harman Kardon sound system on all B5 and B6 models for $3900, or with a panoramic sunroof and Bowers and Wilkins sound system on the Ultimate B6 models for $6450.
The Climate Package, available on all models, adds:
Heated steering wheel (Plus B5 only; already standard on Ultimates)
Heated rear seats (Plus B5 only; already standard on Ultimates)
High-pressure headlight cleaners
Standalone options include:
Adaptive air suspension ($3750, B5 and B6)
Bowers and Wilkins sound system ($4550, Ultimate B6 models only)
Harman Kardon sound system ($2000, B5 and B6)
Rear privacy glass ($1050, B5 and B6)
Panoramic sunroof ($3250, B5 and B6)
Heated steering wheel ($350, Plus B5)
Massaging front seats ($1100, Ultimate models only)
Perforated nappa leather upholstery with front-seat ventilation ($3250, four combinations on B6 Bright, one combination on B6 Dark and Recharge)
High-pressure headlight cleaning ($160, all models)
21-inch eight-spoke alloy wheels ($3,500, Plus B5)
22-inch alloy wheels ($3,500, Ultimate B6 Bright)
Available exterior colors, all of which are no-cost options:
Onyx Black
Crystal White
Denim Blue
Thunder Gray
Platinum Gray (new)
Silver Dawn (new)
Bright Dusk (new)
Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines as a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family.
