By COREY WILLIAMS

DETROIT (AP) — As a fan, Shaun Horne is all about Detroit’s professional sports teams. But when it comes to playing, the high school junior has his eyes on one game.

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“I only play golf,” Horne said after taking his turn on a simulator inside a gym on Detroit’s westside.

Embracing golf makes the 16-year-old a rarity among his Detroit peers — particularly Black high schoolers.

Coaches and community groups in the city are taking ambitious steps to spread the game’s popularity among students — noting that only about 50 of more than 14,000 high school students in Detroit’s school district play golf on school teams.

In Detroit, the biggest challenge is exposing Black youth to the game, said Jesse Hawkins, who is Black and coaches Horne’s team at Renaissance High School. Backing from local corporations and nonprofits, providing access to equipment and even college scholarships is helping.

“When you go into high schools and you go into elementary schools often times we’ll hear narratives around basketball players, football games, those things,” Hawkins said. “And golf is really not as propagated as much for our community.”

Who’s playing?

In Detroit, advocates of increasing play among Black young people have partnered with some of the city’s largest businesses and community organizations. At least two nonprofits offer programs that teach kids how to play golf.

The Rocket Classic has steered nearly $10 million from the annual PGA event held in Detroit to local charitable organizations. Of that, $800,000 has been given to programs that teach kids how to play the game. One program provides access to college scholarships to high school seniors, while upward of 700 children and teens take part each year in programs put on by First Tee of Greater Detroit.

“Golf is the why we get them there, but while we have them there we’re teaching them life skills,” said Carl Bentley, chief executive of First Tee of Greater Detroit, which has donated a golf simulator to the school district. “Learning how to say ‘yes sir, yes ma’am’ — shake a hand properly, how to start a conversation. We’re teaching them life skills and then we get to putting and swinging and things like that.”

Among the 28.1 million Americans who played golf on a course in 2024, about 25% were Black, Asian or Hispanic, according to the National Golf Foundation. Interest is wider when considering those who played or followed professional golf coverage on TV, in writing or via podcasts.

But Hawkins said his experience as a coach suggests Black high schoolers aren’t among that audience.

“You don’t hear kids talking about the latest golf shoes or the cool golf apparel,” Hawkins said. “You’re not necessarily going to get a badge of honor walking into your high school and you’ve got the newest golf shirt.”

Lack of money is a barrier

Golf and equipment can be pricey, sometimes too pricey for families struggling just to make ends meet.

Detroit, which is just under 80% Black, had a median income of about $39,500 in 2023 compared to $69,100 statewide, according to the census. The city’s poverty level was about 32%. Statewide, that figure was about 13.5%.

A set of good golf clubs can cost a few hundred dollars or more. It’s $28 for juniors to play 18 holes and use a cart weekdays at the two public golf courses in Detroit.

The PGA brought its first event to Detroit in 2019, and city native Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies has been its sponsor. The company works with partners to bring the game to Detroit’s youth and cover some of the costs, said Trina Scott, vice president of Civic and Community Affairs at Detroit-based Rock, which is Gilbert’s family office.

“How do we attract Black and brown youth into seeing (golf) as a possibility?” said Scott. “One way of doing that is by making it accessible (and) also eliminating the barriers — being able to have the right clothing to go on a golf course, being able to have the clubs that you need, being able to have the skillset to be confident on the course.”

From the gridiron to the golf course

Mike Schuchard has about a dozen players on his Detroit Cass Tech golf team. That’s about double the number from last season, but only two are considered “varsity level.”

That’s not enough to compete against some suburban schools with strong golf programs.

The first-year golf coach says he’s trying to recruit students who are already interested in others sports.

“These schools are loaded with great athletes, but they just haven’t been introduced to this game, yet,” Schuchard said.

Ahmari Flowers, the senior captain on Cass Tech’s golf team, agrees. He started playing the sport after his freshman year.

“I’m an athletic guy and golf like came easy to me,” said Flowers, 17. “For an athletic person, it’s still a sport, a lot of body movement and all you got to do is control that athleticism and use it to your advantage.”

By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Former FBI director James Comey says that he’s still a bit bewildered over how a seemingly innocent Instagram shot of shells arranged in the sand led to allegations by Donald Trump among others that he was calling for the president’s assassination and to an interview with the Secret Service.

“It’s been a bit of a distraction, honestly,” Comey said with a weary laugh Monday night during an appearance at a Barnes & Noble on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Comey was promoting “FDR Drive,” a crime novel coming out this week. One of the book’s themes, ironically, is weighing the potential of speech to incite others to violence.

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Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s first presidential campaign, explained Monday that he and his wife, Patrice, had been returning from a walk on the beach last Thursday when they came upon some shells organized in a way that resembled numbers, including “86.”

They speculated over whether it was a home address, or a political message. His wife noted that “86” in some restaurants means they had run out of an ingredient. Comey remembered it was slang for saying something was boring and should be “ditched.”

“And she said, ‘You should take a picture of it.’ So I took a picture of it, and then we walk home and she said, ‘You should really put that on Instagram. It’s kind of a cool thing.’ I said, ‘You’re right. It’s a cool thing,’” he explained.

To many viewers, the numbers seemed to spell out 86 and 47. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ’to kill.’”

Trump is the country’s 47th president.

“Some hours later she (Patrice) said to me, ‘You know, people on the internet are saying you’re calling for the assassination of Donald Trump,” Comey explained. “And I said, ’Well, if they’re saying that, I’m taking it down because I don’t want any part of violence.’”

Comey quickly pulled the image, but it had already reached the attention of Trump and other administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel. Trump himself, interviewed on Friday on Fox News, said that Comey “knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

Comey confirmed Monday that he received a call from the Secret Service later Thursday, spoke to them on the phone and agreed to meet with them in person.

“And so they gave me a ride to their headquarters, the Washington field office interviewed me,” he said. “It seems like a year ago, but it was Friday, right? I told them what I just told you. And so I, it seems like a thing that I don’t fully understand and maybe it’ll go away now.”

Comey has written several books since Trump fired him, including the million-selling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.” More recently, he has taken up fiction, his previous novels including “Central Park Drive” and “Westport.”

By KEN MAGUIRE

EMBOROUGH, England (AP) — Scream all you want, but Lobo isn’t letting go.

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The young German shepherd has chomped into the arm of a would-be attacker wearing a padded suit at K9 Protector in southwest England.

A command later, Lobo is back at the feet of Alaster Bly and awaiting his next instruction.

“I describe them as pets with a toolkit built into them. A toolkit that you hope you’re never going to use,” said Bly, K9 Protector co-owner.

Expensive protection dogs like Lobo have been in demand among professional athletes to guard against burglars who target wealthy homes often as part of sophisticated crime rings. Athletes are particularly vulnerable while they’re away at games.

“He will end up in somebody’s home with high-net worth that is potentially at risk from more than your opportunist burglar,” Bly said of Lobo, who costs $60,000 and boasts a Bavarian bloodline that is “second to none.”

The lengthy list of athletes whose residences have been hit includes Premier League stars Jack Grealish and Alexander Isak. England cricket captain Ben Stokes’ home was burglarized while he was playing in Pakistan.

It’s becoming a major problem in the United States, too, with former NFL cornerback Richard Sherman a recent example.

The homes of Kansas City Chiefs teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce were burglarized in October as part of a wave of break-ins that also targeted Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. Seven Chilean men were charged in connection with those burglaries, as well as the break-in at Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis’ home, where nearly $1.5 million in cash and valuables were stolen.

After consulting the FBI, the NBA drew up guidance for players.

One of the recommendations: “Utilize dogs for home protection.”

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo attacks a pretend criminal during a training session at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Which breed is best?

While almost any dog can provide some deterrence, protection-dog providers offer breeds like German shepherd, Belgian Malinois, Rottweiler, Doberman and Cane Corso.

Bly and his wife, K9 Protector co-owner Sian Bly, work predominantly with German shepherds.

“They are the most proven dogs at being family dogs,” Alaster Bly said.

They begin to differentiate early on which pups show potential.

“If we’ve got a puppy that’s really confident, is chasing a rag, biting hold of the rag, and their food drive is high, that’s a good starting point,” Sian Bly said. “We look at how competitive they are with their siblings, as well. You’re looking for quite a strong dog.”

Dogs that don’t make the cut might get routed to prison service or police duty.

“You can’t place a dog with young kids that’s nervous or that the temperament isn’t 100%,” she said.

Protection dogs are expensive

The handful of K9 Protector dogs that reach “high-threat environment” status cost up to $100,000.

It can take a couple of years to train for all sorts of scenarios.

“It’s vast — the ability to deal with four intruders at once, vehicle carjacking tactics, being acceptant of multi-handlers,” Alaster Bly said. “Husband, wife, nanny, housekeeper, estate manager all being able to handle that dog in an equal way in a threat scenario, and the dog still responding in the same way — is very different to a pet-level-trained dog with protection training.”

Clients must be a good match, though.

Sian Bly said if they think a buyer “might use the dog in the wrong way, then we don’t sell them the dog. It doesn’t matter about the finances.”

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo listens to owner Alaster Bly at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Between 10-15% of their clients are professional athletes and they typically require nondisclosure agreements, as do the actors and singers who come calling.

They sell about two or three dogs per month. When the economy is bad and crime increases — demand is higher. Winter months see more sales and the pandemic period of 2020-21 was “the busiest we’ve ever been,” Sian Bly said.

UFC fighter Aspinall picks a German shepherd

UFC heavyweight Tom Aspinall added a protection dog to his family after moving to a new house. The Manchester native posted a video about it.

“I’m not here all the time. I just wanted someone else kind of looking after the family, as well as me, even when I’m here,” Aspinall said of his German shepherd.

U.S. soccer midfielder Tyler Adams opted for a Rottweiler from Total K9, the North Yorkshire company that provided Aspinall’s dog.

Tottenham midfielder James Maddison got a 145-pound Cane Corso from Leicestershire-based Chaperone K9, which also counts Grealish as a client.

Grealish’s mansion was burglarized just after Christmas in 2023 while the Manchester City midfielder was playing a game at Everton. Family members called police when they heard noises and after Grealish’s Belgian Malinois and Cockapoo reportedly started barking.

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo awaits commands at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Grealish later called it “a traumatic experience for all of us, I am just so grateful that nobody was hurt.”

Tips for home security

The NBA memo urged removing online real estate listings that show interiors.

Some stars post their protection dogs on social media along with the pets’ names — but they probably shouldn’t.

“There is nothing more off-putting to a dog than being called by its own name when you’re breaking into the home,” Alaster Bly said.

The Blys use German commands, which buyers must learn.

On K9 Protector’s website, former long-distance runner Mo Farah, a four-time Olympic champion, described turning to a protection dog after his home was burglarized despite an alarm system, video coverage and 24-hour security patrols.

Intruders at Burrow’s house eluded manned security at his property while he was playing a Monday Night Football game at Dallas in December. The criminal complaint on the Chilean crew said they liked to approach from “a wooded or dark area.”

Knowing the rules

Under the UK’s “Guard Dogs Act,” someone capable of controlling a guard dog must be at the premises, and a notice must be posted at the entrance about the dog.

Technically, there are scenarios that could result in criminal prosecution of dog owners in Britain — even in burglaries.

German Shepherd family protection dog Lobo rests at the Strapestone Kennels in Radstock, England, Wednesday, March 5, 2025 .(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

The National Association of Security Dog Users “does not promote the use of dogs as personal/family protection dogs and issues no certification or training courses in relation to this type of dog,” said Roger Flett, a NASDU director.

Samantha Gaines of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals warned against the “glamorization” of painful ear-cropping on breeds like Doberman and Cane Corso. The procedure is prohibited in England and Wales, but it’s legal to import them that way.

UK burglaries are decreasing

It’s unknown if break-ins at wealthy homes are increasing, but statistics for England and Wales show residential burglaries overall are decreasing.

From the year ending March 2018 to the year ending September 2024, there was a 42% drop, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Just a small percentage of burglaries get solved, however. Only in late 2022 did police chiefs commit to responding to all break-ins.

Alaster Bly, a former police officer, said it’s not just about burglaries. A CEO of a company might be facing a threat, or a person might be dealing with a stalker.

“There are life-changing incidents that take place regularly,” he said. “The array of problems and crime that’s going on in the UK at the moment keeps us busy.”

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

It was a chilly December day when Ian Bartoszek and a team of other biologists hiked into the wilderness outside Naples to track pythons. They were homing in on Loki, a 13-foot, 52-pound male. But something didn’t feel right.

Normally, if things go well, they find Loki shacked up with a big fertile female during breeding season. The goal is to remove and euthanize as many of the invasive snakes as possible — taking out a female full of 70 or so egg follicles is like removing 71 snakes from the ecosystem.

As they got closer, they prepared to wrangle multiple big snakes, but when they finally spotted him, he was alone, motionless, and his neck and head were buried under pine needles.

They soon realized he was dead.

“It was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, stop. Don’t step on anything. Let’s look around,’” Bartoszek said. “We went into ‘CSI Crime Scene’ mode.”

“First off, it was a little emotional, because he was dead,” Bartoszek said. “This was one of my favorite scout snakes.”

Bartoszek and the team of biologists at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida have been tracking 40 or so male scout snakes since 2013. This breeding season they removed 130 adult snakes totaling 6,500 pounds. Nearly all of that success hinges on radio-tracking male scout snakes who lead them to big females in areas where a human would never spot them.

The Conservancy had been tracking Loki for six years, and he’d led them to some very rotund females. “He was a good scout,” Bartoszek said. “He was a good player. You never like to lose an MVP.”

When they brushed away the pine needles, Loki’s head and neck were gnawed off. There were no discernible tracks, and he was half-buried, something biologists call a cache.

“Caching is fairly specific to cats, and it looked like a cat cache. We were excited to find out if it was a panther or a bobcat,” Bartoszek said.

Previously, biologists have found several cached pythons in nearby Big Cypress National Preserve, but they had no proof of what kind of wild cat had killed them — the area is home to both bobcats and much larger, and endangered Florida panthers.

Bartoszek needed help to figure out what had happened. He called in former coworker and wild cat expert Dave Shindle, who now works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the coordinator for Florida panther recovery.

Shindle came to the cache site with a video trail cam, knowing that since the kill was fresh, the cat would likely be back. When he saw the snake’s carcass, he felt strongly that the killer was a cat — the gnawed neck was textbook feline caching behavior.

Pythons the size of Loki routinely eat bobcats (Bartoszek often finds bobcat remains in snakes’ digestive tracts during necropsies), and the Conservancy has documented a 15-foot snake swallowing a 77-pound deer, an animal three times the size of a bobcat.

These bobcat claws were found in the digestive tracts of invasive Burmese pythons during necropsies performed by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Additionally, studies of bobcats on tree islands in the Everglades suggest that the more pythons there are in an area, the fewer bobcats use it, either because snakes eat them, or because there’s less prey for the cats due to competition from pythons.

It’s safe to say that pythons kill prey larger than themselves, but so do bobcats: They have been filmed tackling deer, especially young ones.

As Shindle set up the camera, the biologists started making bets on whether a bobcat or panther killed Loki. Bartoszek was betting a panther had done it. “It’s such a big python, I couldn’t really see a bobcat killing a 50-pound snake.” But panthers are exceedingly rare. They would soon find out who the killer was.

A predator, revealed

Shindle retrieved the camera the next day, and immediately spotted the killer on the video.

The grainy footage shows an approximately 25-pound bobcat gingerly walking across a log to return to its python stash. The cat seems nervous, cautious, constantly sniffing to pick up on the scent of the humans who’d been there the day before.

A still frame from a trail-cam video taken of the bobcat that likely killed Loki, a 13-foot, 52-pound male python scout snake. The bobcat is on a log and the python is at the bottom of the frame. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Bartoszek was impressed. “I like animals that punch above their weight class,” he said.

“That’s the last we saw of the bobcat. We just left the carcass there. Who knows if he came back.”

There’s no way to know with 100% certainty how Loki died. Maybe he drew his last breath before the cat found him. But bobcats are not known as scavengers. And Bartoszek had tracked and seen Loki a few days prior, and he was in top condition. “He was a prime specimen,” said Bartoszek. The conclusion: In all likelihood, a 25-pound bobcat killed a 13-foot, 52-pound python.

Leveraging the cold

A key factor in the snake’s demise, aside from the cat’s courage, may have been the cold weather.

Cold snaps, such as the one that occurred a few days before they found the snake, slow cold-blooded pythons down. They’re less able to flee, less able to defend themselves, they’re “off their game,” as Bartoszek put it. “I think he just got cold-stunned, and the cat was opportunistic and took him down,” Bartoszek said.

“This is a good sign for the Everglades that our native wildlife are fighting back,” he said. In fact bobcats may see pythons as a valuable food source if the conditions align. Successful predators put patterns together on how their prey behaves. It could be that this bobcat, and maybe others, have deduced that cold weather gives them an advantage over an otherwise deadly snake.

Bartoszek and his team have started to anticipate losing a scout snake each year during cold spells, maybe to a bobcat, maybe a panther, maybe a bear.

Earlier this year they were tracking an 11-foot, 35-pound snake named Pacino in the Picayune Strand State Forest after another cold snap. “We were out in the forest going, I wonder which of our animals could have got predated?” Sure enough, they found Pacino not only dead but almost entirely eaten.

The scene was messy — grass and ferns trampled. And there wasn’t much left of Pacino. “It was almost like a grenade went off and there was pretty much just the skull (of the snake),” said Bartoszek. Also, the site smelled like a bear.

“He looked like he was killed by a bear, but I can’t tell you 100% if he was. I don’t think he was killed by the cold, because we really didn’t get frost. I think it was a similar situation. He was exposed, and you could tell a bear got this python.”

The half-buried body of Loki, one of the better scout snakes that the Conservancy of Southwest Florida had in the field. (Courtesy Conservancy of Southwest Florida)

Bartoszek sees a potential pattern emerging. “Animals are likely stunned, if you will, for lack of a better word, and a predator takes advantage. In fact, the native mammals might actively look for those vulnerabilities during a cold snap.”

Invasive Burmese pythons ended up in Florida wilderness via the exotic pet trade of the 1970s and ’80s. Escaped or released pets thrived and reproduced, first at the southern tip of the Everglades, but now as far north as Lake Okeechobee and the suburbs of Fort Myers. In some areas where the snakes are more established, mammal sightings are down 80% to 99%.

Bartoszek suspects that Florida panthers occasionally prey upon pythons, but there’s no proof yet. And there are only 200 or so Florida panthers in the wild. The fact that bobcats are widespread — the National Park Service said they have a “healthy population” in South Florida — and potentially learning to prey upon even large pythons is a good sign, Bartoszek said.

In warm weather, some bobcats have found other ways to put Burmese pythons on the menu.

Wildlife biologists in Florida documented a bobcat raiding a python nest back in 2021.

The cat returned several times when the massive 115-pound female mother snake was gone, snacking on eggs and caching the nest. When mamma came back, the cat actually faced off with her and took a swipe, but kept her distance as the snake coiled to strike.

The Conservancy loses approximately 10% of their 40 or so scout snakes each season, some to alligator predation, or sometimes the team will find the radio tracker with no snake. “We’ll never know what took them down,” said Bartoszek.

With the documentation of this bobcat cache, it looks like the tables can turn, at least once in a while. “As we have more (radio-tagged Burmese pythons) out there and we follow them longer-term, we see more of Florida native wildlife fighting back,” he said.

“Yeah, we were a little bummed that we lost a valuable scout. But we were also saying, ‘All right, score one for the home team.’”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6.