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Environmental groups demand emergency rules to protect rare whales from ship collisions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A coalition of environmental groups is calling on the federal government to enact emergency rules to protect a vanishing species of whale from lethal collisions with large ships.The groups filed their petition with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Sept. 28 in an effort to protect the North Atlantic right whale. The giant whale numbers less than 340 and has been in steep decline in recent years.Ship collisions are among the most dire threats to the survival of the whale, according to NOAA. The groups cited a proposed rule from the agency designed to prevent such ship strikes by making more vessels slow down for whales. NOAA has yet to release a final updated speed rule despite proposing new rules more than a year ago, the environmental groups said.The groups argue it’s critically important to get new rules on the books before the upcoming calving season, during which the whales migrate hundreds of miles from waters off New England an...

Book Review: Romance strikes in ‘Maybe Once, Maybe Twice’ with quirky lines and an epic soundtrack

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

On Maggie Vine’s 30th birthday, she makes a marriage pact with the handsome, broad-shouldered, sunbeam-smile-having Garrett Scholl. Thing is, the struggling singer-songwriter had already made a similar deal with her first boyfriend, Asher Reyes, who’s now an extremely successful — and attractive — actor. Thus the two great loves of Maggie’s life come crashing back to her at 35. Alison Rose Greenberg’s second novel, “Maybe Once, Maybe Twice,” is a long, luscious buildup of will-they-won’t-they, love-triangling, song-writing, and trips down memory lane as the narrative hops back to teen Maggie and 20-something Maggie to flesh out her past.Greenberg writes exceptional characters who still fit into the ordinary world, like our protagonist. Maggie Vine is the chic, All The Feels, folk-singing heroine we wanted but secretly didn’t believe could exist so tastefully. She’s got humor and sorrow, pride and doubt, good moments and bad, and a model-gorgeous, standoffish-yet-lovable ...

Four people have died in a plane crash near the Utah desert tourist community of Moab

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

MOAB, Utah (AP) — A plane crash outside the eastern Utah tourist town of Moab killed all four people on board, authorities said Monday.The plane crashed Sunday evening shortly after taking off from Canyonlands Airfield about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Moab, according to a Grand County Sheriff’s Department statement posted on Facebook.The crash of the single-engine Piper plane was being investigated, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a post on X, the social media website formerly called Twitter.A phone message left with sheriff’s officials seeking additional information wasn’t immediately returned Monday.Moab is a tourism-centered community of about 5,300 people near Arches and Canyonlands national parks.The Associated Press

Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearean actor who soars in sci-fi, looks back on his life in memoir

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Patrick Stewart, who famously played a “Star Trek” captain, has boldly gone where no one has gone before — into his past.The actor spent much of the pandemic at his computer writing his memoir, and the result is out this fall, “Making It So,” borrowing his catchphrase from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”“My long-term memory is very strong. It only needed me to turn the key on day one for the door to be open and memory after memory after memory and sensation and sensation and feelings all came scuttling back,” said Stewart, 83, in a Zoom interview from his Los Angeles home.It is a remarkable story of a boy who grew up poor in the north of England, became a great Shakespearean stage actor and then a sci-fi movie icon aboard the USS Enterprise and the “X-Men” movie franchise.He grew up without a toilet or a bathroom in his home, sold furniture as a young man, worked up the rungs of regional theater in England — including touring and crushing on Vivien Leigh — before a...

Pope suggests blessings for same-sex unions possible in response to 5 conservative cardinals

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.The Vatican on Monday published a letter Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanat...

Toronto man arrested after fatal shooting near Kensington Market

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

A Toronto man is facing a first-degree murder charge in connection with a fatal downtown shooting near Kensington Market earlier this year.On Aug. 21, officers were called to the area of College Street and Spadina Avenue around 4:50 a.m. for reports that someone had been shot.Police say there were a group of males arguing outside when one man allegedly pulled out a gun and shot another man.A man in his 40s was found outside a storefront on Spadina with gunshot wounds. He was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries where he was eventually pronounced dead.The victim has been identified as 41-year-old Oluwobi ‘Tobi’ Alaga of Toronto.On Saturday, investigators arrested a suspect in Innisfil Ont., south of Barrie, with help from Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and South Simcoe Police.Toronto resident Carlos Swaby-Palacios, 26, is facing a first-degree murder charge. The accused appeared in a Toronto courtroom on Sunday.Anyone with additional information is being ask...

10 people are dead after Mexico church roof collapses. No more survivors believed buried in rubble

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

CIUDAD MADERO, Mexico (AP) — The collapse of a church roof during a mass in northern Mexico has killed at least 10 people and injured 60, and searchers said Monday that no further people were believed to be trapped in the wreckage. State police had initially estimated about 100 people were inside the church in the Gulf coast city of Ciudad Madero when it collapsed during a baptism Sunday, and said that approximately 30 parishioners may have been trapped in the rubble when the roof caved in.But Tamaulipas state Gov. Américo Villarreal later said only 70 may have been inside. Villarreal said that, after sending search dogs and thermal imaging cameras under the collapsed concrete slab, it appeared that nobody was still trapped, apart from the ten bodies already recovered. “The most likely thing, I can’t affirm it 100%, is that there aren’t any more people trapped,” Villarreal said. Describing the searches by dogs and rescue teams, he said “there are no indications of life i...

Philadelphia journalist who advocated for homeless and LGBTQ+ communities shot and killed at home

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said. Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.“Josh cared deeply about our city and its residents, which was evident both in his public service and in his writing. His intelligence, creativity, passion, and wit shone bright in everything that he did — and his light was dimmed much too soon,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement. Kruger handled social media ...

5 years later, pregnant Chicago postal worker Kierra Coles still missing

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

CHICAGO — A Chicago family continues searching for a missing postal worker nearly five years after her disappearance.Kierra Coles disappeared on Oct. 2, 2018, from an area near East 83rd Street and South King Drive, in the city’s Chatham neighborhood. Surveillance video captured her leaving her apartment, dressed in her work uniform. Her car was later found on that block with her purse and phone inside. Coles was three months pregnant at the time that she went missing. ‘I’m never going to give up’: Family members search for answers 5 years after disappearance of pregnant postal worker She would have turned 31-years-old last Sunday. Her family marked her birthday by asking the public for any tips or information that may help them find her.Anyone with info on Coles' disappearance can leave a tip for police at CPDtip.com. Tips can be left anonymously.

5 takeaways from a near shutdown and Washington’s dysfunction

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:52:00 GMT

(The Hill) – The government did not shut down Sunday, surprising just about everyone.Instead, lawmakers rallied around a 47-day “clean” stopgap measure that did nothing to support Ukraine or deal with the border crisis.The result is that the House and Senate will have to figure out a way to keep the government open again in a little more than a month if they want to prevent a Thanksgiving shutdown.They’ll also have to prevent a closure as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) works under repeated threats to his job.Here are five takeaways.McCarthy escapes again — but trouble is around the cornerMcCarthy’s ability to surprise — repeatedly snatching a semblance of political victory from the jaws of defeat — is becoming something to behold.Throughout last week, it seemed certain that the government would close and that he would get the blame.That this didn’t happen made it a pretty good outcome for the Speaker, even though Democrats got much of what they wanted from the new funding law.The...