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City starts Mass and Cass clear out; launches new ‘Friends and Family’ reunification effort

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

The city of Boston has begun removing tents and the personal encampments of people in the area known as Mass and Cass today, according to city officials.The removal comes after efforts to clear the area were suspended during the winter.“Individuals in the area are being asked to voluntarily remove their tent and are being encouraged to take advantage of the free shelter, substance use treatment, relocation, and storage options available to them,” the city said in a statement.The clear out comes a week after a high profile arrest in the area when a Level 3 sex offender was charged with assault after allegedly following an MIT student into her Beacon Street apartment.Nahom Getaneh, 33, was ordered held without bail last week pending his trial. He was arrested on Southampton street in the Mass and Cass area.The location, at the intersection of the South End and Roxbury, has long been a gathering place and encampment zone for homeless people and those with substance abuse problems.A yea...

How Brandon Hughes’ return to the IL with left knee inflammation will shake up the Chicago Cubs bullpen

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

Learning how to manage left knee inflammation is part of Chicago Cubs left-hander Brandon Hughes’ everyday reality.The issue stems from Hughes’ 2015 surgery to repair the meniscus in his left knee. Since then, his left knee has no cartilage and is essentially bone-on-bone, Hughes explained, constantly leading to inflammation. It flared up in spring training, causing him to open the season on the injured list. His knee again became bothersome to the point that the Cubs placed him on the 15-day IL Saturday, retroactive to Thursday.Hughes’ latest situation began after the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field last weekend.“It always will flare up a little bit after each (outing),” Hughes said Sunday, “and then it’s just a point of, like, how much it fills with (fluid), I guess.”Hughes, 27, appeared in five games between IL stints, allowing two runs, two walks and tallying nine strikeouts in 5⅔ innings. He took a bl...

Arson investigation underway after fire at National City auto repair shop

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

NATIONAL CITY, Calif. — An arson investigation is underway after an early morning fire at a National City vehicle repair shop.Around 2:20 a.m., a passerby reported seeing black smoke and hearing explosions coming from a business located at 1902 Highland Avenue, according to the National City Police Department.Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze a short time after arriving on scene. This San Diego area is among the most expensive ZIP codes in California Footage captured of the scene shows fire damage to the building as well as a vehicle inside the shop that was heavily burned.There were no injuries related to this incident, according to police.The owner of the business was notified and came out to the scene.The cause of the fire has not yet been determined and arson investigators were called out to look into the incident.

‘You destroyed us’: $250K reward offered for info leading to arrest in soccer ref’s murder

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

A reward of up to $250,000 is being offered for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the brazen killing of a 49-year-old Woodbridge man while he was referring a soccer game in North York.Officers responded to calls for shots fired at La Liga Sports Complex in the Finch Avenue West and Alness Street area at around 7:20 p.m. on Sunday, October 9, 2022.Edwin Farley Alvarado Quintero died after being taken to a local trauma centre. Two other males were injured, but survived.On Monday — on what would have been Quintero’s 50th birthday — Toronto Police Service in conjunction with the Bolo Program announced the $250,000 reward, hoping it will help lead them to the suspect in the case, Cristian Adolfo Cuxum, who was 19 at the time of the shootings.Toronto police have issued an arrest warrant for 19-year-old Christian Cuxum. TPS/HOQuintero’s wife, Alexandra Barrera, released a statement on Monday, saying instead of planning her husband’s music-fille...

‘El Chapo’ sons charged with smuggling cheap fentanyl to US

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — With Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán serving a life sentence, his sons steered the family business into fentanyl, establishing a network of labs churning out massive quantities of the cheap, deadly drug that they smuggled into the U.S., prosecutors revealed in a recent indictment.Although Guzmán’s trial revolved around cocaine shipments, the case against his sons exposes the inner workings of a cartel undergoing a generational shift as it worked “to manufacture the most potent fentanyl and to sell it in the United States at the lowest price,” according to the indictment unsealed April 14 in Manhattan.Synthetic opioids — mostly fentanyl — now kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, feeding an argument among some politicians that the cartels should be branded terrorist organizations and prompting once-unthinkable calls for U.S. military intervention across the border.“The problem with fentanyl,...

‘A Small Light’ focuses on those who helped Anne Frank

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Liev Schreiber was visiting conflict-ravaged Ukraine when he got a script about real-life events some 80 years ago that felt strangely timely.It was a story set during the 1942 occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis and the way some Dutch risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.Celebrated diarist Anne Frank is in it, but she’s almost peripheral. Instead, National Geographic’s “A Small Light” focuses on a young, newly married woman who helped hide Frank and who provided food and other necessities at great risk. The series streams on Disney+ on May 1 and on Hulu the following day.“The central storyline being about this young woman coming of age and dealing with her marriage gives you this incredibly intimate perspective on what it’s like to have one’s life interrupted by an invasion,” Schreiber said. “It felt so resonant to me.” “A Small Light” stars Bel Powley as Miep Gies, a real-life heroine for protecting eight people in a secret annex in...

Jordan FM: Regional talks with Syria step toward solution

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan’s top diplomat said on Monday that regional talks with Syria are a step in the right direction to end a decade of the war-torn country’s political isolation and bring Damascus back into the Arab fold. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi’s remarks came as Jordan hosted a meeting of envoys from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Syria. Before the meeting kicked off, Safadi met one-on-one with his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad. Damascus is slowly returning to the Arab fold after being ostracized over President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on a 2011 uprising that descended into a yearslong civil war. However, as Assad consolidated control over most of the country in recent years, Syria’s neighbors have begun to take steps toward rapprochement.The Jordanian Foreign Ministry said the meeting on Monday came as a follow-up to talks with Arab Gulf countries, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt held in Saudi Arabia last month and focused on a “Jordanian initia...

Strike over for 120,000 public servants as union inks tentative deal with feds

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

OTTAWA — The country’s largest federal public-sector union reached a tentative contract agreement with the government overnight, covering more than 120,000 public servants across the country and bringing them back to work after a 12-day strike. It meant that the majority of Public Service Alliance of Canada workers who had hit the picket lines since April 19 were expected to sign in for duty on Monday morning or at their next scheduled shift.But some 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees were still on strike on the day of the federal tax filing deadline, as negotiations over a separate collective agreement continued.“PSAC members held the line together and secured a fair contract that keeps up with the cost of living, increased protections around remote work and creates safer, more inclusive workplaces,” Chris Aylward, the union’s national president, said in a statement. The union said that its Union of Taxation Employees bargaining team would enter a “...

‘Cheers’ bar, ‘Tonight Show’ set among TV history at auction

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

DALLAS (AP) — When Johnny Carson retired from “The Tonight Show” after 30 years, one man was determined to make the iconic set part of his burgeoning collection of television memorabilia. “I would love to say that I convinced him that I was the best guy for the job, but really, if I’m being honest, I had to convince him to save the set at all,” James Comisar said. “He told me he had the tackiest set in Hollywood and who would ever want to see it?”That set is among a dizzying number of items from Comisar’s collection of props, sets and costumes from beloved television shows that will be sold in early June by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions — from the bar where Sam Malone greeted customers on “Cheers” to the pink confection Barbara Eden wore in “I Dream of Jeannie” to the set from Archie and Edith Bunker’s timeworn living room from “All in the Family.” Other items on the block when online bidding starts Monday are a tunic worn by Superman in the 1950s TV series,...

Water pressure: Indigenous leaders from U.S., Canada still demanding pollution probe

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:33 GMT

WASHINGTON — Indigenous and tribal leaders from Canada and the U.S. are keeping up the pressure on both countries to investigate toxic mining runoff from British Columbia. They want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier David Eby to agree to a bilateral investigation under a long-standing transborder water treaty. That’s despite last month’s vow by Trudeau and President Joe Biden to seek a deal they say would “reduce and mitigate” pollution in the Elk-Kootenai watershed. Indigenous groups from sides of the border were in Washington, D.C., on Friday to press their case to the International Joint Commission, which oversees transborder water issues. They say they want a bilateral investigation under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty into Elk Valley mining operations they say have been poisoning their watershed for more than a decade. But Trudeau says he believes the negotiations that are already underway are more likely to yield results.“We believe ...