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Boston city councilor says street sweepers used at Mass and Cass may spread diseases

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

City Councilor Erin Murphy has filed a hearing order to look into whether street cleaning equipment used in the area of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue is spreading infectious diseases to other parts of Boston.Murphy said the city uses the same cleaning equipment on Southampton, Atkinson and Topeka streets as it does in other neighborhoods, including the South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill and Bay Village.This creates the potential for contamination traveling from Mass and Cass to those other neighborhoods, Murphy said. She plans to discuss the hearing request at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.“It’s scary what they’re finding and they’re using the same equipment,” Murphy told the Herald. “It’s a public health crisis.”Murphy said she is not concerned with needles being dragged from Mass and Cass, where open-air drug dealing and homeless encampments are rampant, via the street cleaning equipment.Rather, her focus is on concerns she and other lawmakers raised in a letter ...

When might the Orioles’ playoff games be? Here’s the MLB postseason schedule.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

The Orioles are leading the American League East with less than two months left in the regular season, positioning Baltimore’s baseball team for its first playoff appearance since 2016.MLB announced its postseason schedule Tuesday, hinting at when the Orioles’ playoff run could begin.If Baltimore is unable to hold its lead in the AL East but lands one of the league’s three wild-card spots (or, in a less likely scenario, wins the division with a worse record than the winners of the AL Central and AL West), the Orioles would appear in the AL wild-card series, which runs Oct. 3-5.In those series, the top two wild-card teams face off while the division winner with the worst record faces the third wild-card team. The higher seed hosts every game in the best-of-three matchup. ESPN will televise both the AL and NL wild-card series.If Baltimore wins a wild-card series or finishes as one of the top two AL division champions, it would advance to the AL Division Series. The b...

MIAA board tweaks handbook

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

Those hoping for further developments with regards to Bishop Fenwick’s postseason ban will have to wait a bit longer.The MIAA Board of Directors met virtually on Tuesday morning and while a number of topics were covered including the admittance of a pair of schools and rewording of the handbook, discussion over the postseason ban levied on Bishop Fenwick was saved for executive session.Sources going into the meeting said that reconsideration of the ban was unlikely.During public discussion, the Board unanimously voted to accept Brooke Charter School and Codman Academy as members beginning with the 2023-24 school year. Former Malden principal and current head of the Henderson K-12 Inclusion School, Stephanie Sibley, was announced as the board’s new president.Much discussion on the day centered around slight changes and adjustments to the MIAA Handbook. Most of the presentation made by Associate Executive Director Richard Pearson and Assistant Executive Director Phil Napol...

Remote work giant wants workers back in the office

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

NEW YORK  — The company whose name became synonymous with remote work is joining the growing return-to-office trend.Zoom, the video conferencing pioneer, is asking employees who live within a 50-mile radius of its offices to work onsite two days a week, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email. The statement said the company has decided that “a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom.”The new policy, which will be rolled out in August and September, was first reported by the New York Times, which said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan fielded questions from employees unhappy with the new policy during a Zoom meeting last week.Zoom, based in San Jose, California, saw explosive growth during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as companies scrambled to shift to remote work, and even families and friends turned to the platform for virtual gatherings. But that...

COVID hospitalizations jump again: How bad is it in San Diego?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

(NEXSTAR) – For the second week in a row, the number of people being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 rose significantly, by more than 12%.An additional 9,056 people were hospitalized with the virus last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – that represents a 12.5% jump. The summer wave started a few weeks ago. Last week, the number of new hospitalizations was up 12.1%.In about two dozen states, the surge in hospitalizations is far more than 12%. Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming all saw more than a 20% increase in new COVID hospitalizations. Map: Does your drinking water contain ‘forever chemicals’? New Hampshire saw the biggest jump in a single week – 96%, or a near doubling in the number of people being admitted. Hover over your state on the map (below) to see the percent incre...

Health advocacy work helped to heal Mark Holland during mental health crisis

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

OTTAWA — Advocating for the health of Canadians gave Mark Holland a sense of purpose he needed to help pull him out of the darkest period of his life, the newly appointed health minister said in an interview. After moving from government House leader to the health portfolio, he says it’s “the dream” to work in a ministerial posting he’s so passionate about. Holland was a career politician when he lost his seat in the 2011 election, serving first as an Ontario city councillor in Pickering and Durham before running for federal office in 2004.When he lost, he fell into despair. “I had lost my sense of professional purpose, I’d lost politics,” he said.He spoke candidly last fall about the mental-health struggle he endured at that time. He was told he was toxic, that no organization would want to hire him. His marriage failed and he was “not in a good place” with his children.Holland said that he had tried to take his own life.“...

Air Force veteran Tony Grady joins Nevada’s crowded Senate GOP field, which includes former ally

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Retired Air Force Lt. Col. and former Lt. Gov. candidate Tony Grady announced his bid for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, joining an increasingly crowded GOP field hoping to unseat Democrat Jacky Rosen in what will be one of the most closely watched Senate races next year.The announcement came with a minute-long action movie-themed launch video, emphasizing campaign issues such as crime, illegal immigration and inflation, before showing clips of Grady in the Air Force.“And now Washington elites want to choose our candidate?” the video read, with pictures of Rosen and President Joe Biden speaking side by side. “Not a chance.”The GOP field includes retired Army Capt. and Purple Heart recipient Sam Brown, a former ally of Grady’s, who had long been recruited and endorsed by Washington Republicans for his ability to raise money from the party’s grassroots and his profile as a war hero in a solidly purple state known for razor-thin outcomes. The other major Republic...

A 6-year-old said ‘I did it’ after shooting his teacher at Virginia school, warrants say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — In the moments after a 6-year-old shot his teacher in a Virginia classroom last January, the boy made statements including “I shot that (expletive) dead,” and “I did it. I got my mom’s gun last night,” according to recently unsealed police search warrants.The new court documents in the city of Newport News offer fresh details regarding a shooting that critically wounded a first-grade teacher and shocked the nation. The teacher, Abby Zwerner, survived despite being shot in the hand and chest and is suing the Newport News Public Schools for $40 million. The 6-year-old’s mother, Deja Taylor, was charged with felony child neglect and a misdemeanor count of reckless storage of a firearm. A plea hearing for Taylor’s case is set for next week.The search warrants, which were unsealed after six months, said a reading specialist at Richneck Elementary was walking by Zwerner’s classroom when she heard a gunshot. “Several children ran out of classroom ...

Federal report sheds new light on Alaska helicopter crash that killed 3 scientists, pilot

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A helicopter that crashed on Alaska’s remote and vast North Slope in July, killing three state scientists and the pilot, stopped sending flight-status data to a real-time tracking system as it passed over the southeastern shoreline of an Arctic lake, according to a preliminary report on the crash released Tuesday.The Bell 206L-4 helicopter was later found fragmented and partially submerged in Lake Itinik, a large oval-shaped body of water that measures 3 miles (4.83 kilometers) wide in some places, according to the report from the National Transportation Safety Board. There was no indication in the report of what caused the helicopter to crash into the lake in clear conditions. The cause typically is detailed months later when federal investigators file their final report.The last of the helicopter’s data transmissions sent every three minutes indicated it was traveling in a northwesterly direction at an altitude of 144 feet (43.89 meters) above mean sea lev...

Amazon nations seek common voice on climate change, urge developed world to help protect rainforest

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:14:16 GMT

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Leaders from South American nations that are home to the Amazon challenged the developed world on Tuesday to do more to help stop massive destruction of the world’s largest rainforest, a task they said can’t fall to just a handful of countries when the crisis has been spurred by so many.Assembling Tuesday and Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Belem, the members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, or ACTO, also sought to chart a common course on how to combat climate change, hoping a united front could give them a major voice in global talks.The calls from the presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia came as the leaders aim to fuel much-needed economic development in their regions while preventing the Amazon’s ongoing demise from reaching a “point of no return:” Some scientists say that when 20% to 25% of the forest is destroyed, rainfall would dramatically decline, transforming more than half of the rainforest to tropical savannah, with immense bio...