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Hurricane Franklin fires off waves in Rhode Island, sending surfers flocking to the water [+gallery]

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

POINT JUDITH, R.I. — Hurricane Franklin kicked up major surf here, providing New England surfers the first healthy set of waves this hurricane season.Surfers in and around Boston rely heavily on storms to bring in solid sets, something that belies the constant West Coast waves that East Coast rippers constantly dream of at night.Waves pounded Point Judith, Rhode Island all day with sets topping out at head-high or 2 feet overhead, according to Surfline, a forecasting site for surfers.New Hampshire and Maine saw some surf but the action was down south, where surfers also packed Narragansett Beach and Scarborough State Beach.But surfers north of Boston were likely anxiously looking at the forecast for the rest of the week, which showed a potential for waves on Thursday and Friday in the Granite and Pine Tree states.Hurricane Franklin was “well off-shore” of New England, too far away to impact weather in Boston, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bryce Williams.But...

In latest violence, Israeli police kill Palestinian teen assailant and West Bank bomb hurts Israelis

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Wednesday shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who stabbed a man in a Jerusalem light-rail station, officials said, while Palestinian militants detonated a bomb near a convoy of Israeli troops escorting Jewish worshippers to a holy site in the occupied West Bank, wounding four Israeli troops. The attacks came hours after fighting erupted in a Palestinian refugee camp between local residents and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian man dead.The bloodshed was the latest in a deadly wave of violence that has gripped the area over the past year and a half and shows no signs of slowing.The Israeli army said that the late-night explosion in Nablus — a stronghold of Palestinian militants in the northern West Bank — wounded an Israeli military officer and three soldiers. The soldiers were evacuated to a nearby hospital for treatment. One was moderately wounded and the rest suffered only light wounds. Amateur video on social...

Nebraska governor signs order narrowly defining sex as that assigned at birth

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday signed an executive order strictly defining a person’s sex.The order notably does not use the term “transgender,” although it appears directed at limiting transgender access to certain public spaces. It orders state agencies to define “female” and “male” as a person’s sex assigned at birth. “It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in a statement. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.” Pillen’s order came less than a month after Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an almost identical order.The Nebraska and Oklahoma orders both include definitions for the words “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father” and “mother.” They specifically define a female as a person “whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova” and a male as a p...

Voters in one Iowa county reject GOP-appointed auditor who posted about 2020 election doubts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

INDIANOLA, Iowa (AP) — Earlier this summer, a GOP-controlled board in an Iowa county decided that the person who would oversee their local elections would be a fellow Republican who had no specific experience running elections and who made prior social media posts questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential contest. Local Democrats were outraged — and David Whipple’s stint as county auditor didn’t last long. On Tuesday, voters in Warren County overwhelmingly decided to replace Whipple with Kimberly Sheets, a Democrat who had served in the auditor’s office. She earned about 67% of the vote over Whipple in the special election, which highlighted the desire for voters to choose their own candidate for the important office and take a stand against what some saw as an overreach by local government.“There was a power grab,” Steven Rose, 71, of Indianola, said of Whipple’s appointment to the post after the former auditor retired in June. Rose, who voted for Sheets...

Trump blasts New York fraud case, claims he prevented nuclear war in transcript of April testimony

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump defended his real estate empire and his presidency in a face-to-face clash with the New York attorney general suing him for fraud, testifying at a closed-door grilling in April that his company is flush with cash — and claiming he saved “millions of lives” by deterring nuclear war when he was president.Trump, in testimony made public Wednesday, said it was a “terrible thing” that Attorney General Letitia James was suing him over claims he made on annual financial statements about his net worth and the value of his skyscrapers, golf courses and other assets.James released Trump’s 479-page deposition transcript in a flurry of court filings ahead of a Sept. 22 hearing where Judge Arthur Engoron could resolve part or all of the case before it is scheduled to go to trial in October. She pointed to evidence that shows Trump inflated his net worth by up to 39%, or more than $2 billion, in some years. Sitting across from James at her Manhattan office on April 13...

Georgia Power customers could see monthly bills rise $9 to pay for the Vogtle nuclear plant

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — Residential customers of Georgia’s largest electrical utility could see their bills rise $9 more a month to pay for a new nuclear power plant under a deal announced Wednesday.Georgia Power Co. said customers would pay $7.56 billion more for Plant Vogtle construction costs under the agreement with utility regulatory staff. The Georgia Public Service Commission’s five elected commissioners must approve any deal, but such agreements are typically persuasive. With the commission’s Public Interest Advocacy staff and three ratepayer groups signing on, the agreement is likely to avert contentious hearings over how much blame the company should bear for billions in cost overruns at two new nuclear reactors southeast of Augusta. Vogtle’s Unit 3 and Unit 4 are the first new American reactors built from scratch in decades. Each reactor can power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing any carbon. But even as government officials and some utilities ...

Alex Murdaugh loses prison phone privileges after lawyer records phone call for documentary

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh has lost his phone privileges and his prison tablet computer after his lawyer recorded him reading his journal entries on a call for a documentary about his case, South Carolina Corrections Department officials said Wednesday.Prison policy prohibits inmates from talking to the media without permission because the agency “believes that victims of crime should not have to see or hear the person who victimized them or their family member on the news,” state prisons spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said in a statement.The media interview violation, along with another violation for using a different inmate’s password to make a telephone call, are prison discipline issues and not a crime, Shain said.Murdaugh also lost his ability to buy items in the prison canteen for a month. He will have to get permission from prison officials to get another tablet, which can be used to make monitored phone calls, watch approved entertainment, read b...

Mexican Navy hopes to expand net-snagging hooks to protect endangered vaquita porpoises

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

SAN FELIPE, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s Navy said Wednesday it is planning to expand the area where it sinks concrete blocks topped with metal hooks to snag gill nets that are killing vaquita marina porpoises.The Navy began dropping the blocks into the Gulf of California last year, in hopes it may help save the world’s most endangered marine mammal.The vaquita lives only in the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez, where as few as ten vaquitas remain. They cannot be held or bred in captivity.The vaquitas are caught and drown in illegal gill nets set for totoaba, a Gulf fish whose swim bladder is considered a prized delicacy in China, worth thousands of dollars per pound. That is where the concrete blocks come in; the hooks catch on the expensive totoaba nets, ruining them.That should supposedly discourage illicit fishermen from risking their expensive gear in the “zero tolerance area,” a rough quadrangle considered the last holdout for the vaquitas. It’s called that because that’s where...

Texas judge rules as unconstitutional a law that erodes city regulations in favor of state control

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — A Texas judge ruled Wednesday that a new law eroding the power of the state’s Democratic-led cities to impose local regulations on everything from tenant evictions to employee sick leave is unconstitutional and cannot take effect. The decision by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Austin, an elected Democrat, is a significant win for progressive leaders in Texas’ biggest cities that want to be able to represent their communities. Critics of the law say it would have taken power from local government and denounced it as “The Death Star.” Texas and its major cities join battles that have flared nationwide over statehouses flexing authority over municipalities. “That’s tremendous victory for the people in this city because it allows the local leadership to represent the Houstonians that we have an obligation to serve,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a news conference following the ruling.The state immediately appealed the ruling, according to ...

2 women tasked with constructing migrant housing plan lay out road ahead

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:46:11 GMT

CHICAGO — Tomorrow marks one year since the first bus of migrants arrived in Chicago from Texas, and the two woman tasked with developing a plan for integrating them into Chicago sat down to talk about their work for the first time.Guiding the efforts to house them are Deputy Mayor Cristina Pacione-Zayas, and the head of the newly-created City Office of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights, Beatriz Ponce De Leon."While we are not completely saying [it was a] slam dunk, we did really well," Pacione-Zayas said. "In the last 100 days, we’ve done quite a bit of work to meet the moment."Since that fateful day on Aug. 31, 2022, more than 13,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago via bus or plane, with the City setting up at least 15 shelters to manage the crowds, but that hasn't been enough."It is a very fluid situation and the buses that are coming are out of our control," Pacione-Zayas said. "We are now seeing on a regular basis 30 to 40 people that are arriving at O’Hare."Pacione-Zayas ...