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Father of manager shot to death at Schemengees Bar calls son a ‘hero’ for confronting the Maine gunman

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

Joey Walker, a manager at Schemengees Bar & Grille, died a hero Wednesday, as he picked up a knife while trying to confront gunman Robert Card, his father Leroy Walker told Lester Holt of NBC News.“Joey Walker was shot to death at Schemengees,” the father said. “He died as a hero because he picked up a butcher knife … and he tried to go at the gunman to stop him from shooting anybody else.”Leroy Walker, a member of the City Council in next door Auburn, said his son loved helping and working with people. A testament to that is how Joey had organized fundraisers at Schemengees for the past five years, his father told MSNBC.The next fundraiser Joey had planned, Leroy Walker said, was a cornhole tournament scheduled for Nov. 11, to help raise money for veterans.“That’s not going to work now because he’s dead,” the father said. “A hell of a loss for the community. He’s done everything he could in his community. … It’s just crazy. It’s still a nightmare.”Leroy Walker received the trag...

Liberals to pause carbon pricing on heating oil

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that the government will double the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians beginning next April. Trudeau also says there will be a temporary, three-year pause to carbon pricing measures that are applied to deliveries of heating oil, beginning in two weeks. A government press release says the change will mean that households that use heating oil would save about $250, on average, at the current rate. Through a pilot project, low- and median-income households in Atlantic Canada are to receive an upfront payment of $250 if they currently heat their homes with oil but sign up for a heat pump through a joint federal-provincial government program. The amount of federal funding that eligible homeowners can receive for the installation of a heat pump, which the government says can save households save some $2,500 on their energy bills, is also going up.Trudeau says it means that lower-income households will be able to get an a...

Greenpeace urges Greece to scrap offshore gas drilling project because of impact on whales, dolphins

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greenpeace on Thursday urged Greece to abandon a deep-sea gas exploration project in the Mediterranean, citing newly published research to argue that its impact on endangered whales and dolphins would be greater than previously believed.The environmental group said a survey last year in waters off southwestern Greece and Crete that are earmarked for exploratory drilling found sea mammals were present there in the winter, as well as the summer, as had been already established.The area being explored for gas largely overlaps the Hellenic Trench, which includes the Mediterranean’s deepest waters, at 5,267 meters (17,300 feet). It is a vital habitat for the sea’s few hundred sperm whales, and for other marine mammals already threatened by fishing, collisions with ships and plastic pollution.Current environmental safeguards in place for the project limit prospection to the winter, to less impact whale and dolphin, or cetacean, breeding periods.But the survey publish...

Rays push for swift approval of financing deal for new Tampa Bay ballpark, part of $6B development

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The Tampa Bay Rays are pushing for swift approval of a financing deal for a new 30,000-seat ballpark, part of a much larger $6 billion redevelopment project that includes affordable housing, a hotel, a Black history museum and many other items.The St. Petersburg City Council on Thursday got its first detailed public look at the ballpark financing plan, which will be shared by the city, Pinellas County, the Rays and their Hines company partner. Brian Auld, the team’s co-president, said the goal is to obtain government approvals by March so that construction can stay on schedule for opening day of the 2028 season.“If we miss that opening date, this entire endeavor becomes impossible. We cannot put these dates at risk along the way,” Auld said.The new $1.3 billion ballpark would be located on the same 86-acre (34-hectare) tract of downtown land where Tropicana Field now sits. That domed stadium, which the Rays have called home since 1998, would be demo...

Liberals to pause carbon pricing on heating oil, beef up heat pump incentives

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that the government will double the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians beginning next April. Trudeau also says there will be a temporary, three-year pause to carbon pricing measures that are applied to deliveries of heating oil, beginning in two weeks. A government press release says the change will mean that households that use heating oil would save about $250, on average, at the current rate. Through a pilot project, low- and median-income households in Atlantic Canada are to receive an upfront payment of $250 if they currently heat their homes with oil but sign up for a heat pump through a joint federal-provincial government program. The amount of federal funding that eligible homeowners can receive for the installation of a heat pump, which the government says can save households save some $2,500 on their energy bills, is also going up.Trudeau says it means that lower-income households will be able to get an average heat...

Indians still want to move to Canada despite growing anxiety over political tensions

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

TORONTO — As tensions flare between India and Canada, recruitment firms say interest from workers moving between the two countries has not dropped significantly – even though anxiety is building.The firms attribute the uneasiness some Indians now feel around relocating to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mid-September announcement revealing “a potential link” between India’s government and the killing of a Sikh leader in B.C. that Canada was investigating. Canada later removed most of its diplomatic presence from India after New Delhi threatened to strip diplomatic immunities from them and their families.The moves have made many nervous.“We’ve definitely seen a large increase in people saying, ‘Hey, why should I move to Canada?'” said Ilya Brotzky, chief executive and co-founder of VanHack, a Vancouver-based firm connecting employers and tech professionals around the world.Before the tensions, he estimated about 95 per cent of the conve...

1 of 4 men who escaped from a central Georgia jail has been caught, authorities say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

MACON, Ga. (AP) — One of four men who escaped from a central Georgia jail last week was caught Thursday, authorities said.The U.S. Marshals Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force said 29-year-old Chavis Demaryo Stokes was arrested at home in Montezuma, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the jail, around 2 p.m., the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The sheriff’s office did not provide any other information about the arrest.Sheriff David Davis said last week that Stokes, 52-year-old Joey Fournier, 24-year-old Marc Kerry Anderson and 37-year-old Johnifer Dernard Barnwell had escaped through a damaged window and a cut fence at the jail early Oct. 16. There was no indication Thursday that any of the others had been caught.Video footage showed a blue Dodge Challenger that had been just outside the jail hours before the escape and appeared to show someone tampering with the fence. That person then brought some items into the enclosed area, and the sheriff said...

White House says Russia is executing its own soldiers for not following orders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday said Russia is executing soldiers who have failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire. It’s a development that U.S. national security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its grinding invasion of Ukraine, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters. “But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”The White House has downgraded and released intelligence findings about Russian action over the course of the war. In the past, the administration has said it has acted to disclose the intelligence to highlight plan...

Movie Review: ‘Pain Hustlers’ tells a sadly familiar story with a kitchen-sink style

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

The wife of a man who nearly died of an opioid overdose comes bursting into the office of the sleazy doctor who prescribed it, wrongly, in exchange for personal gain. She slugs the doctor, in her agony.The scene comes deep into the new Netflix film “Pain Hustlers,” and it feels bracingly real and tragic.If only the rest of the movie, the latest in a string of opioid-themed films, felt the same. Instead, despite a high-powered cast featuring a reliably solid Emily Blunt, an expertly low-life Chris Evans and the gifted Catherine O’Hara, the film tries too hard to be something it isn’t, or shouldn’t be: slick and breezy and too clever for its own good, filled with mockumentary interviews, wild montages, and other tricks used to more disciplined effect in more accomplished films.Not that Blunt isn’t an effective presence here as Liza Drake, a struggling, single Florida mom who works at a strip club but wants to move up in life — to be treated with respect, and to support her ailing teen...

Parts of Gaza look like a wasteland from space. Look for the misshapen buildings and swaths of gray

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:32:22 GMT

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip (AP) — Apartment buildings are crumpled. Neighborhoods lie in ruins. Terrain is transformed into moonscape.The destruction of areas of northern Gaza is visible from space in satellite images taken before and after Israeli’s airstrikes, which followed the raids carried out by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.In images shot Saturday by Maxar Technologies, four- and five-story buildings in the Izbat Beit Hanoun neighborhood are in various states of collapse. Huge chunks are missing from some, others are broken in half and two large complexes lie in piles of rubble.The pattern of destruction in the Al Karameh neighborhood can be traced by a widespread pattern the color of ash.Tightly packed streets in Beit Hanoun look obliterated, with a rare white structure standing out in the gray wasteland.Israel has carried out thousands of airstrikes since the war erupted on Oct. 7 following a cross-border raid that killed 1,400 people in Israel and took over 200 others hostage. Pa...