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Boston City Councilors to hear proposal on banning ‘nips’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

Boston City Councilors are proposing a ban on single-serve liquor bottles known as ‘nips.’Councilor Ricardo Arroyo says nip bottles are too small to be recycled and they add to a large amount of litter in the city. Several communities across the state, including Chelsea and Newton, have banned nips and seen a drop in public intoxication.The Boston City Council could hear the proposal on Wednesday.

Jason Sudeikis and ‘Ted Lasso’ cast meet with Biden for mental health discussion

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

(CNN) — Ted Lasso and President Joe Biden are teaming up to — as the television football coach would say — “believe” in the importance of mental health.Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted actor Jason Sudeikis and other members of the cast of “Ted Lasso” at the White House on Monday for a conversation on mental health, Apple TV+ announced Sunday.Cast members joining the discussion include Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Toheeb Jimoh, Cristo Fernandez, Kola Bokinni, Billy Harris and James Lance.The cast visited the White House briefing room on Monday ahead of the meeting with the Bidens.“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter who you voted for, we all probably — I assume, we all know someone who has or had been that someone ourselves actually, that’s struggled, that’s felt isolated, that’s felt anxious, that has felt alone,” S...

Battenfeld: Trumped up charges could become rallying cry for Republicans

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

The likely indictment of former President Donald Trump is a bold – some would say foolhardy – political gambit and could simply become a rallying cry for Trump’s presidential campaign.Liberal Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is risking galvanizing Republicans by charging the former president in a seven-year-old hush money deal to silence a porn star right before the 2016 election.Trump is already making hay of his potential arrest by urging supporters to protest – while other Republicans, even those like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – are rallying to Trump’s side.DeSantis criticized Bragg as a “Soros-funded prosecutor” who is “pursuing a political agenda” – comments that drew Trump’s attention on Monday.“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser and better known,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do.”Of course DeSantis isn’t f...

Report: more private equity invested in Mass. in 2022 than the state budget

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

Despite any doom and gloom about the state economy, rising inflation and increases in the cost of living and doing business, Massachusetts came in sixth among states ranked by private investment in 2022, according to a new report.“Private equity invested more than $55 billion in 312 businesses in Massachusetts last year and directly employed more than 307,000 workers across the commonwealth,” Drew Maloney, president and CEO of the American Investment Council told the Herald Monday.The council’s annual Top States & Districts report shows that the Bay State received more in private investment last year than the state’s final enacted budget for fiscal 2022, about $48 billion, or the next fiscal year’s about $53 billion.Two congressional districts in Massachusetts, represented by U.S. Reps. Katherine Clark and Stephen Lynch, saw more investment than any others in the state and more than most in the country, the report shows.According to the report, Lynch’s MA-8 district was th...

Japan, China leaders begin visits to rivals in Ukraine war

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Kyiv for a surprise visit shortly after noon Tuesday, hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in neighboring Russia for a three-day trip. Moscow’s invasion will be in the spotlight at both meetings. Footage shown on Japanese national broadcaster NHK showed Kishida walking on the platform of a train station, escorted by a few people who appeared to be Ukrainian officials.It was uncertain whether either meeting would change the course of the almost 13-month war in Ukraine, but the talks about 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart highlighted the war’s repercussions for international diplomacy as countries line up behind rival parties. They came after a week in which China and Japan both enjoyed diplomatic successes that have emboldened their foreign policy.Kishida will meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, coinciding with Xi’s talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.Kishi...

With crowded jails, North Macedonia adopts pandemic amnesty

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

SKOPJE, North Macedonia (AP) — North Macedonia’s parliament has adopted a legislative amendment to pardon people facing imprisonment for violating COVID-19 safety rules.Lawmakers late Monday voted 76-1 in favor of the amnesty which will affect more than 200 people currently facing trial as well as more than 90 people reportedly serving prison sentences.North Macedonia had one of the highest fatality rates in the world from the coronavirus, in part due to late access to vaccines. It imposed strict penalties for safety violations, on charges of facilitating the transmission of an infectious disease and failure to comply with health regulations during a pandemic.According to the court data, 1,223 people were fined up to 2,000 euros ($2,140) for violating pandemic protocols, and 205 of them were facing jail time for failing to pay the fine.The amnesty, which applies to citizens and not legal entities, will allow those already serving prison sentences to apply for immediate release.The a...

UN: Months after Pakistan floods, millions lack safe water

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The United Nations children’s agency on Tuesday warned that after last summer’s devastating floods, 10 million people in Pakistan, including children, still live in flood-affected areas without access to safe drinking water. The statement from UNICEF underscored the dire situation in impoverished Pakistan, a country with a population of 220 million that months later is still struggling with the consequences of the flooding, as well as a spiraling economic crisis. The floods, which experts attribute in part to climate change, killed 1,739 people, including 647 children and 353 women. So far, less than half of UNICEF’s funding appeal for Pakistan — 45% of $173.5 million — has been met. According to the agency, before the floods struck last June, water from only 36% of Pakistan’s water system was considered safe for human consumption. The floods damaged most of the water pipelines systems in affected areas, forcing more than 5.4 million people, including 2....

Cyprus court: Briton freely confessed to wife’s killing

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

PAPHOS, Cyprus (AP) — A Cyprus court on Tuesday rejected a defense argument that a British man’s confession to killing his ailing wife was unlawfully obtained, because he was in no frame of mind at the time to speak to police without a lawyer present.David Hunter, 75, made the statements to law enforcement officials and medical staff on five separate occasions following his arrest “undoubtedly of his own free will” without pressure or coercion, the three-judge panel said in a unanimous ruling.The court said it couldn’t accept testimony from a defense expert that Hunter suffered from “disassociation” following his wife Janice’s December 2021 killing at the couple’s retirement home in the coastal resort town of Paphos and wasn’t fully cognizant of what he was saying.The court said that Hunter couldn’t have suffered from disassociation. At the time of his arrest, he recalled to law enforcement officials and to his brother back in the U.K. in detail how he strangled hi...

Early morning drive-by shooting in Mississauga leaves 2 injured

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

Two people are in hospital with injuries after an early morning drive-by shooting in Mississauga.Police responded to a shooting around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday on Ettridge Court, in the area of Cawthra and Lakeshore roads.Investigators say the two victims were getting out of a vehicle when the suspect, or suspects, opened fire from another vehicle.The victims were taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.No suspect descriptions have been made available.

US tells China a Taiwan president stopover is ‘nothing new’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:07:48 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting out the word that an expected stopover in the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen would fall in line with recent precedent and should not be used as a pretext by China to step up aggressive activity in the Taiwan Strait.In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials in Washington and Beijing have underscored to their Chinese counterparts that transit visits through the United States during broader international travel by the Taiwanese president have been routine in recent years, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.In such unofficial visits in recent years, Tsai has met with members of Congress and the Taiwanese diaspora and has been welcomed by the chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. government-run nonprofit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan. The official added that the anticipated stopover is “noth...