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Andover teachers go on strike, rally for better pay, more prep time

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

Andover teachers are out of the classroom and on strike as they continue to battle the School Committee for a new contract agreement after more than nine months of bargaining.Around 1,000 educators, students, parents and other supporters gathered at the Town Common for a solidarity rally Friday, less than 24 hours after 95% of the Andover Education Association voted to authorize an “open-ended strike.”“In Andover, traditionally this has been a lighthouse district for public education. We want to keep it that way,” union Vice President Julian DiGloria said. “We are doing this to keep it that way.”“The School Committee just needs to work with us, offer us a fair contract, respect their employees, and we will continue to make this a lighthouse district,” he added.Educators are calling for better pay for instructional aides, fair raises for teachers, protections for prep time, longer lunch and recess periods for the youngest learners, access to paid family and medical leave, and more of...

MS-13 members fingered for 2010 Chelsea murder of Allston man

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

Two men the feds say are members of the international criminal street gang MS-13 have been fingered as culpable in the 2010 murder of an Allston man under a Chelsea bridge.Adam “Pelon” Rodriguez, 33, and William “Humilde” Pineda Portillo, 30, were charged in a superseding indictment in federal court in Boston. Rodriguez was arrested Wednesday and is being detained ahead of a hearing set for Thursday. Pineda Portillo was arrested in May 2022 while allegedly crossing the border into Texas and returned to Boston.MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, has deep roots in El Salvador but has transnational operations with cliques pushing its reach throughout the U.S. and other countries like Honduras and Guatemala, according to prosecutors and countless reports.Prosecutors say that Rodriquez and other gang members murdered Joaquin Aguilar, of Allston, on Dec. 18, 2010, in Chelsea, according to the indictment. The local members of the gang are also charged with sev...

Orioles GM Mike Elias named MLB Executive of the Year after unprecedented turnaround, 101-win season

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

At his end-of-the-season news conference last month, Mike Elias made sure to recognize the “historic achievement” that was the Orioles’ turnaround.“I hope that the city of Baltimore remembers this group for kind of reminding the world that this is Baltimore and we do baseball here,” Elias said.Among those the Orioles reminded of that officially include Elias’ peers, who voted the Orioles general manager as MLB Executive of the Year, as announced Tuesday morning.In 2021, the Orioles won just 52 games. Two years later, they were the American League’s best team and won 101 games, hitting the century mark for the first time in more than four decades. That 49-win difference over a two-year span is the greatest such turnaround in MLB history.When Elias was hired in November 2018, he was taking over an organization that just lost a franchise-worst 115 games. While also having baseball’s worst big league club, the Orioles didn’t sport a ...

Hollywood actors union board votes to approve the deal with studios that ended the strike

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

By ANDREW DALTON (AP Entertainment Writer)Board members from Hollywood’s actors union voted Friday to approve the deal with studios that ended their strike after nearly four months. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ executive director and chief negotiator, announced at an afternoon news conference that it was approved with 86% of the vote. The three-year contract agreement next goes to a vote from the union’s members, who will now get to learn what they earned through spending the summer and early fall on picket lines instead of film and television sets. SAG-AFTRA is expected to reveal the terms later Friday.Crabtree-Ireland said the deal “will keep the motion picture industry sustainable as a profession for working class performers” and will preserve “tens of thousands of jobs.”SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said the studios believed they could outlast actors.“From Jul...

Bronx Zoo welcomes pair of new Mangshan pit vipers, one of the world’s rarest species of snakes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

Larry McShane | New York Daily NewsTwo recently-arrived Mangshan pit vipers, one of the world’s rarest and most colorful species of snake, are just a subway ride away in the Bronx.The new hatchlings were born this past Aug. 7 at the Bronx Zoo, with one of the pair now housed in the nursery at the facility’s World of Reptiles with a pair of adult Mangshan vipers, the facility said in a Friday news release. The venomous snakes were only discovered in 1990 and are believed to live solely inside a densely forested 115-square-mile stretch of mountains in Southeast China.Zoo officials described the pit viper as an endangered and “exceptionally beautiful” creature, with its scales forming camouflage patchworks in various colors of green for protection in the forest and a light-colored tip to their tales. The zoo said there are currently just 500 Mangshan pit vipers believed to exist in the wild, and the creatures are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Natur...

1.2 million chickens will be slaughtered at an Iowa farm where bird flu was found

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

By JOSH FUNK (Associated Press)An additional 1.2 million chickens will be slaughtered to prevent the spread of the bird flu after the virus was confirmed on an Iowa egg farm in the second massive case this week.The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship announced the latest bird flu infection at a farm in Taylor County Friday, and Iowa’s governor immediately declared a disaster there to make sure the state has the resources to respond quickly. The Iowa case is just the latest one in the outbreak that began early last year and has prompted officials to kill a total of nearly 63 million birds. Earlier this week, 1 million chickens were killed on a Minnesota egg farm. But the vast majority of the cases, or nearly 58 million birds, occurred last yearAnytime a case of bird flu is found the entire flock is killed to help keep the highly contagious virus from spreading to another farm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been finding fewer wild birds carrying the viru...

San Diego votes to advance rolling back scooter laws after Bird pulls from city

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

SAN DIEGO — San Diego City Councilmembers voted to advance a proposal that would soften regulations around rental scooters on Wednesday, just days after the last scooter company in the city announced that they would be suspending operations.Bird notified their riders of their plans to remove devices from the city last weekend, leaving San Diego without the option that city officials have increasingly looked to as a convenient, sustainable alternative for people to get around neighborhoods.Other companies that were had contracts to allow them to deploy scooters in San Diego — Lime, Spin and Link — all pulled out of the city, in part due to laws passed by city officials to address safety and sidewalk congestion. New funding to advance airport transit link project approved by SANDAG These regulations included a sidewalk speed limit of 3 mph, the banning of large or disorderly clusters of scooters, imposition of fees on operators, and limits on the number of companies and devices that...

‘Nope’ star Keke Palmer alleges physical abuse by ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson, court documents say

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Nope” star Keke Palmer alleges in civil court documents that she suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, with whom she shares a son.The filing this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court included a request for a domestic violence restraining order against Darius Jackson, 29. Judge Wendy L. Wilcox on Thursday issued a temporary order pending a Dec. 5 hearing.Telephone messages seeking comment from Jackson were left on voicemail at a number associated with his address as listed in the court filing. The documents did not list any attorney who might comment on his behalf.Incidents of violence, both recent and in the past, were described in a legal declaration under the actor’s real name, Lauren Palmer. She said she dated Jackson from June 2021 until the relationship ended this past October because of physical and emotional abuse. “On Sunday, November 5, Darius trespassed into my home, physically attacked me, knocked me over my...

Moody’s lowers US credit outlook, though keeps triple-A rating

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on the U.S. government’s debt on Friday to “negative” from “stable,” citing the cost of rising interest rates and political polarization in Congress. Moody’s retained its top triple-A credit rating on U.S. government debt, though it is the last of the three major credit rating agencies to do so. Fitch Ratings lowered its rating to AA+ from AAA in August, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. in 2011. A reduced outlook, however, raises the risk that Moody’s could eventually strip its triple-A rating from the U.S. as well. A lower rating on U.S. debt could cost taxpayers if it leads borrowers to demand higher interest rates on Treasury bills and notes. The yield on the 10-year Treasury has risen significantly since July, from about 3.9% to 4.6% Friday, an unusually sharp rise. Some market analysts have said the August Fitch downgrade may have contributed to that inc...

Skilling: Cool, but sunny weekend ahead for Chicagoland

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:47:50 GMT

It was markedly chillier today than Thursday with a high of just 45-deg -- a reading 6 degrees below normal and cool enough to rank among Fall 2023's  season's four coolest days.Clouds will break up as expeditiously tonight as they arrived Friday.  While the day opened sunny Friday morning, an overcast spread in during the late morning and afternoon.The clearing is to permit temps to drop in the chilly Canadian air mass which has swept in across the area.  That diminishing winds and 20-deg dew points will be present tonight—an indication of an environment in which all the stops to slow nighttime cooling are being removed--it's likely we'll see some bone-chilling mid 20-deg lows in the normally colder locations which surround the city and are away from the warming influence of Lake Michigan with its low 50-deg water temps. Speaking of Lake Michigan, its water temps off Chicago have dropped more than 20-degrees off their late August high of 72.4-deg—having settled to an average of 52....