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AG Andrea Campbell calls on feds to speed up work authorizations for migrants

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

Long processing delays for newly-arrived migrant work authorizations have placed an “increasing burden” on states, their social safety net programs, and shelter systems, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said Wednesday in a letter to the federal government.Campbell penned the letter with 18 other state attorneys general to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an effort to prompt action on work authorization permits for immigrants who have been lawfully paroled into the United States.The letter comes about a week after Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts to deal with the high number of migrants and displaced families seeking temporary housing within the state’s emergency shelter system.Addressing processing delays, the attorneys general wrote in their letter, will allow work-eligible migrants to become “self-sufficient” as soon as possible and “not be forced to rely on state resources.”The group said they have seen an unprecedented influx...

BPS fully staffed with bus drivers, still hiring bus monitors ahead of school year

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

BPS and city leaders are feeling more confident about transporting students to school safely and on time this coming school year, officials outlined at an early back-to-school primer.“Last year to not be fully staffed (with bus drivers) was a deficit. The Orange Line was obviously a critical issue. This year, there’s many more favorable flags going into this school year that help us to feel confident,” Superintendent Mary Skipper said outside Trotter Elementary Wednesday.Officials indicated a positive outlook going into the first few days of transporting K-12 students around the city this school year — a far cry from the mad scramble to distribute free Charlie Cards, commission vans and keep the system afloat in the midst of the Orange Line shutdown, driver shortage and widespread complications last August.The 620 active BPS buses — transporting over 20,000 students daily — are fully staffed with over 700 drivers for the first time since pre-pande...

Two great white sharks have traveled a very similar 4,000-mile path up the Atlantic coast. Are they brothers?

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

Are two great white sharks that have taken a very similar path north this year brothers or half brothers?That’s what shark researchers are trying to figure out, after juvenile male white sharks Simon and Jekyll were both tagged off the coast of Georgia and have moved close to one another up the Atlantic coast for more than 4,000 miles.Historically, white sharks have been known as solitary animals migrating on their own, but Simon and Jekyll are traveling to the same place at the same time.“They’ve taken an unusually synchronous path north,” OCEARCH Chief Scientist Bob Hueter told the Herald.“It’s the first time we’ve seen something like this, and it’s very interesting, it’s mysterious and it’s exciting,” he added.When OCEARCH researchers tagged 9-footer Simon and 8-footer Jekyll off the Georgia coast in December, the scientists took a number of samples — including blood, tissue and muscle samples.The researchers...

Mac Jones trying to “chase the standard” Tom Brady set with Patriots

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

GREEN BAY, Wisc. — Let’s be honest: Patriots-Packers joint practices would have carried more gravitas if they were held four years ago.Since that time, Tom Brady left the Patriots, joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then retired, and Aaron Rodgers was traded from the Packers to the New York Jets. And now two young quarterbacks — the Patriots’ Mac Jones and the Packers’ Jordan Love — are stuck living in the shadows of two of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.Jones, who never actually played with Brady, since he was drafted a year after Brady left for the Buccaneers, was asked if he would have any advice for Love about replacing a living legend.Related ArticlesNew England Patriots | Patriots already excited about ‘special things’ Ezekiel Elliott can bring New England Patriots | Callahan: How Ezekiel Elliott will make life easy on Patriots’ best, most pivotal players New England Patriots | ...

SoCal in 'probable path' of Tropical Storm Hilary; When was the last time a tropical storm hit California?

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

When conversations about tropical storms and hurricanes arise, California is rarely included. A tropical storm forming off the Pacific coast of Mexico, however, could impact the Golden State.Tropical Storm Hilary, which is expected to grow into a hurricane by Thursday, is slated to make its way toward the Baja California peninsula later this week, according to the National Hurricane Center. Tropical storm causes heat warnings and high surf in San Diego While the Hilary is expected to weaken as it approaches the peninsula, the remnants could still bring several inches of rain and potential flooding to the area, according to the Washington Post. Southern California is currently in the storm's "probable path."Tropical Storm Hilary's potential path. Aug. 16, 2023. (NOAA)“Confidence continues to increase on a heavy rainfall, potentially high impact, event unfolding across parts of the Southwest and California Saturday to Monday,” the National Weather Service said Wednesday.While it is ...

Police testify in trial of 2 white Mississippi men in shooting at Black FedEx driver

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

BROOKHAVEN, Miss. (AP) — A police dispatcher and a detective testified Wednesday in the trial of two white men in Mississippi who are accused of chasing and shooting at a Black FedEx driver who had dropped off a package at a home.Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Charles Case, charged with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into the vehicle driven by D’Monterrio Gibson in January 2022, sat with their attorneys in a small courtroom full of spectators.Gibson, who is now 25, was not injured. But the chase and gunfire led to complaints on social media of racism in Brookhaven, about an hour’s drive south of the state capital, Jackson. Gibson’s attorney in a civil lawsuit, Carlos Moore, compared the episode to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white men — a father, son and neighbor — chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The encounter between Gibson and ...

Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, one year on: ‘It’s restoring the American dream’

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden rattled off an impressive list of economic wins Wednesday to mark one full year of “transformative” climate spending that’s better known among critics in Canada and overseas than it is by voters in the United States. It was August 2022 when Biden signed the $1.2-trillion Inflation Reduction Act — a misnomer, he has acknowledged, that says more about the American mood throughout much of last year than it does about the law itself. And Biden’s own mood Wednesday seemed to betray one of the White House’s most enduring frustrations: that his economic and political victories are being drowned out in a country wracked by partisan division.“We’re still a country that believes in hard work. We’re still a country that believes each and every one of us is created equal,” Biden told his East Room guests, his tone rising, his face stern.  “We’ve never fully lived up to it, (but) we never walked aw...

Jerry Moss, co-founder of A&M Records and Rock Hall of Fame member, dies at 88

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

Jerry Moss, a music industry giant who co-founded A&M Records with Herb Alpert and rose from a Los Angeles garage to the heights of success with hits by Alpert, the Police, the Carpenters and hundreds of other performers, has died at age 88.Moss, inducted with Alpert into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, died Wednesday at his home in Bel Air, California, according to a statement released by his family.“They truly don’t make them like him anymore and we will miss conversations with him about everything under the sun,” the statement reads in part, “the twinkle in his eyes as he approached every moment ready for the next adventure.”For more than 25 years, Alpert and Moss presided over one of the industry’s most successful independent labels, releasing such blockbuster albums as Albert’s “Whipped Cream & Other Delights,” Carole King’s “Tapestry” and Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!” They were home to the Carpenters and Cat Stevens,Janet Ja...

US wildlife managers agree to review the plight of a Western bird linked to piñon forests

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — U.S. wildlife managers announced Wednesday that they will investigate whether a bird that is inextricably linked to the piñon and juniper forests that span the Western United States warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act.The pinyon jay’s numbers have declined over the last half-century as persistent drought, more severe wildfires and other effects of climate change have intensified, leaving the birds with less food and fewer nesting options as more trees die or are removed.Environmentalists also are concerned that without the pinyon jay — a social bird that essentially plants the next generation of trees by stashing away the seeds — it’s possible the piñon forests of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and other Western states could face another reproductive hurdle.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to review the jay’s status comes in response to a petition filed more than a year ago that included research showing the speciesR...

Steven Guilbeault to become first cabinet minister to visit China since 2018

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:24:28 GMT

OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will travel to China on a diplomatic mission later this month, even as politicians in Ottawa continue to negotiate a public inquiry into alleged foreign interference.Guilbeault will be in Beijing from Aug. 26 to 31 in what will be the first official visit of a Canadian cabinet minister to China since 2018.A spokesperson for Guilbeault says the world is faced with the “triple crisis” of climate change, pollution and biodiversity, which can only be handled through urgent international co-operation.His office said the minister will attend a meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development while in Beijing.Guilbeault’s office noted that he and his Chinese counterpart, Huang Runqiu, strengthened their ties when their countries co-hosted the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal in December.Despite that example of co-operation, relations between the two countr...