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Tornadoes slam Arkansas, shredding rooftops and tossing cars

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

By ANDREW DeMILLO (Associated Press)LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A tornado raced through Little Rock and surrounding areas Friday, splintering homes, overturning vehicles and tossing trees and debris on roadways as people raced for shelter. There were early reports at least two dozen people hurt, some critically.Another tornado hit the town of Wynne in the eastern part of the state near the Tennessee border, and officials reported widespread damage there including destroyed homes and downed trees. There were more confirmed twisters in Iowa, damaging hail fell in Illinois and wind-whipped grass fires blazed in Oklahoma, part of a massive storm system threatening a broad swath of the country that is home to some 85 million people in the South and Midwest.The destructive weather came as President Joe Biden toured the aftermath of a deadly tornado that struck in Mississippi a week ago and promised the government would help the area recover. The Little Rock tornado tore first through n...

Former Brockton RMV manager pleads guilty to fraudulently handing out learner’s permits

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

A former manager of a Brockton Registry of Motor Vehicles location in Brockton pleaded guilty to giving out passing test scores to those who failed if they bribe her.Mia Cox-Johnson, 43, pleaded guilty to two counts of extortion under color of official right and one count of conspiring to commit extortion. U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper has scheduled sentencing for July 20, when Cox-Johnson could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.Cox-Johnson was criminally charged in federal court in Boston on March 2, but she accepted a plea agreement she reviewed the day before, according to the date on the signature lines of the agreement filed with the court.According to the charging document, an applicant, identified in the document as “Individual A,” for a Massachusetts learner’s permit had taken the test in the applicant’s “primary language six times on the computer and had failed each time.”One of the co-conspirators told another that there was a person at the Brockton RMV...

MassGOP Chair: Geoff Diehl campaign liable for bulk of party’s $600K debt

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

MassGOP officials say the party should not be on the hook for its whopping $600,000 debt, pointing to an audit that shows losing Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl’s campaign is responsible for a majority of the charges.Party Chair Amy Carnevale said the bulk, or $404,000 of the $602,000 in unpaid invoices she inherited from past Chair Jim Lyons are from advertising and media-related expenses authorized and signed by the Diehl campaign, “but incredibly were billed well after Election Day to the MassGOP.”“Not on my watch,” Carnevale said in a Friday email to state Republicans. “We are auditing all these invoices to determine who is ultimately responsible for paying them because we have not received sufficient documentation from the vendor.”The majority of these charges were for radio and television ads related to the governor’s race, according to MassGOP Executive Director John Milligan. The audit, he said, will differentiate between what expenses the party is liable for,...

Clarke Schmidt gets his first real chance to stick in Yankees’ rotation

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

Clarke Schmidt has gotten the short end of the stick during his Yankees tenure.The 2017 first-round pick spent nearly his entire college and minor-league career as a starting pitcher however, despite a few spot starts here and there, he’s yet to have a real opportunity to become a mainstay in the Bombers’ rotation.That will change beginning Saturday afternoon.Schmidt will take the ball for the Yankees — with a tough act to follow after Gerrit Cole’s record-setting Opening Day performance — in their second game of the season against the San Francisco Giants.The right-hander began spring training in competition — after Frankie Montas’s shoulder surgery that will keep him out until at least the second half of the season — with Domingo German to become the clubs’ fifth starter. However, a forearm injury to the newly-signed southpaw Carlos Rodon and a lat injury to Luis Severino has extended that competition through the beginning week...

Louis Coleman, convicted of kidnapping Jassy Correia resulting in her death, ordered to pay $60K+ restitution

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

The man convicted of kidnapping and killing Jassy Correia in February 2019 has been ordered to pay more than $61,000 in restitution, with most of that intended for Correia’s young child who was left motherless.A federal jury in Boston convicted Louis Coleman III in June of 2022 of kidnapping resulting in Correia’s death. U.S. Chief District Court Judge Dennis Saylor IV sentenced Coleman to life in prison without the possibility of parole.That judgment was amended Friday to include a total of $61,362.68 in restitution. The bulk of that restitution, $50,000, is listed as payable to “Representative of the Estate of Jassy Correia, for benefit of her Minor Child.” Another $8,800 is earmarked for the Massachusetts Compensation Fund and the remaining $2,562.68 will go toward the Federal Crime Victims Fund.Correia’s daughter was only 2 years old at the time of Jassy’s death.Coleman’s defense attorneys Jane Peachy and David Hoose wrote a terse letter later in the day announcing that they wou...

A bit of luck: Padres pride in full bloom at this Del Mar garden

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

SAN DIEGO – The Padres’ season has finally arrived and the fans across the county have rallied behind the team, from wearing the team’s jerseys to new Friar-themed offerings.But, there’s one hidden gem garden in Del Mar that is celebrating the team’s return to Petco Park with an extra special display all about the Padres.Gwen’s Garden, a memorial garden for a beloved animal friend just steps away from Dog Beach, has been decked out in a display all about the Padres in honor of the season opener last night.The garden was created by North County resident, Jimmy Joe Gooding, through the “Adopt a Spot” program through the City of Del Mar, gaining approval for it about five years ago. It was dedicated to his yellow Labrador Retriever named Gwen who passed about two years before. Padres City Connect jerseys draw fans in for second year He planted new flora in the area that was once known for being a sort of “eyesore,” giving it new life with flowers, succulents and other greenery. Durin...

Man wanted in suspected hate-motivated incident at Kennedy station

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

Toronto police are searching for a man wanted in a suspected hate-motivated investigation.Police say they were called to Kennedy subway station around 10 a.m. on Friday for reports of a man armed chasing several people around with a sharp object.Investigators say the suspect allegedly yelled racial slurs to the people he was chasing.He fled the scene before police arrived. The suspect is described as six-feet-tall with a medium build, long dark hair in a ponytail and unshaven. He was last seen wearing a maroon long sleeve shirt, black pants and a black backpack. “After consultation with the Service’s specialized Hate Crime Unit, the investigation is being treated as a suspected hate-motivated offence,” police said in a statement. Should the suspect be charged and convicted of the offence, the Judge will take into consideration hate as an aggravating factor when imposing a sentence.

Experts say Mexico military holding info on missing students

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A group of international experts investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico said Friday that Mexico’s military has failed to hand over key information on the case.The group was created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate the abduction and forced disappearance of students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in the state of Guerrero.The panel presented a new report on the case Friday.“There are black holes where the information disappears,” panel member Carlos Beristain said, adding that military personnel had given responses to investigators that appeared to have been “coached.”He was referring to purported “secret operations” that Mexican marines carried out in Guerrero in the month after the students were abducted by police officers. On Sept. 26, 2014, police in the city of Iguala took the students off buses they had commandeered. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later, bu...

Mexico’s president visits city where fire killed 39 migrants

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president on Friday visited the border city where 39 migrants died in a fire at a detention center, expressing pain over the disaster but probably not bringing any changes in tough immigration policies. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he was personally devastated by Monday’s tragedy in Ciudad Juarez, which is across from El Paso, Texas. “I confess it hurt me a lot, it damaged me,” López Obrador said before starting out on his trip to Juarez. “It ripped my soul apart.” The president said the fire was the second most painful moment of his administration, exceeded only by a 2019 pipeline fire in the central Mexico town of Tlahuelilpan that killed about 135 people.However, it hasn’t cost him much politically. Many residents of Mexican border cities mourned the death of the migrants in the smoky mattress fire, which was set by some migrants to protest perceived moves to deport them. But in Ciudad Juarez, many peope were fed up with migrants la...

To conserve, Nevada may try to buy back groundwater rights

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:55:35 GMT

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Marty Plaskett upgraded his farming equipment and spent $60,000 on new sprinklers to conserve water, even before the rural Nevada valley where he farms alfalfa began more strictly managing groundwater.Now, Plaskett is weighing another adjustment: selling off part of his legal right to use water that lies under his land to the state. Even after a wet winter, Nevada and much of the West are still dealing with the effects of a prolonged drought that depleted groundwater supplies. Lawmakers in Nevada are considering a bill to allow the state to buy groundwater rights in diminished basins so nobody could use them again.In the area where Plaskett farms, the state severely overestimated decades ago just how much water was available from wells sunk deep into fractured rock and gravel. The Legislature hasn’t determined how much farmers would be paid to give up some rights to groundwater.“It would mainly come down to, number one, the price,” said Plaskett, 57.St...