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Dog dies after fire sparks in house near Fort Lauderdale

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

A pet was trapped by flames in a home near Fort Lauderdale.The house that caught fire is located in the Broadview Park neighborhood, near Southwest 50th Avenue, Thursday afternoon.Firefighters say the dog that was inside the home did not survive.The residents were not there at the time.Officials said it is too early to tell what ignited the blaze.

France will pay you to repair your clothes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

Paris/London (CNN) — France is to introduce a scheme that will subsidize repairs to clothing and shoes in order to cut waste and planet-heating pollution from the textile industry.Under the scheme, which was announced by secretary of state for ecology Bérangère Couillard Tuesday, discounts varying from €6 ($7) to €25 ($28) will be available depending on the complexity of the repair.For instance, a simple piece of restitching will receive a €6 subsidy, while resoling a pair of shows will qualify for a €25 rebate.“It could encourage exactly the people who have bought, for example, shoes from a brand that makes good-quality shoes or likewise good-quality ready-to-wear to want to have them fixed instead of getting rid of them,” Couillard said at a news conference.“And that is exactly the objective, to create a circular economy for shoes and textiles so that products last longer, because in government we believe in the second life of a product.”Couillard said the text...

Union: 35,000 911 calls went unanswered by Boston Police in 2022

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

Roughly 35,000 emergency calls went unanswered by Boston Police Department dispatchers last year, a serious lapse one union representative says is due to an understaffed and overworked operations division.Operations employees have been ordered to work double shifts, or 16-hour days, three to five times a week for the past three years, according to Neal O’Brien, senior business representative for SEIU Local 888.This often results in dispatchers working 90 hours per week, O’Brien wrote in a letter to Police Commissioner Michael Cox.“Some operations workers have become so fatigued with this abusive work schedule, that in some instances have reached their breaking points and have risen from their chairs unannounced, rifled their headsets to the floor and stated they quit,” O’Brien wrote.According to the department’s rules and procedures, officers are limited to working 18 hours per day and 90 hours per week, but there is leeway for supervisors to approve additional overtime....

Christopher Bell set to defend Cup Series title in New Hampshire

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

New Hampshire Motor Speedway is a demanding and uniquely configured short race track that requires a lengthy courtship of trial and error for drivers to get a handle on it.There have been a few exceptions to that hard and fast rule of NASCAR Cup Series racing on the Magic Mile and nobody has adjusted to its quirky nuances better than Christopher Bell.Bell is the operator of the No. 20 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing and on Sunday (2:30 p.m.) he will defend his title in the running of the Crayon 301 at NHMS.“I love going up to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, it has been a really good race track for me in the past,” said Bell. “It is always nice break in the middle of the summer to get out of the (hot) weather and I’m excited to get up north.“It’s been a great race track for me and the track is very unique in the fact that turns one and two are really smooth and three and four are very rough. It is very flat everywhere but has a little bit more banking when running up the track from t...

MBTA adds commercial driver’s permit program to bus operator training amid shortage

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

A bus driver shortage at the MBTA led the agency to incorporate a commercial driver’s license permit program into new hire onboarding, a move the authority’s top hiring official said helped boost recruitment efforts and bring in more candidates.The workforce challenge has plagued the MBTA since last year, where officials have turned to sign-on bonuses and hiked pay for operators in an attempt to attract more people. But even if applicants made it all the way to a job offer, the commercial driver’s license requirement was still a “barrier to entry,” said Gil Alzate, director of talent acquisition at the MBTA.The MBTA started by offering a “CDL familiarization course” hosted twice a month on Tuesdays before offering an opportunity to obtain a commercial learner’s permit program as part of new-hire training, Alzate said.“So now we hire folks, clean driving record, they meet all our policy requirements, and we embed them into the program. The first two weeks are targeted around getting ...

Got Sriracha? The price for a bottle of Huy Fong’s iconic hot sauce gets spicy with supplies short

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS (AP Business Writer)NEW YORK (AP) — It’s not just you. Sriracha is hard to come by these days — at least for one popular brand.The shortage of Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha, the beloved red hot sauce packaged in those green-capped bottles, isn’t new — with the company pointing to a scarcity of chile pepper supply for several years now. And as frustrated fans continue to face store shelves missing the Huy Fong name, third-party resellers are punching up prices.Huy Fong Sriracha, which used to go for under $5 or $10 a bottle, is now selling for shocking amounts in some listings posted to sites with vast third-party marketplaces — including Amazon, eBay and Walmart. Many are simply sold out.For those still in stock, prices range depending where you look. As of Thursday morning, for example, ads for a single 17-ounce bottle on eBay stretched from around $20 to a whopping $150 — contrasting significantly from the price...

Judge approves Minneapolis police reform deal forged after George Floyd’s killing

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP) — Minneapolis must enact police reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, after a judge on Thursday approved a settlement agreement between the city and the state Human Rights Department.The Star Tribune reported that Hennepin County Judge Karen Janisch signed the settlement, which calls for de-escalation whenever possible, limits on the use of tear gas and other chemical agents, and an end to police stops for broken taillights and searches based on the smell of marijuana. “This is a huge framework. There is going to be a lot of work that the city is going to be doing in the near future,” Janisch said. “I hope that the city is up to that task and that you can find good people to be able to carry this forward.”The Human Rights Department began investigating shortly after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes on May 25, 2020, disregarding the Black man’s fading pleas that he couldn’t breathe. Floyd’s death spa...

Suspended Nigeria central bank governor charged after weeks in detention

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

KANO, Nigeria (AP) — The suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria was charged after a month in detention under a court directive Thursday that officials act against the man or let him go, the secret police agency announced.Godwin Emefiele was charged after being investigated for alleged “criminal infractions,” said Peter Afunanya, spokesman for the secret police, the Department of State Services.Afunanya’s statement, however, did not specify the charges filed against Emefiele in the capital, Abuja. The police agency had in 2022 accused him of terrorism financing and economic crimes, both of which carry long jail terms.Shortly after he took office in June, new President Bola Tinubu directed Emefiele’s suspension, saying the move was related to the investigation of his office as the central bank governor and planned reforms in the financial sector.Emefiele was then taken into custody and has been detained since, prompting him to sue the secret police recently on the gro...

Judge sentences man to 15 years for arranging smuggling trip that ended with crash killing 13 people

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for coordinating a smuggling trip in which two dozen migrants were stacked into a Ford Expedition that crashed into a tractor-trailer, killing 13 people outside a California desert town.Jose Cruz Noguez pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges stemming from the March 2, 2021, crash near Holtville, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of San Diego. It was one of the deadliest highway crashes involving migrants smuggled into the United States. Cruz Noguez also admitted to trying to still get payment for the smuggling trip from the survivors, prosecutors said. Neither Cruz Noguez nor his attorney could be reached for comment.“Cruz Noguez organized one of the most callous and inhumane smuggling attempts that law enforcement has responded to in this district,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said. “He and his co-conspirators treated these individuals like a worthless commodity.”Cruz Noguez arranged ...

A stray bullet hit a woman lying in bed. A federal judge dismissed her lawsuit against police

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:52:30 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Mississippi woman who says she was hit by a stray police bullet while lying in bed. Latasha Smith, 49, was in bed on Dec. 11 when an officer from the state-run Capitol Police fired several bullets at a suspect running through her Jackson apartment complex, according to her federal complaint. A stray bullet entered Smith’s apartment and struck her arm. Smith, who said her teenage daughter was home during the episode, was taken to a hospital. In April, Smith sued Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell and Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey, arguing that police officers under their watch violated her constitutional rights by acting with “deliberate indifference” for her life. She also claimed that Tindell and Luckey failed to properly train officers. In a Wednesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Tom Lee granted Tindell and Luckey’s request to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that they cannot be liabl...