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Rays push for swift approval of financing deal for new Tampa Bay ballpark, part of $6B development

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The Tampa Bay Rays are pushing for swift approval of a financing deal for a new 30,000-seat ballpark, part of a much larger $6 billion redevelopment project that includes affordable housing, a hotel, a Black history museum and many other items.The St. Petersburg City Council on Thursday got its first detailed public look at the ballpark financing plan, which will be shared by the city, Pinellas County, the Rays and their Hines company partner. Brian Auld, the team’s co-president, said the goal is to obtain government approvals by March so that construction can stay on schedule for opening day of the 2028 season.“If we miss that opening date, this entire endeavor becomes impossible. We cannot put these dates at risk along the way,” Auld said.The new $1.3 billion ballpark would be located on the same 86-acre (34-hectare) tract of downtown land where Tropicana Field now sits. That domed stadium, which the Rays have called home since 1998, would be demo...

Liberals to pause carbon pricing on heating oil, beef up heat pump incentives

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that the government will double the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians beginning next April. Trudeau also says there will be a temporary, three-year pause to carbon pricing measures that are applied to deliveries of heating oil, beginning in two weeks. A government press release says the change will mean that households that use heating oil would save about $250, on average, at the current rate. Through a pilot project, low- and median-income households in Atlantic Canada are to receive an upfront payment of $250 if they currently heat their homes with oil but sign up for a heat pump through a joint federal-provincial government program. The amount of federal funding that eligible homeowners can receive for the installation of a heat pump, which the government says can save households save some $2,500 on their energy bills, is also going up.Trudeau says it means that lower-income households will be able to get an average heat...

Indians still want to move to Canada despite growing anxiety over political tensions

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

TORONTO — As tensions flare between India and Canada, recruitment firms say interest from workers moving between the two countries has not dropped significantly – even though anxiety is building.The firms attribute the uneasiness some Indians now feel around relocating to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mid-September announcement revealing “a potential link” between India’s government and the killing of a Sikh leader in B.C. that Canada was investigating. Canada later removed most of its diplomatic presence from India after New Delhi threatened to strip diplomatic immunities from them and their families.The moves have made many nervous.“We’ve definitely seen a large increase in people saying, ‘Hey, why should I move to Canada?'” said Ilya Brotzky, chief executive and co-founder of VanHack, a Vancouver-based firm connecting employers and tech professionals around the world.Before the tensions, he estimated about 95 per cent of the conve...

1 of 4 men who escaped from a central Georgia jail has been caught, authorities say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

MACON, Ga. (AP) — One of four men who escaped from a central Georgia jail last week was caught Thursday, authorities said.The U.S. Marshals Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force said 29-year-old Chavis Demaryo Stokes was arrested at home in Montezuma, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the jail, around 2 p.m., the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The sheriff’s office did not provide any other information about the arrest.Sheriff David Davis said last week that Stokes, 52-year-old Joey Fournier, 24-year-old Marc Kerry Anderson and 37-year-old Johnifer Dernard Barnwell had escaped through a damaged window and a cut fence at the jail early Oct. 16. There was no indication Thursday that any of the others had been caught.Video footage showed a blue Dodge Challenger that had been just outside the jail hours before the escape and appeared to show someone tampering with the fence. That person then brought some items into the enclosed area, and the sheriff said...

White House says Russia is executing its own soldiers for not following orders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday said Russia is executing soldiers who have failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire. It’s a development that U.S. national security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its grinding invasion of Ukraine, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters. “But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”The White House has downgraded and released intelligence findings about Russian action over the course of the war. In the past, the administration has said it has acted to disclose the intelligence to highlight plan...

Movie Review: ‘Pain Hustlers’ tells a sadly familiar story with a kitchen-sink style

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

The wife of a man who nearly died of an opioid overdose comes bursting into the office of the sleazy doctor who prescribed it, wrongly, in exchange for personal gain. She slugs the doctor, in her agony.The scene comes deep into the new Netflix film “Pain Hustlers,” and it feels bracingly real and tragic.If only the rest of the movie, the latest in a string of opioid-themed films, felt the same. Instead, despite a high-powered cast featuring a reliably solid Emily Blunt, an expertly low-life Chris Evans and the gifted Catherine O’Hara, the film tries too hard to be something it isn’t, or shouldn’t be: slick and breezy and too clever for its own good, filled with mockumentary interviews, wild montages, and other tricks used to more disciplined effect in more accomplished films.Not that Blunt isn’t an effective presence here as Liza Drake, a struggling, single Florida mom who works at a strip club but wants to move up in life — to be treated with respect, and to support her ailing teen...

Parts of Gaza look like a wasteland from space. Look for the misshapen buildings and swaths of gray

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip (AP) — Apartment buildings are crumpled. Neighborhoods lie in ruins. Terrain is transformed into moonscape.The destruction of areas of northern Gaza is visible from space in satellite images taken before and after Israeli’s airstrikes, which followed the raids carried out by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.In images shot Saturday by Maxar Technologies, four- and five-story buildings in the Izbat Beit Hanoun neighborhood are in various states of collapse. Huge chunks are missing from some, others are broken in half and two large complexes lie in piles of rubble.The pattern of destruction in the Al Karameh neighborhood can be traced by a widespread pattern the color of ash.Tightly packed streets in Beit Hanoun look obliterated, with a rare white structure standing out in the gray wasteland.Israel has carried out thousands of airstrikes since the war erupted on Oct. 7 following a cross-border raid that killed 1,400 people in Israel and took over 200 others hostage. Pa...

Brittney Griner, 5-time Olympian Diana Taurasi head up US national women’s roster for November

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Five-time Olympic gold medalist Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner head up the USA Basketball Women’s National Team roster announced Thursday for a pair of November exhibition games and training camp in Atlanta. The national team will play the Tennessee Lady Vols on Nov. 5 in Knoxville and Duke on Nov. 12. The team will hold a training camp Nov. 7-9 in Atlanta as the U.S. women chase an eighth straight Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. USA Basketball will keep evaluating the player pool before naming the final roster for the Paris Games. A’ja Wilson, who just led the Las Vegas Aces to the WNBA title, currently has her left wrist in a cast. Breanna Stewart is awaiting the birth of her second child with her wife. Chelsea Gray is recovering from an injured foot, keeping her from a return to her college home at Duke.Taurasi is one of seven players who will play in both exhibitions along with Griner, Kahleah Copper, Allisha Gray, Rhyne How...

Erin O’Toole says CSIS told him he would remain target of China ‘into the future’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

OTTAWA — Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says Canada’s spy agency told him he would be a target of the Chinese government “into the future” for “an undetermined time.” O’Toole shared that detail today with MPs on a parliamentary committee probing the issue of foreign interference and the privilege of fellow parliamentarians. The study was launched amid media reports late last year and early this year that Beijing had allegedly meddled in Canada’s affairs during the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. In May, the federal government confirmed a media report that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had information in 2021 that China’s government was looking to intimidate longtime Conservative MP Michael Chong, as well as his relatives in Hong Kong. That prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say the spy agency needed to share such information with parliamentarians. O’Toole says he learned of Beijing’s like...

Africa’s fashion industry is booming, UNESCO says in new report but funding remains a key challenge

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:37 GMT

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Africa’s fashion industry is rapidly growing to meet local and international demands but a lack of adequate investment still limits its full potential, UNESCO said Thursday in its new report released at this year’s Lagos Fashion Week show.Currently valued at $15.5 billion worth of exports annually, the earnings from the continent’s fashion industry could triple over a decade with the right investment and infrastructure, according to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, who launched the organization’s first report on fashion in Africa in Nigeria’s economic hub of Lagos.With a young population of 1.3 billion people set to double by 2050, the continent’s fashion industry has also proven to be both “a powerful lever for the promotion of cultural diversity (and) also a way to empower young people and women,” said Azoulay.Across the continent, fashion continues to grow on various fronts – including in movies and films – in the form of textiles, garments as w...