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Editorial: City Council misdeeds now 3 for 3 – where’s the accountability?

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

There was a time not too long ago when politicians embroiled in scandals put constituents before career and resigned from their posts.They may have done so reluctantly, but they did it.  It was the right thing to do.Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, we live in the age of doubling down, and that’s especially true on the Boston City Council.Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson is the latest in the sorry-not-sorry lineup. She admitted this week to violating the state’s conflict of interest law by hiring her sister and son to paid positions on her staff, and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine.As the Herald reported, the State Ethics Commission said Tuesday that Fernandes Anderson appointed her sister and son to full-time positions in 2022, her first year on the City Council.Fernandes Anderson set her sister’s salary at $65,000. She awarded her sister a raise in June 2022, increasing her salary to $70,000 and tacking on a $7,000 bonus, the Ethics Commission said.In June 2022, Fernandes ...

‘The Heiress and the Heist’ captures crimes of debutante-turned-IRA rebel

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

Why would a daughter of immense British privilege rebel as spectacularly as Rose Dugdale did in the 1970s, supporting the Irish Republican Army in its notorious fight against English rule by robbing her family paintings by Goya, Gainsborough and Vermeer worth millions?Dugdale’s mind-boggling crossover from a debutante presented to the Queen to a revolutionary engineering that multi-million dollar art heist from her father’s rural Ireland estate is the focus of the three-part Sundance Now/AMC+ documentary, “The Heiress and the Heist.”“It’s a very well-known story in Ireland because Rose Dugdale is an extraordinary person who left privilege as the daughter of a very wealthy British man,” director David Harvey began in a Zoom interview from Dublin. “She goes to Oxford,  becomes radicalized as a young person, then joins the IRA and is involved in some of the most high-profile criminal acts in Irish history. It is an extraordinary story.”Dugdale’s headline-making heist, then “the greates...

Dear Abby: Nightmare neighbor takes over couple’s lives

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

Dear Abby: My boyfriend, “Pete,” and I have been together four years. During the pandemic, he moved to my hometown, and we live together. Last year, he befriended a man who lives across the street. This neighbor had been a civil-service employee but took early retirement and is undergoing treatment for PTSD.Originally, I was happy for Pete’s new friendship in a new city, but the friendship has turned into a daily bromance. They spend two to six hours in Pete’s man cave, drinking, smoking and playing bar games. When I join in, the neighbor interrupts me and railroads the conversation. He insults me and is hypocritical about everything from my appearance to the meals I prepare.I defend myself to this man, but Pete remains silent despite my pleas for support. (Pete says he “hates confrontation.”) An example: When Pete didn’t quickly answer his texts or calls, the neighbor would come to our house, peer through our windows, yell and bang on the d...

Stock market today: Asian shares gain after the Federal Reserve raises interest rates

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares were higher Thursday after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to their highest level in more than two decades, just as Wall Street expected. Regional attention has focused on whether Japan’s central bank might alter its longstanding ultra-lax monetary policy at a policy meeting that ends on Friday. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.4% to 32806.18 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong jumped 1.3% to 19,613.18. The Shanghai Composite index was up 0.8% at 3,237,13. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 added 0.8% to 7,460.60. South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.5% to 2,603.08.Bangkok’s SET was down 0.1% and Taiwan’s benchmark gained 0.4%. Stocks on Wall Street held steady Wednesday. The S&P 500 slipped less than 0.1% to 4,566.75, remaining near a 15-month high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% to 35,520.12, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1%, to 14,127.29.The bond market moved more sharply, and Treasury yields fell after Fed Ch...

Accused of bomb threats they say they didn’t make, family of Chinese dissident detained in Thailand

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — When Gao Peng landed in Thailand on July 3, he was not expecting to be accused of making bomb threats, to be put on an EU travel blacklist, or to see his mother and 16-year-old sister detained and threatened with deportation back to China.But bomb threats made in his and his mother’s names against airports, luxury hotels and the Chinese embassy in Bangkok derailed the family’s plan to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where Gao Peng’s father moved three years ago. The threats appear to be part of Beijing’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to harass Chinese dissidents living overseas and their families.While parts of the story told by Gao Peng and his father, Gao Zhi, couldn’t be independently confirmed, their predicament echoes accounts by other Chinese dissidents abroad, who believe Chinese authorities are making bomb threats in their names to control their political activities.William Nee, research and advocacy coordinator at a coalition of rights organization...

As e-bikes proliferate, so do deadly fires blamed on exploding lithium-ion batteries

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The explosion early on a June morning ignited a blaze that engulfed a New York City shop filled with motorized bicycles and their volatile lithium-ion batteries. Billowing smoke quickly killed four people asleep in apartments above the burning store.As the ubiquity of e-bikes has grown, so has the frequency of fires and deaths blamed on the batteries that power them — sparking a push to better regulate how the batteries are manufactured, sold, reconditioned, charged and stored.Consumer advocates and fire departments, particularly in New York City, are urging the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish national safety standards and confiscate imports that don’t comply with regulations at the border, so unsafe e-bikes and poorly manufactured batteries can be taken off the streets and out of homes.The matter comes under discussion when the commission convenes a public hearing Thursday in Washington.“We’ve been sounding the alarm for months,” New York ...

Biden looks to provide relief from extreme heat as record temperatures persist

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — With millions of Americans facing broiling heat across the Southwest, President Joe Biden on Thursday plans to announce new steps to improve weather forecasts and make drinking water more accessible, according to the White House.He’ll be joined by the leaders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, described the heat wave as “a difficult time” and said Biden was treating climate change with “the urgency it requires.”Climate activists and some Democrats have pushed Biden to declare a climate “emergency,” but the White House has resisted.The mayors of Phoenix and San Antonio, two cities that have suffered from the heat waves, are expected to participate in the White House event virtually. Phoenix has seen at least 26 days in a row of temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Maricopa County, where the city is located, reported recently that there wer...

Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn to pay $10M to end fight over claims of sexual misconduct

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Casino mogul Steve Wynn’s long legal fight with Nevada gambling regulators over claims of workplace sexual misconduct is expected to end Thursday with a settlement calling for him to pay a $10 million fine and cut virtually all ties to the industry he helped shape in Las Vegas.The Nevada Gaming Commission was scheduled to meet in the state capital of Carson City and accept a deal in which the 81-year-old Wynn admits no wrongdoing.The seven-page agreement that Wynn signed July 17 with members of the investigatory Nevada Gaming Control Board said he was accused of “failure to exercise discretion and sound judgment to prevent incidents that have reflected negatively on the reputation of the gaming industry and the State of Nevada.”Wynn, who now lives in Florida, will not attend the hearing, his attorney Colby Williams said Wednesday. Williams declined to comment about the proceedings until they are complete.Under terms of the deal, Wynn will be allowed to maintai...

How many transgender and intersex people live in the US? Anti-LGBTQ+ laws will impact millions

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

New laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating in GOP-led states, but often absent from policy decisions is a clear understanding of how many people will be directly affected. There has been relatively scant data collected on the number of LGBTQ+ residents in the U.S., particularly intersex people — those born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female categories. That means lawmakers are often writing laws without the same kind of baseline information they might have for other demographic groups. “We can’t study the impact without knowing the population,” said Christy Mallory, legal director of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Williams Institute is a think tank that researches sexual orientation and gender identity demographics to inform laws and public policy decisions.Here’s a look at what we know and what we don’t know about the number of people in the U.S. who are LGBTQ+ or intersex. ___WHY DOES IT MATTER?Legi...

Biden is welcoming far-right Italian Prime Minister Meloni for White House talks

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:15:16 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set for talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday, welcoming the far-right leader who has won praise from the U.S. administration for her strong backing of the U.S.-led effort to assist Ukraine as it tries to fend off the Russian invasion.The warm reception comes after initial trepidation in the Biden administration about Meloni, who rose to power last year as the head of Italy’s most far-right government since the end of World War II. Biden administration concerns about her ideology have been eased by her support for Ukraine and her seeming openness to pull back from Italy’s participation in China’s infrastructure-building Belt and Road Initiative. Her visit comes as Italy prepares to take up the presidency next year of the Group of Seven industrialized nations.White House officials said that in addition to discussing Ukraine and China, the two leaders were expected to discuss migration from North Africa to Eur...