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New MBTA boss Phil Eng rides out slow zones, rider frustrations

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

The trip took upward of an hour, closer to 75 minutes — time for Phil Eng to hit a couple of slow zones and get an earful from the T-riding populace.“You know what? It moves at an interesting pace,” Eng, the incoming general manger of the MBTA said after his ride up the Green Line’s D branch from Riverside to Park Street on Monday afternoon — a stretch that, according to the T’s new dashboard, contains more than 15 stretches with speed restrictions. He declared, “We will fix that.”After talking to the riders, he reported to the press at Park Street, “They’re optimistic. They’ve shared some of the frustrations, but they’re really happy that the team is moving forward, that I’m going to focus on the things that are important to them. So it’s a great day.”The $470,000 man — that’s his annual salary, up from the $320,000-or-so-a-year previous GM — comes from New York City, where he has a lengthy resume r...

Food for thought: Free meals for all New Mexico students

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday signed legislation to provide free school meals to all students regardless of family income, as New Mexico and several other states look to fill the gap left by lapsed federal pandemic-era benefit programs and address the strain to family budgets caused by food prices.The bill cleared the Legislature during the recent 60-day session, with lawmakers setting aside more than $22 million in the state budget to help pay for the program. Additional money will be used to improve school kitchens so healthier meals can be prepared. “When we feed our children, we’re feeding our future – these investments today will yield benefits tomorrow through generations of healthier New Mexicans,” the Democratic governor said in a statement issued after she celebrated with dozens of elementary school students.California and Maine have made universal meals permanent, legislation to do so is advancing in Vermont, and Nevada pitched in $75 milli...

Walmart Canada CEO says retailer not trying to profit from inflation

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

OTTAWA — Walmart Canada is not trying to profit from food inflation, president and CEOGonzalo Gebara told a parliamentary committee studying the issue Monday evening.Gebara told MPs that Walmart Canada’s gross profit rate for its food business declined last year, as did the company’s total operating profit in dollars. However, he declined to provide specific numbers for the private business, saying Walmart Canada has provided relevant financial information to the Competition Bureau.MPs pressed Gebara on the fees and penalties that grocers charge suppliers. These fees are one of the topics being discussed as part of efforts to create a grocery code of conduct. Gebara said Walmart Canada has received a draft of the code of conduct recently and is reviewing it. “We will support any initiative that would bring better conditions and the ability to have more transparency in the whole chain,” he said.  Gebara’s comments before the committee followed a highly anticipated appearance by...

Christie: GOP needs someone who can quickly take down Trump

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that Republicans need a candidate who can take out Donald Trump in a single, brutal swipe like the one Christie delivered to a different rival in 2016.Speaking in New Hampshire, Christie recalled a favorite moment from his failed presidential campaign: embarrassing Marco Rubio on a debate stage three days before the first-in-the-nation primary. After Christie challenged Rubio’s lack of experience, the senator from Florida repeated himself twice in a cringe-worthy moment capped off by Christie saying: “There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”Trump will never step aside quietly, said Christie, who is mulling another run himself.“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco, because that’s the only thing that’s gonna defeat Donald Trump,” he said at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. “And that means you have to ...

Idaho Senate passes ban on gender-affirming care for minors

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Senate on Monday voted 22-12 to pass a bill criminalizing gender-affirming healthcare for minors, one month after the state House passed similar legislation. The measure bars transgender and transitioning children, or children with gender dysphoria, from receiving hormones or puberty blockers to alleviate their symptoms or help them with transitioning, KTVB reported Monday. Doctors prescribing these hormones or blockers could be charged with a felony and face prison time.The Senate will send the measure back to the House for consideration of the Senate amendments. If the House agrees, the bill will go to Sen. Brad Little.Republican lawmakers in more than two dozen states have pushed for bans on gender-affirming care this year, targeting what doctors and psychologists widely consider medically necessary care.The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends gender affirming care to treat children struggling with gender dysphoria. The organization says those ...

Rare beetle species named after ex-California governor Brown

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Scientists are naming a rare species of beetle in honor of former California Gov. Jerry Brown after finding one at his ranch.Bembidion brownorum was last seen in 1966, but it hadn’t been named or described until one was collected near a creek on Brown’s ranch in Colusa County, about an hour’s drive northwest of Sacramento, the University of California, Berkeley announced Monday.The beetle is brown and tiny at about 5 millimeters (0.20 inch) long, although that is still larger than other Bembidion beetles. Under magnification “it glows with a green and gold metallic shimmer,” according to UC Berkeley.Brown, who left office in 2019, lives in California’s inner coastal mountain range on land that has been in his family since the 1860s. He has offered his property as a meeting space for the California Native Plant Society, entomologist, and forestry and fire experts.UC Berkeley entomologist Kipling Will has been sampling insects at the 2,5...

Voter abstention rises in Cuban National Assembly election

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s government reported Monday that abstention in National Assembly elections was 24.1%, a figure some analysts said reflects discontent with the island’s economic crisis as well as a rise in apathy.While a 75.9% voter turnout in Sunday’s voting is high compared with other countries, it is about nine percentage points lower than voter turnout in Cuba’s 2018 National Assembly elections and far lower than the 94.2% turnout seen in 2013. Since there was only one candidate running for each of the 470 legislative seats, turnout was watched by observers as a political thermometer. “It is evident that the government is dealing with less unconditional support from its bases,” said Arturo López-Levy, a professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid.Cuba’s economy was badly hit by the pandemic and increased U.S. sanctions, and the island nation has seen a surge in migration along with power outages and fuel shortages. The communist-ruled nation was rocked ...

B.C. plans family law changes to decide who gets the pets when couples split

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

VICTORIA — The British Columbia government introduced legislation Monday that looks to ensure family custody battles over animals can become more pet-friendly.The important role pets play in families will now be considered in amendments to B.C.’s Family Law Act that clarify the law to provide more guidance for people and judges involved in animal custody disputes, Attorney General Niki Sharma said.“What we were learning was this is an issue that can be very sensitive and challenging at a time when a family is breaking up. So, we needed to kind of step in to help not only to give some guidance but also give a provincial court judge the authority, if it’s needed, to treat a pet not just like any other property but to actually consider what would be in the best interests of the pet and the family in that context,” she said in an interview after introducing the legislation.Custody disputes over pets have previously been settled as property assets, but the amendme...

Fleming stars as `Nixon in China’ arrives at Paris Opera

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

PARIS (AP) — After spending decades portraying generals’ wives, a countess and a courtesan, Renée Fleming walked gingerly onto the stage of the Bastille Opera in a blond wig, red coat and black gloves to depict Pat Nixon, former first lady of the United States.John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” a 1987 work among the most acclaimed American operas, received its Paris Opera premiere on Saturday night to eight minutes of applause following a revelatory production by Argentine director Valentina Carrasco that replaced literalism with metaphor. The lasting images were of a dark American eagle pitted against a bright red Chinese dragon and of ping-pong tables symbolizing both diplomacy and the quest for superiority.“You really have to be in your mid-60s to even remember this other than as it’s something that you learn about in school,” said Fleming, a 64-year-old soprano who bid farewell to the standard repertory six years ago. “I’m sorry, but in the context of what’s going on now, Water...

Review: Vietnam vets try to help nation they once attacked

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:30:00 GMT

“The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace and Redemption in Vietnam,” by George Black (Knopf)In the U.S., we’ve mostly moved on from our military engagements in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s the American way — not dwelling on our mistakes or engaging in a national discussion about what went wrong.And atonement? We don’t do that.But two American Vietnam vets thought differently and became our national conscience, our moral center and our agents of redemption in dealing with the fearsome toll that herbicide spraying and unexploded bombs inflicted on tens of thousands of Vietnamese.Manus Campbell, a Marine from New Jersey, and Chuck Searcy, an Army intelligence analyst from Georgia, have spent the past few decades in Vietnam leading efforts to heal the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese still suffering from war wounds or diseases linked to herbicide exposure.Thanks to Campbell, Searcy and a small group of scientists and others, the U.S. and others are providing the resources to...