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Healey hires state’s first ever transportation safety chief

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

Gov. Maura Healey began the week by following through on a longstanding campaign promise, announcing Monday morning she had found a seasoned hand to lead the state’s transportation safety initiatives.“Pat Lavin is a dedicated public transportation expert who shares our administration’s commitment to improving safety and reliability across our transportation system, including the MBTA,” Healey said in a written statement. “We created this position to ensure we had a senior official coordinating efforts across all modes of transportation and driving strategies across the system to improve safety for riders and workers.”According to Healey’s staff, Lavin will begin his $ 325,000-a-year job as MassDOT Chief Safety Officer on May 8 and comes into the newly created role with over 40 years of experience working in transit.Lavin has been serving as director of safety at K & J Safety and Security Consulting Services since 2019 and was chief safety officer for the Washington Metropolitan ...

McCaughey: Tuberculosis next immigration worry

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

Ready for another pandemic? New York City’s health commissioner announced last week that the influx of migrants from the southern border — more than 50,000 to New York City alone in the past year — is delivering contagious diseases, including tuberculosis and polio, to our neighborhoods.The same disease threats are also endangering other migrant destinations, including California, Texas and Florida.In a letter to physicians and health care administrators citywide, Commissioner Ashwan Vasan explained that “many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB.”TB, short for tuberculosis, is a bacterial infection. It is treatable with antibiotics, but it generally takes six to nine months of medication to recover. Not a walk in the park.TB spreads through the air, like flu or a cold. Stand next to someone with TB for a long subway ride or sit next to them every day at school and you can catch it.New York City’...

Letter to the editor: Abortion was never in the Constitution

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

The current fervor among the beltway chattering class over Roe v. Wade being overturned in the Supreme Court ruling of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) highlights the level of civic illiteracy that permeates our country today. The Supreme Court makes up the Judicial Branch of our federal government, one of three coequal branches established by the United States Constitution, the document that defines (and through unanimous ratification in 1788, legitimizes) our national government.That same document also states very clearly that the powers not enumerated in the Constitution — and therefore not bestowed upon the federal government by the duly appointed representatives, of we, the people — were “left to the states.” To dispel any confusion, this was again reaffirmed in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, “Retention of the People’s Rights,” ratified in 1791 and stating with zero ambiguity, “The powers not delegated ...

Editorial: Integrity in short supply

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

There’s been a reckoning in the media and that’s good news.Don Lemon is out at CNN and Tucker Carlson has been shown the door at Fox. Both twisted the facts to their liking, with Lemon a repeat offender.His misogynistic ways proved too much for CNN to stomach. Any credibility the cable channel still had was being eroded by Lemon’s presence. So he had to go and why not drop the news after Fox parted with their primetime host?“I am stunned,” Lemon wrote of his firing on Twitter Monday.Really? It’s stunning it took this long. Saying GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, 51, was not “in her prime” should have cost him his job immediately. Instead, CNN let him stick around for two months.Lemon’s demise hitting almost immediately after Carlson’s was CNN being cowardly. It was a calculated move to capitalize on a rival’s bigger announcement.A full explanation has yet to surface why Carlson was dropped, but it comes days after Fox agre...

‘Positive attitude and a smile’ again put to test for Heat’s Oladipo on eve of surgery

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

As Victor Oladipo moves toward surgery later this week for the torn patellar tendon in his left knee sustained in Saturday’s playoff victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra offered a window into the previous relentless approach by the guard from such procedures.“I think all these times behind the scenes, when no one is watching, I feel like I’ve had a front-row seat at that on all these off days the last three years, on weekends, when no one is here, but he’s on the training table and then working his way to the weight room,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat hosting the Bucks on Monday night at Kaseya Center in Game 4 of their best-of-seven opening-round series. “And it’s usually like a four- or five-hour process, and then finishing up with all the post-rehab work after working out.”This will be the third major procedure Oladipo will attempt to return from during his Heat tenure, since being acquired in March 202...

'Uncontainable excitement': 18-year-old captures northern lights over Illinois

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

APPLE RIVER, Ill. — An 18-year-old storm chaser from the suburbs didn't have to go to far to find majestic beauty in the sky Sunday night.When Landon Moeller, of Schaumburg, heard he'd have the chance to see the northern lights in the area and not the Arctic Circle, he'd got in his car and headed west for about an hour and 45 minutes to Apple River, Illinois."I got to just outside Apple River at 9:30 p.m. I specifically chose this spot because I was actively trying to avoid extensive cloud cover and light pollution to the east towards Chicago and it paid off," Moeller told WGN News.The northern lights were viewable in Illinois due to a coronal mass ejection and a minor solar flare happened Friday night, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.Within about ten minutes, this sight greeted Moeller, who used a Nikon Z6 II to capture the images.The sky at around 9:40 p.m., courtesy Landon MoellerFrom there, the lights got more intense before a "substorm expansion" from around...

Singer R. Kelly moved to North Carolina prison from Chicago

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

BUTNER, N.C. (AP) — Singer R. Kelly was moved from a Chicago correctional center to a medium-security prison in North Carolina last week, according to federal officials. Robert Sylvester Kelly was transferred from the Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago to the federal correctional institution in Butner, North Carolina, on April 19, Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Benjamin O’Cone said Monday via email. R. Kelly sentenced to additional year on top of previous conviction, 19 concurrent years in child porn, sex crime case   The bureau doesn’t disclose the reasons for inmate transfers due to privacy, safety and security reasons, he wrote. In February, a federal judge in Chicago sentenced the 56-year-old Grammy Award-winning R&B singer to 20 years in prison for child pornography and enticement of minors for sex. He will serve all but one of those simultaneously with a separate 30-year sentence on racketeering and sex trafficking convictions in New York. Read more: Lates...

Five $1 million lottery wins in Illinois remain unclaimed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

ILLINOIS — The clock is ticking for five lottery-made millionaires to claim their prizes in Illinois.Two Mega Millions tickets, two Lucky Day Lotto tickets, and one Lotto ticket, all worth at least $1 million dollars, still have not been claimed, according to the Illinois Lottery's website. Winners have one year from the date of the drawing before they lose their winnings. Activists call to a raise minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago All five tickets are from 2023 and were sold on the following dates in the listed locations:January 14 Mega Millions - 7-Eleven, 847 N. Dodge Ave. Evanston, IL 60202March 16 Lucky Day Lotto - Walmart, 1100 S. Randall Rd. Elgin, IL 60123April 8 Lucky Day Lotto - Family Pantry, 9259 Waukegan Rd. Morton Grove, IL 60053April 14 Lotto - BP Amoco, 5548 W. 159th St. Oak Forest, IL 60452April 15 Mega Millions - Circle K, 460 S. Mclean Blvd. Elgin, IL 60123Additionally, five prizes from the Jackpot and Daily Game list worth at least $100,000 are also li...

Activists call to raise minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

CHICAGO — Restaurant workers and union activists are advocating for a raise in minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago and across the country. One Fair Wage is calling to raise the minimum wage to $15 for tipped employees. While the city of Chicago states it has a minimum wage of $15, it does not apply to tipped workers.In Illinois, tipped workers have a minimum wage of $7.80 an hour, and nationally, a wage of $2.13 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Bed Bath & Beyond files for bankruptcy, all stores set to close "That has been a big problem for a population that is overwhelming women, disproportionately women of color and we have the highest rate of single moms of any occupation in the United States, in Illinois and in Chicago," Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage said. Restaurant employees are required to pay for a mandatory food safety certification program every few years, activists said.

Famous Twitter users disavow Musk over verification return

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:11:28 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Celebrities, professional athletes and other high-profile Twitter users are once again being verified by the social media platform and they don't know why their blue check marks reappeared — nor do they seem too happy about it.Twitter removed the blue marks last week from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. But the check marks mysteriously returned for many highly followed accounts over the weekend, leading some prominent users to disavow what's become a divisive symbol of Twitter owner Elon Musk's erratic changes to the platform.The account belonging to the Auschwitz Memorial, which has 1.5 million followers and regularly tweets out photos and names of Holocaust victims, tweeted on Sunday that after two days of no checkmark “our account got the blue tick back,” but said it was “obliged to clarify that the Memorial never subscribed and paid for the Twitter Blue as it might be implied.”Other high-profile accounts with more than 1 million followers also took to...