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Manager Bob Melvin's job appears to be safe with the underwhelming Padres

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Manager Bob Melvin's job appears to be safe with the underwhelming San Diego Padres after owner Peter Seidler said in a statement Monday morning that the current leadership team “continues to have my full support.”The announcement came less than 24 hours after the Padres finished the most disappointing season in franchise history at 82-80. They were eliminated from playoff contention on Friday night, a bitter result for a team that came into the season with World Series expectations after making a stirring run to the NL Championship Series last fall and then increasing their payroll to around $250 million, the third highest in baseball.There have been numerous reports of a fractured relationship between Melvin, who finished his second season with San Diego and 20th overall as a big league manager, and general manager A.J. Preller, who has had just two winning records in a full season since being hired in August 2014.“We entered 2023 with expectations that we would b...

Man who sought to expose sexual predators fatally shot during argument in Detroit-area restaurant

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

A 40-year-old Detroit-area man who posed as a 15-year-old girl on social media to identify alleged sexual predators has been fatally shot during an argument in a restaurant.Police arrested two males, ages 17 and 18, Saturday in Friday night’s slaying of Robert Wayne Lee of Pontiac, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said.Lee had gone by the name “Boopac Shakur” on social media. His crusade had led to criminal charges against several men — including a jail deputy, but his work also misidentified one person as a sexual predator, according to the sheriff’s office.Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Monday that Lee had confronted an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old as they sat in a Pontiac restaurant, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Detroit. Lee and the 18-year-old got into an argument, at which point the 17-year-old pulled a gun at the table and shot Lee, Bouchard said. Lee later died at a hospital.Authorities did not release the name of either suspect. The case h...

Couple killed by bear in Banff National Park experienced in outdoors: family friend

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA — An Alberta bear expert who’s a family friend of one of two people killed by a grizzly bear in Banff National Park says the couple was experienced in the outdoors and could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.Kim Titchener, who has a company called Bear Safety and More, said both the couple and their dog died in the backcountry on the weekend.“These were very experienced outdoors people. I don’t know if they had bear spray on them. I highly doubt they had food sources that were left out,” she said in an interview. “This might be a wrong place, wrong time situation.”Parks Canada has not provided those details, and did not immediately respond to a request for an interview Monday.The federal agency said in a statement Saturday that its dispatchers received an alert at about 8 p.m. Friday from an inReach GPS device about a bear attack west of Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, which is about 200 kilometres northwest of Calgary...

New York fraud trial accusing Trump of lying about his wealth opens as he denounces it as a ‘scam’

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The fraud lawsuit that could cost former President Donald Trump control of some of his most prized properties went to trial Monday, with New York state lawyers vowing to hold him accountable while he denounced the case as a politically motivated “scam.”The civil case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, accuses the business-mogul-turned-politician and his company of deceiving banks, insurers and others by habitually misstating his wealth in financial statements.“They were lying year after year after year,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, said in an opening statement as Trump sat at the defense table. He looked straight ahead, arms crossed, facing away from a screen that showed details of Wallace’s presentation. Defense lawyers, in their openings, said that the financial statements were true. Trump’s holdings are “Mona Lisa properties” that can command top dollar, attorney Alina Habba said.“That is not fraud. Tha...

TTC launching app to give Wheel-Trans customers more options

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

The TTC has announced that they have launched a new mobile app that will allow Wheel-Trans customers to schedule and manage trips from their smartphones.The Wheel-Trans mobile app, available for both iOS and Android devices, supports most of the same functions that are currently available on the Wheel-Trans self-booking website.The app can be used to plan both door-to-door and Family of Services (FOS) trips.Customers can use the Wheel-Trans app to book, review, modify or cancel trips, use the ‘Where is My Ride?’ option to see the vehicle location on a map in real time (available only for buses), schedule and manage both door-to-door and Family of Services trips, and receive service alerts and view trip history.The app is now one of four ways that Wheel-Trans customers can book trips, along with using the existing Wheel-Trans self-booking website, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or by contacting Wheel-Trans reservations.

Environmental groups demand emergency rules to protect rare whales from ship collisions

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A coalition of environmental groups is calling on the federal government to enact emergency rules to protect a vanishing species of whale from lethal collisions with large ships.The groups filed their petition with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Sept. 28 in an effort to protect the North Atlantic right whale. The giant whale numbers less than 340 and has been in steep decline in recent years.Ship collisions are among the most dire threats to the survival of the whale, according to NOAA. The groups cited a proposed rule from the agency designed to prevent such ship strikes by making more vessels slow down for whales. NOAA has yet to release a final updated speed rule despite proposing new rules more than a year ago, the environmental groups said.The groups argue it’s critically important to get new rules on the books before the upcoming calving season, during which the whales migrate hundreds of miles from waters off New England an...

Book Review: Romance strikes in ‘Maybe Once, Maybe Twice’ with quirky lines and an epic soundtrack

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

On Maggie Vine’s 30th birthday, she makes a marriage pact with the handsome, broad-shouldered, sunbeam-smile-having Garrett Scholl. Thing is, the struggling singer-songwriter had already made a similar deal with her first boyfriend, Asher Reyes, who’s now an extremely successful — and attractive — actor. Thus the two great loves of Maggie’s life come crashing back to her at 35. Alison Rose Greenberg’s second novel, “Maybe Once, Maybe Twice,” is a long, luscious buildup of will-they-won’t-they, love-triangling, song-writing, and trips down memory lane as the narrative hops back to teen Maggie and 20-something Maggie to flesh out her past.Greenberg writes exceptional characters who still fit into the ordinary world, like our protagonist. Maggie Vine is the chic, All The Feels, folk-singing heroine we wanted but secretly didn’t believe could exist so tastefully. She’s got humor and sorrow, pride and doubt, good moments and bad, and a model-gorgeous, standoffish-yet-lovable ...

Four people have died in a plane crash near the Utah desert tourist community of Moab

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

MOAB, Utah (AP) — A plane crash outside the eastern Utah tourist town of Moab killed all four people on board, authorities said Monday.The plane crashed Sunday evening shortly after taking off from Canyonlands Airfield about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Moab, according to a Grand County Sheriff’s Department statement posted on Facebook.The crash of the single-engine Piper plane was being investigated, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a post on X, the social media website formerly called Twitter.A phone message left with sheriff’s officials seeking additional information wasn’t immediately returned Monday.Moab is a tourism-centered community of about 5,300 people near Arches and Canyonlands national parks.The Associated Press

Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearean actor who soars in sci-fi, looks back on his life in memoir

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Patrick Stewart, who famously played a “Star Trek” captain, has boldly gone where no one has gone before — into his past.The actor spent much of the pandemic at his computer writing his memoir, and the result is out this fall, “Making It So,” borrowing his catchphrase from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”“My long-term memory is very strong. It only needed me to turn the key on day one for the door to be open and memory after memory after memory and sensation and sensation and feelings all came scuttling back,” said Stewart, 83, in a Zoom interview from his Los Angeles home.It is a remarkable story of a boy who grew up poor in the north of England, became a great Shakespearean stage actor and then a sci-fi movie icon aboard the USS Enterprise and the “X-Men” movie franchise.He grew up without a toilet or a bathroom in his home, sold furniture as a young man, worked up the rungs of regional theater in England — including touring and crushing on Vivien Leigh — before a...

Pope suggests blessings for same-sex unions possible in response to 5 conservative cardinals

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 13:51:35 GMT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.The Vatican on Monday published a letter Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanat...