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Ticker: Jobless claims up, again; FDA panel recommends COVID vax update

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits remained elevated last week, a possible sign that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes over the past year may taking hold in what’s proved to be a resilient job market.U.S. applications for jobless claims were 262,000 for the week ending June 10, the Labor Department reported Thursday, more than analysts were expecting. This week’s number mirrors last week’s, which was revised up by 1,000. The claims numbers for the past two weeks are the highest since October of 2021.The four-week moving average of claims, which flattens some of the week-to-week fluctuations, rose by by more than 9,000 to 246,750. That’s the highest level since November of 2021.U.S. employers have added jobs at a furious rate since more than 20 million jobs disappeared during the pandemic purge in the spring of 2020. Americans have enjoyed unusual job security, despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to coo...

MLB to start months-long approval process for Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball will start a months-long approval process for Oakland Athletics’ proposed move to Las Vegas, which appears set to become the second shift of a franchise in the last half-century.A day after the Nevada Legislature approved $380 million in public financing for a ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred bemoaned the team’s inability to obtain a new stadium in Oakland and defended A’s owner John Fisher, who has maintained public silence.“I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I do not like this outcome. I understand why they feel the way they do,” Manfred said Thursday during a news conference following an owners meeting. “I think that the real question is what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer. They never got to the point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site.”Manfred said the team must submit a relocation application explaining its efforts in Oakland and...

Jury weighs dozens of charges against gunman who massacred 11 at Pittsburgh synagogue

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A jury on Thursday began sifting through a mountain of evidence against the truck driver who burst into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 congregants, a guilty verdict all but assured after the defendant’s own lawyers acknowledged he carried out the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.Robert Bowers was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people when he turned a sacred house of worship into a “hunting ground,” a federal prosecutor told the jury before the start of deliberations. Jurors spent about two hours weighing dozens of criminal counts against the 50-year-old before going home for the day.Deliberations were set to resume Friday morning. The government is seeking a death sentence.“There can be no forgiveness,” said a statement released by New Light Congregation, one of three Jewish congregations that came under attack in the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. “Forgiveness requires two components: that it is offered by the person who commits the wrong a...

Former West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw dies at 84

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Warren McGraw, a former West Virginia Supreme Court justice who spent five decades in public service, has died at age 84, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Thursday. Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy said McGraw died Wednesday. Blue Ridge Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens in Beckley said it was in charge of funeral arrangements, which were incomplete.McGraw had retired as a county circuit judge in 2021, citing the physical impairments due to Parkinson’s disease.Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic Party chairman and a member of the House of Delegates, said Warren was “a tireless advocate for working people and those who are too often left behind.””Warren McGraw never forgot that a society is measured by how it treats its weakest members. From the school board to the legislature, to the halls of the supreme court, he fought with every ounce of his ability to improve the lives of the poor and those struggling to make a better life for themselves and for th...

Evacuation ends in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., as resident recalls terror when fire loomed

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

Tumbler Ridge resident Joline Couture feared the worst last week as she prepared to pack up and leave under an evacuation order as wildfires loomed outside the small community in British Columbia’s northeast. “It was absolutely terrifying,” Couture said. As a Canadian Ranger, Couture was also waiting on orders to go door to door to tell people to leave as winds whipped up the flames and pushed them toward the town. “We were told it’s not a matter of if the fire was gonna hit Tumbler Ridge, it was a matter of when it was gonna hit, so that was pretty terrifying, to know that I was going to be knocking at doors and telling people to pack everything that they could because they might not have a place to come home to,” she said. “And there were some people that said that they didn’t want to leave.”But now the imminent risk to the town has lifted.Thanks to recent rain and favourable winds, Tumbler Ridge’s roughly 2,000 residents...

Most of 108 drowning victims in Nigeria boat accident were women and children

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Most of the 108 people who drowned after a boat broke apart in north-central Nigeria were women and their children, survivors and local authorities told The Associated Press on Thursday as search efforts ended. The wooden boat was carrying more than 250 people across the Niger River in Kwara state as they returned home from a late-night wedding when the craft hit a log and split early Monday, survivors said.“We took some little children to the ground, but some of the women did not want to leave their children behind and they drowned,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, who survived the accident on the Niger River, one of Africa’s largest, stretching about 4,100 kilometers (2,500 miles). “Most of the women in that boat had children, (and a) majority of the people dead are women and small children,” Mohammed said. He said he rescued three children but lost nine child relatives.Villagers ended the search operation Thursday afternoon, with the victims all buried near the river...

Biden hopes Su’s role in dockworker deal can sway Democratic holdouts to confirm her as labor chief

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is hoping that Julie Su’s role in brokering a deal between West Coast dockworkers and shippers will provide fresh momentum for the Senate to act on her long-stalled nomination to be labor secretary.Su flew to San Francisco to help seal the tentative agreement after a lengthy dispute that had led to sporadic disruptions at some of the nation’s largest ports. President Joe Biden asked Su, a civil rights lawyer who was deputy labor secretary when tapped for the Cabinet job in February, to join the negotiations, according to a White House official, in an effort to stave off potential work stoppages as the bargaining sessions grew tense.Biden thanked Su, the department’s acting head, and said he had relied on her “deep expertise and judgment” to move the negotiations along. “This is going to have a real positive impact on trade,” Biden said. “She’s shown she’s a true leader and I think she should be confirmed.” The International L...

June temperatures briefly passed key climate threshold. Scientists expect more such spikes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Worldwide temperatures briefly exceeded a key warming threshold earlier this month, a hint of heat and its harms to come, scientists worry.The mercury has since dipped again, but experts say the short surge marked a new global heat record for June and indicates more extremes ahead as the planet enters an El Niño phase that could last years.Researchers at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Thursday that the start of June saw global surface air temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels for the first time. That is the threshold governments said they would try to stay within at a 2015 summit in Paris.“Just because we’ve temporarily gone over 1.5 degrees doesn’t mean we’ve breached the Paris Agreement limit,” cautioned Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus program. For that to happen the globe needs to exceed that threshold for a much longer time period, such as a couple of decades instead...

Man sentenced to life for ’99 slaying of 2 teen girls in Alabama

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

OZARK, Ala. (AP) — A man convicted of the 1999 slaying of two teenage girls in southeast Alabama was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison.Circuit Judge William Filmore officially handed down the sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole to Coley McCraney. The proceeding was a formality since a jury decided the sentence in April and Alabama law requires a judge abide with the jury’s decision in capital cases. A jury in April convicted McCraney of capital murder for the deaths of Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley, court records show. The two 17-year-olds disappeared after setting off for a party in southeastern Alabama on July 31, 1999. They never returned. Their bodies were found the next day in the trunk of Beasley’s black Mazda along a road in Ozark, a city of 19,000 people about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Montgomery. Each had been shot in the head.“The families of J.B. Beasley and Tracie Hawlett have prayed for over two decad...

RONA Inc. getting rid of 500 jobs across Canada, citing ‘new market realities’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:52:40 GMT

BOUCHERVILLE, Que. — RONA Inc. says it’s eliminating 500 jobs across Canada in a bid to simplify its organizational structure.The Boucherville, Que.-based home improvement retailer says in a press release Thursday evening that it needed to adapt to reflect new market realities amid a slowing economy. The Canadian economy has been showing some signs of weakness amid higher interest rates as the central bank seeks to quell inflation. However, GDP grew at an annualized rate of 3.1 per cent in the first quarter, beating expectations. The Canadian consumer has proven resilient amid tightening conditions, with household spending helping to buoy the economy’s growth in the first quarter. In November, Lowe’s announced it was selling its Canadian retail business, including RONA, to New York-based private equity firm Sycamore Partners.  RONA says it operates or services around 425 corporate and affiliated stores under different banners across the country. It says it has 22,0...