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A summer spent in a barn helped turn Astros’ Pena into a champion

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

Before he was a World Series champion, before he was Carlos Correa’s heir apparent as Houston Astros shortstop, Jeremy Peña was just like the thousands of other minor leaguers willing to do anything to achieve their dream of reaching the big leagues.For the Providence, R.I., native and former UMaine baseball star, that dream included an unusual detour.During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Peña was left in the lurch when spring training was cut short and the minor league baseball season cancelled. Then a High-A prospect, Peña connected with former college teammates Joe Bramanti, Jake Rainess and Alex McKinney and spent the summer in Maine working out in an old barn.Bramanti, a North Andover resident, first shared the story last season after Peña initially established himself with the Astros. Now back at Fenway Park for the first time since winning the World Series, Peña reflected on his own memory of that formative experience.“Everyone cleared the school, fa...

Photos: Hurricane Idalia aftermath

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

Hurricane Idalia brought “catastrophic storm surge” to a swath of the Gulf coast, according to the National Hurricane Center, leaving a wake of destruction in Florida, including two deaths.The storm, which rapidly intensified into a major Category 4 storm before dropping back to a Category 3 early Wednesday, made landfall at the crux of Florida’s Big Bend region. Idalia will move near or along the coasts of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina late Wednesday or Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said.More than 330,000 customers in Florida and Georgia were without electricity, according to the Associated Press.READ MORE: ‘This is actually unbelievable’: Idalia floods Gulf coast, careens inland with 90 mph windsLIVE UPDATES: Thousands without power in FloridaThe Florida Highway Patrol reported two deaths related to the storm. A man died about 6 a.m. in Gainesville while driving in “extremely rainy conditions,” according to FHP.  His pickup veered into a ditch and hit a tree...

San Diego International Airport is busiest single-runway airport in US

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- Did you know San Diego International Airport (SAN) only has a single runway for arriving and departing flights? Not only that, but it is the busiest of its kind in the nation.The runway, which is 9,401 feet in length and 200 feet in width, originally accommodated World War II-era long-range bombers in 1942 until United Airlines became the first airline to offer pure jet service in September 1960, according to SAN.Aerial view of the San Diego International Airport, river and Pacific Ocean, in Southern California. Lindbergh Field is the busiest single runway commercial airport in the United States of America.Although San Diego International Airport is not designated as an airline hub, its single runway is the busiest in the U.S. The airport brings in more than 20 million passengers a year, seeing roughly two million passengers per month this summer. UC San Diego among top public universities in U.S., according to new ranking SAN offers 16 major and commuter airlines, in...

Opponents of Nebraska plan to use public money for private school tuition seek ballot initiative

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

Organizers of an effort to have Nebraska voters weigh in on whether to use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition scholarships said Wednesday they have more than enough signatures to put that question on the November 2024 ballot.The Support Our Schools effort turned in 117,000 signatures to the Nebraska Secretary of State, who must now verify them. That’s nearly double the roughly 60,000 valid signatures needed to make the ballot, and organizers are confident they have met that goal.“This bill needs to be repealed,” Jenni Benson, a Support Our Schools Nebraska sponsor and president of the Nebraska State Education Association, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This wildly successful petition effort has shown that Nebraskans agree.”The effort was launched even before Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill this spring to funnel millions in taxpayer money from public coffers to scholarships for private school tuition. Support Our Schools was funded mostly throu...

Non-permanent residents in Canada undercounted by one million: CIBC

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

TORONTO — A new CIBC Capital Markets report says the official number of non-permanent residents in Canada often cited by policymakers could be vastly underestimated.The report says the actual number could be off by one million, meaning any policies around housing or those aimed at capping the number of non-permanent residents might be more urgent than previously thought.Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC, says the significant gap is in part because the federal government does not have a system to track people with expired visas who continue to stay in the country.While forecasting is difficult, population estimates are crucial because cities and provinces use them to inform their budgets and plan future housing and infrastructure projects. Canada’s population hit a milestone of 40 million earlier this year. With the underestimation of non-permanent residents, the report says from a housing perspective, it’s the equivalent of more than two years of building capa...

Crown hires ‘Big Little Lies’ publisher Amy Einhorn to boost its fiction program

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The editor of such best-selling novels as Liane Moriarty’s “Big Little Lies” and Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” is joining a division of Penguin Random House. Amy Einhorn, most recently president and publisher of Henry Holt and Company, will begin as senior vice president and publisher of fiction at Crown Publishing Group on Oct. 2.“Over the course of her career, Amy’s exceptional editorial taste and astute commercial instincts have helped shape the modern fiction market,” Crown President David Drake wrote in a company memo shared Wednesday with The Associated Press.Crown has been known in recent years for such nonfiction bestsellers as former President Barack Obama’s “Promised Land” and former first lady Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” and the hiring of Einhorn is part of an effort to boost its fiction. Einhorn’s mandate will be “to build an impactful fiction program comprised of approximately 20 titles published each year,” according to Dra...

Hurricane Franklin nears Bermuda as a Category 2 storm

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The outer bands of Hurricane Franklin lashed Bermuda on Wednesday as the Category 2 storm was forecast to pass near the island located in the north Atlantic Ocean.Franklin had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph) and was located some 160 miles (260 kilometers) northwest of Bermuda early Wednesday afternoon. It was moving northeast at 13 mph (20 kph) and was expected to keep spinning through open waters.A tropical storm warning was in effect for Bermuda, with forecasters warning of life-threatening surf and rip currents for the island and the U.S. East Coast.Officials in Bermuda warned that Hurricane Idalia, which was crossing Florida on Wednesday, was forecast to possibly hit the island early next week as a tropical storm.The Associated Press

Hurricane Idalia unleashes fury on Florida and Georgia, swamping wide stretch of coast

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

CEDAR KEY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday in Florida as a Category 3 storm and unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast, submerging homes and vehicles, turning streets into rivers, unmooring small boats and downing power lines in an area that has never before received such a pummeling.More than 330,000 customers in Florida and Georgia were without electricity while rushing water covered streets near the coast. As the eye moved inland, high winds shredded signs, sent sheet metal flying and snapped tall trees.“We have multiple trees down, debris in the roads, do not come,” posted the fire and rescue department on the island of Cedar Key, where a tide gauge measured the storm surge at 6.8 feet (2 meters) — enough to submerge most of the downtown. “We have propane tanks blowing up all over the island.”Idalia came ashore in the lightly populated Big Bend region, where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula. It made landfall near Keaton B...

Spain has condemned inappropriate World Cup kiss. Can it now reckon with sexism in soccer?

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

MADRID (AP) — When Patricia Otero watched the president of Spain’s soccer federation tarnish the greatest victory in the history of women’s sports in Spain by forcibly kissing a player on the lips during the Women’s World Cup medal ceremony, she was saddened — but not surprised.For this amateur soccer player, the kiss that Luis Rubiales pressed on Spain forward Jenni Hermoso was simply the most public and notorious example of the treatment she and her teammates received as girls and young women.“We have seen that all our lives,” the 30-year-old told The Associated Press from the southern city of Malaga, where she still plays soccer when not teaching high school. And when Rubiales tried to justify the kiss by saying it was like one he would have “given my daughters,” it sounded eerily familiar.“I had a coach who would pat our butts, and always while acting friendly, saying, ‘You are like a daughter to me.’ And that was when you are still not adult enough to know what he is doin...

Former official under Belarus President Lukashenko to face Swiss trial over enforced disappearances

Published Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:32:08 GMT

GENEVA (AP) — A former member of Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko’s special security forces is to face trial in Switzerland next month for the forced disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s, rights groups said Wednesday.Activists called it a “watershed moment” in international justice that could trigger prosecutions abroad of other Belarus officials — including Lukashenko, whose regime has come under renewed criticism over a crackdown against opposition leaders that began in August 2020 and support for Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine last year, among other things.The case against Yuri Harauski, a former member of a military unit known as SOBR, is due on Sept. 19-20 in the northern Swiss regional court of St. Gallen and focuses on the enforced disappearances of three people in 1999. An extract of the court filing, obtained by The Associated Press, indicated that prosecutors planned to seek a three-year prison sentence — of which two would be s...