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Leader of local non-profit chapter describes escaping violence in Israel and efforts to send aid

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

A Boston woman who was in Israel for volunteer work is back in the United States after escaping violence that broke out in the country last week.“You’re afraid you are going to die,” Jewish National Fund-USA Boston President Rhonda Forman said. “You’re just afraid you’re going to die.”Forman told 7NEWS she was still reeling from what she witnessed in Israel, where she was volunteering at a rehabilitative hospital just miles from the Gaza Strip, where Hamas fighters launched a series of attacks, including violent assaults on civilians and rockets being fired into the nation.Left feeling numb after getting to safety, she said one of her fellow workers was killed in such an attack.“On the road that I drove every single day, her car was hit by a rocket,” she said. “That hit me very hard personally because that Saturday morning, I would have been on the road at that sae time.”Forman was north in Tel Aviv when Hamas launche...

Rite Aid goes belly up

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

Rite Aid has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell part of its business as it attempts to restructure while dealing with losses and opioid-related lawsuits.The company said Rite Aid stores will continue to fill prescriptions, and customers will still be able to visit its locations or shop online while it goes through its voluntary Chapter 11 process. But that process also will allow it to speed up its plan to close underperforming stores.Going through Chapter 11 will help “significantly reduce the company’s debt” while helping to “resolve litigation claims in an equitable manner,” Rite Aid late Sunday.Rite Aid Corp. said in its federal bankruptcy filing that it runs more than 2,000 stores. Most of its locations are on the East and West Coasts.The Philadelphia company, which is marking its 60th birthday this year, has posted annual losses for several years and has been cutting costs and closing stores as it dealt with long-standing financial ...

Northeastern opens gleaming new lab, research space

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

Northeastern University on Monday officially opened it’s new EXP Center on Huntington Ave. an 8-story scientific research and creation space with labs ranging from robotics, to drug discovery to wireless communications.Among the specs for the new facility, Northeastern said the new center boasts 375,000 square feet including a 15,000 square foot maker-space, a 12-ton ceiling mounted crane inside a two-story robotics lab, 21 3-D printers, and 10 chemistry teaching labs.“You will plant the seeds for new companies and new branches of industry and that is so exciting,“ said Gov. Maura Healey, a Northeastern alumna  during Monday’s ceremony.Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun looked toward the future in his remarks.“We are here today not to celebrate the building, but to celebrate a commitment to a better world and this is something that will endure for many many generations to come,” he said.Students are already at work at the one of the many labs in Northeastern University’s new EXP ...

Barricaded stabbing suspect prompts SWAT standoff in Spring Valley

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

SPRING VALLEY, Calif. -- A stabbing suspect was barricaded inside a Spring Valley motel room on Monday, prompting a SWAT standoff.Around 11 a.m., authorities received a call about a stabbing at Crown Inn & Suites in the 9600 block of Campo Road, San Diego County Sheriff's Department said to FOX 5. A man was found with an injured hand and was taken to a hospital, SDSO said on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Female migrant dies after crossing the border in California "Our Crisis Negotiation Team (CNT) is on site and talking to the suspect to reach a peaceful confusion to this situation," SDSO added.The Chula Vista Police Department's SWAT team was also at the scene.Authorities have closed Campo Road at Hollyhock Lane, Rogers Road and Kenwood Drive, and the state Route 94 onramp from Kenwood Drive. IRS postpones tax filing deadline one month for California storm victims Authorities did not immediately know the relationship between the suspect and the victim, or what ...

Lowrider cruising to become legal after Newsom signed bill repealing bans

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- A bill to legalize lowrider cruising across California was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, ending a decades-long ban on the popular pastime.Assembly Bill 436, introduced by National City Asm. David Alvarez, repealed regulations in the state vehicle code that allowed local governments in the state to place restrictions that directly target lowrider vehicles.This includes the regulation of cruising, which is when a vehicle is driven "low and slow," on streets and the operation of vehicles that have been modified from their original design to make the body of the car closer to the ground than the bottom of its rims. IRS postpones tax filing deadline one month for California storm victims “On behalf of the thousands of advocates who supported this culturally significant legislation, the low rider communities and car clubs from all over California, I would like to thank the Governor for signing AB 436 into law," Alvarez said in a statement. "The law will al...

San Diego State is No. 17 in the preseason men's AP Top 25

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

Bill Self likes to remind his team that the faces may change at Kansas but the expectations within his program never do.Expectations outside the program? Turns out they are as high as possible this year.The Jayhawks were the clear No. 1 pick in the AP Top 25 preseason men's basketball poll released Monday, earning 46 of 63 first-place votes to easily outdistance No. 2 Duke and No. 3 Purdue. It's the third time since Self's arrival in Lawrence in 2003 that his team will start the season on top but the first time since the 2018-19 season.“You know you'll have a target on your back playing at Kansas,” said Kevin McCullar Jr., who decided to return for a second season with the Jayhawks and fifth in college hoops. "We'll have that chip on our shoulder, you know, prove everybody wrong, and state why you should be the No. 1 team in the nation. You go out there and use that. You use that as fuel every day.”The Jayhawks had a disappointing follow-up to their 2022 national title last season, ...

Four men held in central Georgia jail escaped and a search is underway, sheriff says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

MACON, Ga. (AP) — Four men detained in a central Georgia jail escaped through a damaged window and a cut fence early Monday morning, authorities said. Bibb County Sheriff David Davis identified the four as Joey Fournier, Marc Kerry Anderson, Johnifer Dernard Barnwell and Chavis Demaryo Stokes. During a news conference Monday, Davis said that jail staff noticed a break in the perimeter fence around 6 a.m. After watching video footage, they discovered the four men were able to escape via a window in a second-floor dayroom and then through the fence around 3:30 a.m., he said.“They could be anywhere,” the sheriff said, adding that he was not aware of any connections between the men before they entered the jail and doesn’t know whether they stayed together once they escaped.Video footage also showed a blue Dodge Challenger that had been just outside the jail earlier in the night and appeared to show someone tampering with the fence. That person then brought some items into the encl...

Winnipeg court hears man was in psychosis when he killed parents, attacked nurse

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

WINNIPEG — Court has heard a man was experiencing psychosis and thought higher powers were telling him his relatives and a colleague were “contaminated by evil” the day he killed his parents and attacked a hospital nursing supervisor. Trevor Farley believed he was directed by the Angel Gabrielto save his victims from a “demonic evil,” said an agreed statement of facts read in a Winnipeg courtroom Monday. He was convinced he had to “cut the contamination in order to save the victims,” read Crown attorney Shannon Benevides. Farley’s lawyer told Manitoba Court of Kings’ Bench Justice Kenneth Champagne that Farley acknowledges he committed the attacks, but should be found not criminally responsible due to mental illness.  “Tragic doesn’t begin to describe this,” said Evan Roitenberg. “The Farley family has lost their parents. An innocent person has been attacked at her workplace.”Farley pleaded not guilty to f...

B.C. to bring in law forcing Surrey to go with municipal police force

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

VICTORIA — British Columbia Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has introduced legislation that will require the City of Surrey to provide policing with a municipal force in the latest jurisdictional salvo over the RCMP and the Surrey Police Service.The update in the Police Act also gives the province the authority to cancel the RCMP contract it has with Surrey, B.C.’s second most populous city behind Vancouver. Farnworth introduced the Police Amendment Act Monday in the legislature, where he said the change would provide Surrey residents with “clarity and finality” on the future of the city’s police services.He said the changes would require any municipality that has approval from the province to change its police force to “proceed to completion” once the transition starts.In a written statement, Farnworth said a lack of clarity in the existing Police Act was “exposed” during the Surrey police transition process.He said the new amendment...

Canada’s new antisemitism envoy Deborah Lyons eyes hate speech on campuses and online

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:18:37 GMT

OTTAWA — The Trudeau government has appointed former ambassador Deborah Lyons as Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.Lyons is Canada’s former ambassador to Israel and to Afghanistan, and she replaces former attorney general Irwin Cotler, who held the role for three years.The role involves collecting data and speaking out for Jewish people when they are attacked within Canada and abroad, and similar roles exist for Muslims and LGBTQ+ people.Lyons was named to the role Monday morning during a conference on antisemitism in Ottawa.She told reporters that her appointment comes amid “the malignancy growing here, that cancerous hate speech, that desire to polarize and divide and disrupt and destroy the spirit that is Canada.”It also comes as Israel grieves a gruesome Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that left 1,400 dead, and concerns by the United Nations that Israel is violating humanitarian law by depriving Palestinian civi...