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Texas officials issue shelter-in-place order after chemical plant explosion

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

SHEPHERD, TEXAS (AP) — Authorities issued a shelter-in-place order for Texas residents within a one-mile radius of a chemical plant fire Wednesday.A large plume of smoke could be seen in video captured by residents as the plant caught fire in Shepherd, Texas.San Jacinto County Office of Emergency Management said in a statement that a private school in the area had been evacuated and that Highway 59 was closed due to the fire.Shepherd is a mainly rural area about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Houston.Local authorities warned residents to shelter in place and to shut off their HVAC air conditioning systems. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office shared on Facebook that the plume could be heading toward the Livingston area.“At this time, the effects of the chemical in the air are unknown,” the Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.

NBA takes rebound away from Miami’s Bam Adebayo, denying him rare 20-rebound triple-double

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Bam Adebayo had Miami’s first 20-rebound triple-double in team history. Until he didn’t.The NBA, which reviews every stat from every game and often makes changes during and even after contests, took away one of the rebounds Adebayo was credited with in Miami’s 108-107 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday night.That means Adebayo’s final line was 22 points, 19 rebounds and 10 assists. Still a triple-double, the sixth of his regular-season career and seventh when including playoff games — just not one of the 20-rebound variety.The only other player in Heat history to grab 19 rebounds as part of a triple-double was Lamar Odom, who had 30 points, 19 rebounds and 11 assists in Miami’s 102-96 win over Sacramento on March 6, 2004.

Miami got too expensive so she moved to Colombia

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

(CNN) — She’d been living in Miami for around three decades and had built a life that she loved.But Julie Balzano, originally from Long Island, found herself struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living in the “Magic City,” recently ranked as the 10th most expensive city in the world on Swiss private bank Julius Baer’s annual Lifestyle Index.After selling her home in 2021 with the intention of downsizing, Balzano couldn’t find anything within her price range and decided to rent a townhouse for a year in order to “let the market stabilize” and eventually “buy back in.”However, as time went on, the 60-year-old, who is divorced with two grown-up children, realized that this was unlikely to happen anytime soon, and she’d need to come up with a different plan for her future.‘Falling behind’“Property prices were rising exponentially,” Balzano tells CNN Travel. “My income was not keeping up, and I was slowly but surely falling behind.”With her rent “creeping up and up,” B...

Don’t trust the data: France insists it’s pulling its weight on arms to Ukraine

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

PARIS — The numbers showing that France is the military skinflint among European countries when it comes to donating weapons and ammunition to Ukraine don’t paint the full picture, French lawmakers argue in a report presented Wednesday. The MPs want to “deconstruct what may have been said or written about France’s aid that would not live up to our ambitions,” Lionel Royer-Perreaut, a deputy from French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party and the report’s co-author, told reporters. “Some have a vested interest in letting things flourish on social networks to destabilize the Western bloc, others because of intra-European competition,” he added when asked what’s driving criticism of France. France and Ukraine did start on the wrong foot. In the war’s early days, Macron insisted Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be humiliated and suggested that Moscow deserved “security guarantees,” infuriating Kyi...

Rishi Sunak accepts ‘disrespectful’ London Gaza rally will go ahead

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

LONDON – Rishi Sunak backed the “right to peacefully protest” even as he branded a controversial pro-Palestine rally due to take place in London this weekend “disrespectful” to the U.K.’s war veterans.After hauling in the capital’s top police officer to discuss the demo, the British prime minister issued a statement Wednesday evening saying the country could “survive the discomfort and frustration” it might cause this coming Saturday.The solidarity march coincides with Armistice Day, which commemorates the end of World War I. Organizers the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have stressed it will avoid any remembrance activity and focus on calls for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.But the planned demo has sparked a heated debate in the U.K. about the trade-offs between free speech and security amid renewed Middle East conflict.Sunak’s statement came just after he quizzed Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley to quiz him on the f...

Authorities break up multi-state ‘high-end’ brothel network that had locations in Massachusetts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

Three men accused of operating “sophisticated high-end brothels” in parts of Massachusetts and eastern Virginia were taken into custody following a federal investigation, authorities said.The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced the brothel network’s breakup on Wednesday, which officials believe had clients who included “elected officials, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, attorneys, scientists and accountants, among others.”“Pick a profession – they’re probably represented in this case,” Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy said during a news conference Wednesday.Arrested were Han Lee, 41, of Cambridge, Mass., Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, Mass., and James Lee, 68, of Torrance, Calif.Citing charging documents, the US Attorney’s Office said that since at least July 2020, the s...

Chicago basketball report: Bulls at the bottom of the stats rankings — while both Illini men and women are ranked to start season

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

Folks, we’ve officially entered peak basketball season.College basketball is back. The Chicago Bulls are already battling to get back to .500. And the NBA In-Season tournament is drawing attention and ire from fans.Every Wednesday throughout the season, Tribune writers will provide an update on what happened — and what’s ahead — for the Bulls, Sky and local basketball.Bulls snap losing skid with blowoutThe Bulls have struggled to secure wins in the opening weeks of the NBA season, falling into a skid that included a loss in their first NBA In-Season Tournament outing against the Brooklyn Nets last Friday.They momentarily snapped out of that rut with a convincing win over the Utah Jazz on Monday, converting 30 points out of turnovers to sail to a 130-113 win. But that result came against a floundering 2-6 Jazz team, providing little insight into how the Bulls can compete against stronger opposition in the East.The Bulls rank in the bottom third of league stati...

Colorado funeral home owner, wife, arrested on charges linked to the handling of at least 189 bodies

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

By JESSE BEDAYN and MEAD GRUVER (Associated Press)DENVER (AP) — The owner of a Colorado funeral home and his wife were arrested Wednesday after the decaying remains of at least 189 people were recently found at his facility. Jon and Carrie Hallford were arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on suspicion of four felonies — abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery — District Attorney Michael Allen said in a news release after at least some of the aggrieved families were told.Jon Hallford was being held at the Muskogee County, Oklahoma, jail, but his wife wasn’t listed as being there, according to a man who answered a call to the jail but refused to give his name. Jon Hallford doesn’t have an attorney listed in the jail’s records, and neither he nor his wife could immediately be reached for comment. Neither has a personal phone number listed, and the funeral home’s number no longer works.Jon Hallford owns Return to Nature Funeral Home in...

Ivanka Trump testifies she wasn’t involved in documents central to her father’s civil fraud trial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK (Associated Press)NEW YORK (AP) — Ivanka Trump testified Wednesday that she had no role in her father’s personal financial statements, echoing her adult brothers about documents central to the civil fraud trial that could reshape Donald Trump’s family business. The former president’s elder daughter, who has been in his inner circle in both business and politics, rounds out a major stretch in the trial. Her father took the stand on Monday, and her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. testified last week.Unlike her father and brothers, Ivanka Trump is no longer a defendant in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit. It alleges that Donald Trump’s asset values were fraudulently pumped up for years on annual “statements of financial condition” that helped him get loans and insurance. “I wasn’t involved in his statement of financial condition,” Ivanka Trump, a former exec...

FDA approves new version of diabetes drug Mounjaro for weight loss

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:09:17 GMT

A new version of the popular diabetes treatment Mounjaro can be sold as a weight-loss drug, U.S. regulators announced Wednesday.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, or tirzepatide. The drug helped dieters lose about a quarter of their body weight, or 60 pounds (27 kilograms), in a recent study.Zepbound is the latest diabetes drug approved for weight loss, joining Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, a high-dose version of its diabetes treatment Ozempic. The F DA approved Lilly’s drug for people who are considered obese, with a body mass index of 30 or higher, or those who are overweight with a related health condition, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes. The drug should be paired with a healthy diet and regular exercise, the FDA said. In the U.S., at least 100 million adults and about 15 million children are considered obese.The drug tirzepatide in Zepbound and Mounjaro and semaglutide in Wegovy and Ozempic work by mimicking ho...