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Holiday sales expected to grow 1% in Mass. as national shopping could hit 6-year record

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

Holiday sales at small businesses in Massachusetts during the five-day shopping streak starting Black Friday are expected to grow marginally compared to the total haul of purchases seen last November and December, according to the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.A 1% increase in local holiday shopping comes as the National Retail Federation predicted some 182 million people are planning to shop in-store and online from Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday, the highest estimate since the organization started tracking data in 2017.Retailers Association of Massachusetts President Jon Hurst said local projections, which come from a survey of the group’s 4,000 members, are not “one of the more optimistic” outlooks.“For all intents and purposes, it’s flat,” Hurst told the Herald Wednesday. “Consumer confidence is down a little bit right now, a reflection of the continued effects of inflation and also of … interest rates. But it’s funny, because over the years, sometimes what...

Ticker: 32,000 Jeep Wrangler hybrids recalled; Unemployment claims drop by 24,000

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

Automaker Stellantis on announced a recall of more than 32,000 of its hybrid Jeep Wrangler SUVs because they pose a potential fire risk.As part of what the company described as a routine review of customer information, Stellantis determined that eight of the hybrid Wranglers had caught fire while they were turned off and parked. Six of the vehicles were being charged when the fires started. The company said it doesn’t believe anyone was hurt in the fires.The recall covers 2021-2024 models of the Jeep Wrangler 4xe SUVs. All other Wrangler models have been deemed safe by Stellantis, which maintains its U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan.The SUVs affected by the recall can still be driven until they are fixed, but Stellantis is recommending they be parked away from buildings and not be charged until they can be repaired. The fixes involve either resetting or updating the software, or replacing the vehicle’s battery pack.Stellantis plans to contact the owners of the...

FBI ends investigation of car wreck at Niagara Falls bridge, no indication of terrorism

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — The FBI has ended its investigation of a fiery car wreck that killed two people at a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls after finding no evidence that it was a terror attack, easing a tense period of high tensions as Americans headed into the Thanksgiving holiday. The FBI’s decision late Wednesday came several hours after the vehicle raced through an intersection, hit a median and was launched through the air before slamming into a line of booths and exploding at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. Local police are now handling the case as a traffic investigation. “A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified,” the FBI’s Buffalo office said in a statement. “The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation.”A spokesman for the City of Niagara Falls said the investigation has been taken over by the Niagara Falls Police Department’s Crash Manage...

IEA report warns oil and gas companies against banking on carbon capture

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

CALGARY — A new report from the International Energy Agency warns that oil and gas companies shouldn’t bank on carbon capture and storage to help them maintain their status quo on a warming planet.Carbon capture and storage refers to the use of technology to sequester harmful greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes and store them safely underground.In Canada, carbon capture and storage is a key piece of the oil and gas sector’s decarbonization goals.Oilsands companies, for example, have banded together to propose a $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage project in northern Alberta that they say will help them reach net-zero emissions from production by 2050.But the latest report from the IEA says deploying carbon capture won’t give the oil and gas industry the ability to continue increasing fossil fuel production in the future.The IEA says limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require 32 billion tonnes of emissions to be se...

3 children and a woman injured in Ireland in a suspected stabbing. A person was taken into custody

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Three young children and a woman were injured Thursday in Dublin’s city center in what Irish police have termed “a serious public order incident.”A man also suffered injuries during the violence, which took place outside a school shortly after 1:30 p.m. Citing witnesses at the scene, Irish media said some of the casualties were hospitalized with suspected stab wounds. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar expressed his shock and said a suspect had been detained.Police said one of the children, a girl, and a woman have sustained serious injuries. A man and the two other children sustained less serious injuries.They added that they were “following a definite line of inquiry” and weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the violence.Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee said she was “deeply shocked” by the “appalling attack on three innocent children and a woman.”The Associated Press

Amazon and NFL hoping to establish a tradition with the first Black Friday game

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

It is not a stretch to say the Black Friday game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets is Amazon’s Super Bowl.Not only does it mean an additional game on Prime Video that Amazon hopes to make into a yearly tradition, but it comes on the busiest shopping day of the year.“When we talked with the NFL, this is a perfect marriage. Black Friday is a huge event for us every year. We’re really putting everything behind this,” Prime Video Vice President Jay Marine said.Hans Schroeder, the executive vice president of NFL Media, said the league had been exploring the possibility of adding a game on Black Friday for a while. The Thanksgiving Day tripleheader has been among the most-watched games during the regular season for the past two years.Adding a Black Friday game gives the NFL another day to take over. Combine it with it airing on Amazon, and it was a match made in football and commerce heaven.“It’s an opportunity for us to continue to innovate with Amazon. I think some of what th...

Daniel Noboa is sworn in as Ecuador’s president, inheriting the leadership of a country on edge

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Daniel Noboa, an inexperienced politician and heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, was sworn in Thursday as Ecuador’s president, a role that citizens are demanding he uses to restore the public safety that drug cartels and other criminal organizations robbed them of at the decade’s start.Noboa’s term will run only through May 2025, which is what remains of former President Guillermo Lasso’s tenure. Lasso cut his term short when he dissolved the National Assembly in May as lawmakers pursued impeachment proceedings against him. The head of the country’s newly elected legislature, Henry Kronfle, placed the presidential sash on Noboa during a ceremony in Quito, the capital. Under Lasso’s watch, violent deaths in Ecuador soared, reaching a record 4,600 in 2022, which was double the number from the year before. Killings, kidnappings, robberies and other criminal activities became part of Ecuadorians’ everyday life,. The assassination of presidenti...

Pennsylvania woman sentenced in DUI crash that killed 2 troopers and a pedestrian

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A woman has been sentenced to decades in prison after pleading guilty to driving under the influence and then striking and killing two state troopers and a pedestrian on an interstate in Philadelphia last year.Jayana Webb, 23, of Eagleville pleaded guilty Wednesday in a Philadelphia courtroom to three counts each of third-degree murder and homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence in the early morning crash in March 2022. She was sentenced to 27 1/2 to 60 years in prison.District Attorney Larry Krasner called it “a just resolution of one of the most shocking incidents of vehicular violence in recent memory.”Police said Troopers Martin Mack III and Branden Sisca were trying to get a pedestrian to safety from the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 near south Philadelphia’s sports stadiums when a vehicle “traveling at a high rate of speed” struck all three. The troopers and the pedestrian, identified as 28-year-old Reyes Rivera Oliveras of Allentown, died...

Some were quick to blame terrorism, and Canada, after fatal Rainbow Bridge border explosion

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

While a vehicle explosion at a busy border crossing on the eve of U.S. Thanksgiving was enough to stir suspicion in even the most temperate types, some were notably quick to jump to conclusions that terror, and even Canada, were to blame.U.S. Representative Mike Kelly not only rashly concluded that it was indeed a terror attack, but also that the ‘terrorists’ entered the U.S. through Canada.It was later confirmed that the driver of the ill-fated vehicle was from Western New York and was instead apparently trying to enter Canada from the U.S. when for reasons still unknown he raced to a fiery death, taking his passenger with him.No evidence of explosives were found at the scene after an FBI probe, and New York State Governor, Kathy Hochul, said “there is no sign of terrorist activity with respect to this crash.”But Kelly was among a trove of Republican politicians who weighed in on the event before those findings were made public, with many using it as an atte...

Pilot tried to pull out of landing before plane crashed on the doorstep of a Texas mall

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:50:52 GMT

PLANO, Texas (AP) — A pilot who died when the small plane he was flying crashed and burned on the doorstep of a strip mall in Texas was aborting a landing, according to an incident report released Wednesday.Plano police on Wednesday identified the pilot of the single-engine Mooney M20 as 87-year-old Elzie Monroe McDonald, of Arizona, The Dallas Morning News reported. McDonald was the only person on board when the plane crashed Tuesday.The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the crash. But a Federal Aviation Administration incident report says McDonald was pulling out of a landing before crashing.Photos from the scene showed the wreckage in a parking space next to a nail salon and diner just outside of the shopping center in the Dallas suburb of Plano.The crash caused a parked car to catch fire. No one was inside the vehicle, and no bystanders were injured, authorities said.The Associated Press