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This San Diego Christmas store is one of a handful in SoCal open year-round

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

SAN DIEGO — Throughout December, San Diego embodies the spirit of the "most wonderful time of the year," coming to life with sparkling lights and Southern California winter wonderlands.But, nestled in a quiet cul-de-sac right at the edge of San Diego's Bay Park, there is a store that has been bringing the cheer of Christmas to shoppers all year long for decades.The family-owned City Lights Collectibles, located on Knoxville Street, has been selling holiday collectibles to locals and visitors alike as one of the only year-round Christmas stores in Southern California for over 30 years. San Diego Fire-Rescue kicks off Toys For Tots drive Founder Brian Young opened City Lights as a small retail store in Mission Bay in 1991. He moved to the area over a year prior with his wife and then-12-year-old son from the United Kingdom to retire, but a few months in, he started to feel an itch to work again."I was retired for about 15 months, got very bored and decided to open a small Christmas ...

Canadian with family in Gaza calling on Ottawa to advocate more for its citizens

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

An Ontario man says he is desperate to get his two children and wife out of the Gaza Strip as Israel intensifies its offensive into southern areas of the besieged territory.Nael Alhalis, says his 13-year-old daughter and his nine-year-old son – who are Canadian citizens – are on a list of foreigners allowed to leave Gaza through a border crossing with Egypt but his Palestinian wife is not. He says Canadian government officials have told him they are advocating for his wife to be put on the list but say the matter is ultimately out of their control. Alhalis says his children can’t cross the border unaccompanied and even the journey from central Gaza, where his family is sheltering, to the border in the south is growing more dangerous as Israel’s bombardment increases. Alhalis – who was born in Gaza, later immigrated to Canada and has a home in Burlington, Ont. – says he and his family have been living largely in Gaza for the last six years and he was travelling for work w...

Memorials to victims of Maine’s deadliest mass shootings to be displayed at museum

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Volunteers and city workers on Tuesday began removing mementos, signs and other items that accumulated at the sites of the deadliest shootings in Maine history, reflecting a change in season and a new chapter in the area’s recovery.The handwritten signs, cards, bouquets and other items — more than a 1,000 of them — will be archived, catalogued and prepared for exhibition at a museum in Lewiston.Part of the process is practical: Snowfall makes it imperative to remove the memorials before they’re destroyed by either the elements or plows. But organizers also say it feels like the right time as communities continue to heal and grieve after 18 people were killed and 13 injured on Oct. 25.“We want to make sure the community doesn’t forget what happened and how the community came together. So bringing the items together feels like next stage,” said Rachel Ferrante, executive director of the Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor, located at...

NCAA President Charlie Baker calls for new tier of Division I where schools can pay athletes

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — NCAA President Charlie Baker wants to create a new tier of Division I where schools with the most athletic resources can offer unlimited educational benefits, enter into name, image and likeness partnerships with athletes and directly pay them through a trust fund.In a letter sent Tuesday to more than 350 Division I schools, Baker told members that the disparity in resources between the wealthiest schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision and other DI members — along with the hundreds of Division II and III schools — is creating “a new series of challenges.”“The challenges are competitive as well as financial and are complicated further by the intersection of name, image and likeness opportunities for student-athletes and the arrival of the Transfer Portal,” Baker wrote.Baker said the difference in the way schools that participate in revenue-generating college sports operate and the vast majority of college sports is complicating attempts to modernize the collegiate ...

Supreme Court throws out case that could have limited lawsuits over disability access

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a case surrounding a Maine hotel that could have made it harder for people with disabilities to learn in advance whether a hotel’s accommodations meet their needs.Hotels and other business interests had urged the justices to limit the ability of so-called testers to file lawsuits against hotels that fail to disclose accessibility information on their websites and through other reservation services.The information is required by a 2010 Justice Department rule. People who suffer discrimination can sue under the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, signed into law in 1990.The justices did not issue a decision on the substance of the case. Instead, they dismissed the case and threw out a lower court ruling in favor of tester lawsuits. The outcome leaves the issue unresolved nationally.Federal courts in some parts of the country allow such lawsuits. In others, those suits are barred.The case in front of the court involve...

Gerry Fraley wins BBWAA Career Excellence Award, top honor for baseball writers

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Gerry Fraley, a gregarious and tempestuous reporter over four decades until his death four years ago, won the BBWAA Career Excellence Award on Tuesday.The honor was announced by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America at the winter meetings. Fraley will be honored during the Hall of Fame’s induction weekend from July 19-22 in Cooperstown, New York.Known for his quick humor and combustible temper, Fraley died in May 2019 at age 64 after a two-year battle with cancer.He received 173 of 370 ballots from BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years’ service after finishing second last year, two votes behind John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press.San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins received 113 votes this year and New York Post baseball columnist Joel Sherman got 83. There was one blank ballot submitted in voting conducted by mail in November.“Frales,” as he was called throughout baseball, became the 75th winner of the honor, known as the J....

U of T named world’s most sustainable university

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

The University of Toronto (U of T) has been recognized as the most sustainable university in the world in a new ranking.The QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2024, which evaluates post-secondary institutions for their environmental impact, social impact and governance, features nearly 1,400 global universities.U of T rose from second place in last year’s ranking, with the University of California, Berkeley taking the top spot in that edition. The method tracks how post-secondary institutions tackle the world’s most prominent environmental, social and governance challenges. U of T was ranked third for environmental and seventh for social impact.The environmental impact category comprises sustainable education, sustainable institutions and sustainable research, while the social impact category includes employment and opportunities, equality, life quality, impact of education and knowledge exchange.Canadian universities rank highly in sustainabilityOther Canadian...

US job openings fall to lowest level since March 2021 as labor market cools

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers posted 8.7 million job openings in October, the fewest since March 2021, in a sign that hiring is cooling in the face of higher interest rates yet remains at a still-healthy pace. The Labor Department’s report said Tuesday that openings were down significantly from 9.4 million in September.Layoffs were up modestly in October. And the number of Americans who quit their jobs – which generally reflects confidence in their ability to find better pay or working conditions elsewhere — was down slightly.Despite dropping in October, job openings remain at historically high levels. They have now exceeded 8 million for 32 straight months — a threshold they had never reached before 2021.U.S. hiring is slowing from the breakneck pace of the past two years. Still, employers have added a solid 239,000 jobs a month this year. And the unemployment rate has come in below 4% for 21 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.The job market has shown...

Rate of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces rising, StatCan survey suggests

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

A new report from Statistics Canada suggests the problem of sexual misconduct in the military is getting worse.The survey suggests 3.5 per cent of Canadian Armed Forces personnel say they were sexually assaulted by another military member in 2022.That is a significant increase from the 1.6 per cent reported in the same survey in 2018, and 1.7 per cent in 2016.Statistics Canada defines sexual assault as sexual attacks, unwanted touching, and sexual activity when the victim was unable to consent.Victims of these assaults were more likely to be women, the survey found, and they were disproportionately younger, Indigenous, members of the LGBTQ+ community or people with disabilities.Most Armed Forces members who said they were victims of these assaults said they did not report them to authorities, in many cases because they did not think it would make a difference.However, more than half who say they witnessed inappropriate sexual behaviour said they did intervene.Statistics Canada says ...

Scrapyard that caught fire should not be located in centre of Saint John, says panel

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:22:00 GMT

FREDERICTON — A panel investigating a major scrapyard fire in Saint John, N.B., says the site is at significant risk of future, potentially catastrophic, explosions.The panel was established with representatives from Port Saint John and the provincial government to investigate the Sept. 14 fire at the American Iron & Metal plant, located by the city’s harbour.The massive fire took nearly three days to extinguish and prompted officials to warn residents to stay indoors and close their windows.In a report released today, the panel says the location of the plant, which is close to a residential neighbourhood, is entirely inappropriate.It says Saint John’s water resources were not to sufficient to deal with the Sept. 14 fire, and that the city is ill-equipped to manage potential future fires at the site.The panel says the negative socio-economic impacts of the plant are unacceptable to nearby residents and surrounding communities.This report by The Canadian Press was fir...