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Borenstein: 37% raise for Oakland Mayor Thao is excessive and tone deaf

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

The Oakland city administrator’s recommendation of a 37% raise for Mayor Sheng Thao is excessive, an insult to taxpayers and tone deaf to the city’s fiscal plight.At a time when Oakland officials should be looking to control costs, City Administrator Jestin Johnson proposes that Thao receive a pay boost that’s completely out of proportion with other mayors across the state.Thao, who has been mayor just six months, nominated Johnson for his $340,000-a-year post. Then, less than four weeks after he started his job, he signed off on a recommendation that the City Council increase Thao’s salary from $203,000 annually to $277,975.City Council members are expected to consider the mayor’s salary hike Tuesday. Most disturbing are the misinformation and questionable rationales they have received from Johnson to justify it.Oakland is the eighth most populous city in California, far behind the top four — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco. But the raise would make Thao th...

Opinion: Common sense says build BART to downtown San Jose

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

Common sense says that a generational transit investment with multiple strong public approvals and that has been thoroughly studied time and again by independent experts at local, state and federal transportation funding authorities is finally ready to be built.One of the most remarkable aspects of completing BART to San Jose is the strong public support the project has enjoyed over the past two decades. At three separate elections in 2000, 2008 and 2016, Santa Clara County voters have overwhelmingly approved taxing themselves to bring regional mass transit to the South Bay, most recently with 72% of the vote.No other major civic improvement in our area has received such an endorsement — not the 1988 election that barely approved the San Jose Arena with 53%, not even the comprehensive improvements to San Jose parks, libraries and fire and police facilities voters approved by at least 67% in 2000 and 2006 when I was mayor.Asking for another study now is magical thinking by crit...

Arsenal signs Declan Rice from West Ham for a deal worth a reported $138 million

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

England midfielder Declan Rice joined Arsenal for a deal worth a reported 105 million pounds ($138 million) on Saturday, ending his nine-year association with West Ham.The fee wasn’t officially announced by either club, but West Ham said the 24-year-old Rice was moving for a British-record transfer fee.Arsenal is reportedly paying an initial fee of 100 million pounds, plus add-ons. That initial fee is the same as the British-record sum that Manchester City paid Aston Villa for Jack Grealish in 2021.Another England midfielder, Jude Bellingham, joined Real Madrid from Borussia Dortmund this offseason in a deal that could reach more than $139 million.It is a statement signing by Arsenal after a season which saw the club narrowly miss out on the Premier League title but re-establish itself as a force in England under Mikel Arteta.In a message from Rice to West Ham fans, he said it was a “tough” decision driven by his “ambition to play at the very highest level of the game.”“Playin...

Mass crash on Tour forces organizers to briefly halt Stage 14. Pogacar, Vingegaard escape unscathed

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

ANNEMASSE, France (AP) — Spanish rider Antonio Pedrero was evacuated by ambulance following a mass pile-up that briefly halted the 14th stage of the Tour de France soon after the start on Saturday.Louis Meintjes, who was 13th overall, hit the ground and abandoned with a suspected broken collarbone. His Intermarche-Circus-Wanty teammate Adrien Petit got back on his bike with his right leg bandaged.Dozens of racers crashed on a bend on a slippery road in Annemasse and many received treatment. Organizers decided to neutralize the stage for about 15 minutes. Stage 14 is a tough 152-kilometer (94-mile) trek featuring five climbs in the Alps.Neither of the two race leaders was involved in the crash. Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard leads two-time champion Tadej Pogacar by just nine seconds.___AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsSource

American boat patrols waters around new offshore wind farms to protect jobs

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts (AP) — One early morning this week in ocean waters off the coasts of Rhode Island and New York, signs of the nascent wind industry were all around. Giant upright steel tubes poked from the water, waiting for ships to hoist up turbines that will make electricity driven by wind.A battleship-gray vessel was on the prowl. In this ramp-up for U.S. offshore wind, American marine companies and mariners fear they’ll be left behind. So Aaron Smith, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association, was looking through binoculars to see whether ships servicing the new wind farms were using foreign-flagged vessels instead of U.S.-made ships with American crews.“It really makes me upset when I think about the men and women I know who can do this work. American citizens, fully capable, sitting at home while foreign nationals go to work in U.S. waters,” Smith said. “It’s unfair.”The ship is named the Jones Act Enforcer, after the century-old law that says the t...

Extreme weather warnings issued across Europe

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

Large parts of Europe were covered by extreme weather warnings on Saturday. A heat wave continued to grip southern countries, with temperatures between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius in parts of Spain, Italy and Greece. In parts of other countries, like France and the U.K., warnings were issued for heavy wind and rain, and thunderstorms. The planet already saw its hottest week in recorded history at the beginning of July, a combination of man-made global warming exacerbated by El Niño, a naturally occurring weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. European governments and meteorological services warned their citizens about the impact of extreme weather. In Italy, 15 cities, among them tourist destinations like Rome and Florence, were covered by a “red alert” from the country’s Health Ministry on Saturday, with the advice to avoid exposure to the sun and heat between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. The health impact is “possible” not only for risk groups but also for hea...

Worcester launches mobile mental health crisis team to respond to emergencies with counselors, clinicians

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

The City of Worcester is launching a new program that utilizes mental health professionals in crisis situations as a new way to respond to emergencies.The city is partnering with UMass Memorial Health’s Community Healthlink program to launch the Mental Health Community Mobile Crisis Response Pilot Program.“This is an absolutely exciting moment for us as a city,” said Eric Batista, city manager. “Having clinicians available for phone calls, to be able to respond, be on site, or even have conversations with the individuals, try to diffuse and provide the services they need is a win, win for everybody.”The type of response varies case by case, and dispatchers will determine if just mental health clinicians are needed or if other public safety officials should respond as well.“We want to make sure that the area or the situation, it’s not going to be any more harmful to any clinician coming in,” Batista said. “We want to make sure that everyone is safe, so depending on the situatio...

Marketa Vondrousova takes the first set of the Wimbledon women’s final against Ons Jabeur

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Marketa Vondrousova has taken the first set of the Wimbledon women’s final against Ons Jabeur by a 6-4 score.They traded early breaks of serve and it was 2-all after 23 minutes of play at Centre Court on Saturday.They again traded breaks — each one at love — and it was 4-all after 34 minutes.But Jabeur’s mistakes kept coming, and Vondrousova collected the opening set’s last four games.The main stadium’s retractable roof was shut at the beginning of the match.The winner will become a first-time Grand Slam champion. They went into Saturday’s title match with a combined record of 0-3 in major finals.The No. 6-seeded Jabeur, a 28-year-old from Tunisia, was the runner-up at the All England Club and at the U.S. Open last season.She is the only Arab woman or North African woman to participate in a Grand Slam singles final.The 42nd-ranked Vondrousova, a 24-year-old from the Czech Republic, lost in the 2019 French Open final as a teenager.She is the first unse...

Ontario government plans to recoup COVID-19 loans to province’s doctors

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

TORONTO — The Ontario government says it plans to recoup loan payments issued to doctors at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic to cover their increased costs and loss of revenue from lower patient volumes.In a memo issued to the Ontario Medical Association on Friday, which was obtained by The Canadian Press, the province says it is “critical” to recover more than $521 million in outstanding loan payments in order to fund other priorities.Beginning next month, the Ministry of Health will deduct pay from physicians’ monthly OHIP payments over a one-year period, rather than the original five-month timeline it first proposed, with no interest charged.The ministry says it was clear when it launched the COVID-19 Advance Payment Program in April 2020 that monthly loan payments doled out to eligible health-care providers would need to be paid back.Since loan repayments began in April 2021, it says it has recovered nearly $139 million out of the total $660 million provided...

The man who threatened to burn holy books outside the Israeli Embassy in Sweden abandons the plan

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:14:57 GMT

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The man who said he would burn the Torah and the Bible outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm gave up his plan and instead held a one-person demonstration on Saturday against the burning of holy books, the media reported. At the scene, he said he was a Muslim and threw a lighter he held in his hand to the ground, saying he never intended to burn holy books. The man, who is in his 30s and had been issued a permit for the protest by Stockholm police, said such an action would be against the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and that he “will not burn,” according to the Swedish news agency TT.The man, who resides in western Sweden, also said that “no one should do that,” the report said. Israeli officials had called on the Swedish government to stop the protest and the burning of the holy books on Saturday afternoon outside the diplomatic mission. Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the World Jewish Congress condemned the action in advance as did Israeli Foreign Minister E...