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Across the US Southwest, people in desert cities like Phoenix are enduring an extreme heat wave

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — Even Southwestern desert residents accustomed to scorching summers are feeling the grip of an extreme heat wave smacking Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Southern California this week with 100-degree-plus temps and excessive heat warnings.To add insult to injury, the region has been left high and dry with no monsoon activity, which can help offset the blazing temperatures. In Arizona, the monsoon season officially begins June 15 and can bring powerful storms with high winds, lightning and heavy bursts of rain.The heat has made parts of Phoenix feel like a ghost town. Sunset concerts were canceled, and covered restaurant patios equipped with cooling misters sit empty. On Monday, Martin Brown and his black Labrador, Sammy, escaped the heat in Phoenix by going to the lobby of Circle the City, an air-conditioned walk-in health clinic for homeless people that is also a designated hydration station. Anyone can come in to sit, to get bottled water, and to find snacks like a b...

EPA sets stricter limits on hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigerators, air conditioners

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is enforcing stricter limits on hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners that contribute to global warming. A rule announced Tuesday will impose a 40% overall reduction in HFCs starting next year, part of a global phaseout designed to slow climate change. The rule aligns with a 2020 law that calls for an 85% reduction in production and use of the climate-damaging chemicals by 2036. Officials said refrigeration and air conditioning systems sold in the United States will emit far fewer HFCs as a result of the rule, the second step in a 15-year phasedown of the chemicals that once dominated refrigeration and cooing equipment.Here’s a look at HFCs and what the United States and other countries are doing to limit their use.WHAT ARE HFCs?Hydrofluorocarbons are highly potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners. HFCs produce greenhouse gases that are th...

Get another COVID-19 booster in the fall, Canada’s NACI recommends

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

Canadians should get another COVID-19 vaccine booster in the fall if it’s been at least six months since their last dose or COVID-19 infection, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) said on Tuesday.“Booster doses in the fall will be formulations updated to target more recent, immune-evasive SARS-CoV-2 variants,” the NACI statement said.“Individuals vaccinated with the updated formulation are expected to benefit from a better immune response against these variants compared to current vaccines,” it said.Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have started the process to get the new formulations of their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines approved by Health Canada, the department said in an email to The Canadian Press.“This regulatory review has not yet been completed,” Health Canada said. “More information on this vaccine, including the authorized age groups, will be available in the coming months.”Fall immunization important for tho...

Kansas lawmakers botched the drafting of a new anti-trans law, agency attorney says

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas legislators botched the drafting of a new law aimed at preventing transgender people from changing how their sex is listed on their driver’s licenses, a state agency’s lawyer argued in a court filing made public Tuesday.The attorney in Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration made that argument in asking a state court judge to lift an order barring such changes because of a lawsuit filed by Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach. Five transgender Kansas residents also want the order revoked, arguing in their own court filings that their constitutional rights are being violated. Kelly announced last month that the state would continue changing transgender people’s driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities, despite an new anti-transgender rights law that took effect July 1. If Kobach’s lawsuit is successful, Kansas would become one of the few states that don’t allow such changes.“It is a poorly writte...

Worker alleges he was fired for outing unsanitary conditions at well-known Gold Coast restaurant

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

CHICAGO — A former employee of a well-known restaurant in Gold Coast is speaking out on what he said were unsanitary conditions for customers and workers at the establishment.Matthew Cabrales, a former server at Hugo's Frog Bar and Fish House, and his attorney held a media briefing Tuesday afternoon claiming he was wrongfully terminated from his job.He said the official reason was for using his cellphone, but he claimed he was using it to document an issue he felt was compromising the health of employees and customers at Hugo's.Cabrales was let go from the restaurant shortly after recording what he and his attorney described as the restaurant kitchen being flooded with dirty water while the establishment was still open. "It smelled like sewage as soon as you hit the back of the house," Cabrales said. "The entire staff, even the bussers, were voicing their complaints to management, like what are we doing?” ‘How did that happen?’: Couple says Southwest Side animal hospital lost thei...

Wrongfully convicted, Chicago woman says innocence certificate is bittersweet

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

CHICAGO – After serving more than 17 years in prison, Madeline Mendoza, whose wrongful conviction was vacated earlier this year, was granted a certificate of innocence on Tuesday.The overturned double murder conviction of Mendoza was one of several cases linked to disgraced former Chicago police detectives Reynaldo Guevara and Ernest Halvorsen.At least one of the officers who helped send Mendoza to prison remains on the city payroll and has now collected more than a million dollars.PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Judge vacates woman’s double murder conviction in case tied to disgraced CPD detectives"Justice has now prevailed," said Mendoza, 31 years after she was falsely implicated in a 1992 double murder. The then-17-year-old was sentenced to 35 years behind bars for allegedly setting up the shooting deaths of two men in Humboldt Park. Months after a Cook County judge vacated the conviction, Tuesday saw the final step in clearing Mendoza's name. "I was 16 years old when this case happened. I di...

Pro surfer Mikala Jones dies after surfing accident, friends say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

HONOLULU (KHON) -- Hawaii surfer Mikala Jones passed away while surfing at a remote, secret wave off the Mentawai Islands over the weekend. He was 44 years old. Jones had been surfing off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia Sunday morning when his surfboard fin cut his femoral artery, said his father, dentist Dr. John Jones. According to a friend who was on the boat with Jones, he had a four-inch deep cut and he was losing a lot of blood. Though they put a tourniquet on Jones and raced him to land, the nearest hospital was still more than 45 minutes away. Jones later died.He had been surfing since he was about 7 or 8 years old, and began competing in the 12-and-under “menehune” age group a few years later. He won two national championships as an amateur.Later, he took on sponsors and traveled to surf spots in Tahiti, Fiji, South Africa and the Galapagos Islands. In the 1990s, Jones began to experiment with taking first-person images of himself on the water. Jones attached a camera to ...

PGA officials face questioning from Senator on potential merger with LIV Golf

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) -- The PGA Tour was in the hot seat as Senators questioned the group's planned merger with the Saudi-owned LIV Golf tour."There is something that stinks about this path that you're on right now," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said.Blumenthal and other lawmakers are concerned the heavy Saudi investment isn't in the best interest of the U.S. tour and its players."What would you say to the players who feel blindsided and betrayed?" Blumenthal asked."Describe how difficult it's going to be to conclude this deal," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said.Johnson says the major investment can't erase Saudi Arabia's past."No amount of money can wash away the stain of the brutal Kasshogi assassination and other human rights abuses," Johnson said.But PGA officials defended the decision, saying the PGA will benefit from the deal and that it prevented LIV Golf from taking over entirely."LIV Golf would've continued to recruit our players and put our tour in jeopardy and they coul...

Why don't MLB All-Stars wear their own team's jersey?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) — The MLB All-Star Game has been around for almost a century, starting in 1933 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. There have been plenty of changes to the "Midsummer Classic" over the years, but have you ever wondered why players don't wear their own team's jersey anymore? In the very first All-Star Game, the National League team wore specially made gray uniforms with navy blue caps with the words "National League" across the front, while the American League players wore their own team jerseys. Where will the next MLB All-Star Games be held? Every year after that, players wore their own team jerseys. That remained the case up until 2021 when the MLB partnered with Nike to create All-Star jerseys specifically for the game. It wasn't necessarily a new idea. In 1997, specific jerseys were made for players to wear during the Home Run Derby, usually representing the host team's colors. For example, when the 2012 All-Star Game was held in Kansas City, the uniforms wer...

COVID spread from deer to humans multiple times, study says

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:43:24 GMT

(The Hill) - The coronavirus spread from deer to humans at least a few times based on an analysis of samples taken from the animal, according to a new study. The analysis published in the scientific journal Nature on Monday revealed that researchers found three possible cases of mutated variants of the virus from deer spreading to humans. Those cases appear to have originally stemmed from the virus spreading from humans to the deer and then mutating and spreading back to humans. The researchers, several of whom work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Agriculture, collected 8,830 respiratory samples from free-ranging white-tailed deer from 26 states and Washington, D.C., between November 2021 and April 2022. They identified 282 deer infected with COVID-19 and 34 different lineages of the virus in the samples collected, including those belonging to the alpha, gamma and delta variants that were more common earlier in the pandemic and the o...