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BuzzFeed News to be shuttered in corporate cost cutting move

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN (AP Business Writer)Pulitzer Prize winning digital media outlet BuzzFeed News is being shut down as part of a cost-cutting drive by its corporate parent that’s shedding about 15% of its entire staff, adding to layoffs made earlier this year. In a memo sent to staff, Buzzfeed Inc. co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti said Thursday that in addition to the news division, layoffs would take place in its business, content, tech and administrative teams. BuzzFeed is also considering making job cuts in international markets.BuzzFeed has about 1,200 total employees, according to a recent regulatory filing, meaning about 180 people will be losing their jobs in the latest cuts.Peretti said in his memo that he “made the decision to overinvest” in the news division, but failed to recognize early enough that the financial support needed to sustain operations was not there.Digital advertising has plummeted this year, cutting into the profitability of major tech c...

Ticker: Twitter begins removing blue checks; CSX railroad’s 1Q profit jumps 15% on higher rates

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

This time it’s for real.Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks — which used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is — began disappearing from these users’ profiles late morning Pacific Time.High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump.CSX railroad’s 1Q profit jumps 15% on higher ratesCSX hauled in 15% more profit in the first quarter as the railroad’s higher rates and fuel surcharges offset its high...

Coast Guard recovers ‘unresponsive’ boaters 7 miles off Cape Ann, locates overturned vessel

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

Missing boaters who departed from the New Hampshire coast on Wednesday morning have been recovered by U.S. Coast Guard boat crews about 7 miles off Cape Ann, according to officials who said the boaters were “unresponsive.”The Coast Guard also found their overturned vessel in the area about 7 miles northeast of Cape Ann.“USCG boat crews have recovered 3 unresponsive persons after searching in the vicinity of the overturned vessel,” the First Coast Guard District tweeted.“Search is ongoing for 1 missing person,” USCG Northeast added just before 6 p.m. on Thursday.The Coast Guard had put out an alert about the missing boaters at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday.“Missing boaters: Michael Sai and 3 additional people departed Hampton, NH, yesterday morning in the pictured 17-ft white center console,” USCG Northeast tweeted. “Their reported destination was fishing grounds near Jeffreys Ledge, approx. 50 miles offshore.”The Coast Guard asset...

Neighbor says 6-year-old and parents shot over stray ball

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina man shot and wounded a 6-year-old girl and her parents after children went to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into his yard, according to neighbors and the girl’s family — another in a string of recent shootings sparked by seemingly trivial circumstances.Gaston County Police Chief Stephen Zill said at a news conference Wednesday that his department and the U.S. Marshals Service’s Regional Fugitive Task Force were conducting a broad search for 24-year-old Robert Louis Singletary, who fled after the Tuesday night shootings near Gastonia, a city of roughly 80,000 people west of Charlotte. Singletary, who has been out on bond in a December attack in which authorities say he assaulted a woman with a hammer, is wanted in Tuesday’s shootings on four counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and one count of being a felon in ...

Police activity prompts freeway closure in Carlsbad

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

CARLSBAD, Calif. — All northbound lanes on a stretch of Interstate 5 in Carlsbad were closed Thursday afternoon due to police activity.According to Caltrans, all northbound lanes of I-5 at La Costa Canyon were closed at La Costa Avenue as of 1:45 p.m. Northbound lanes were reopened just before 2:20 p.m. and officers were working to clear the area.Motorists were initially detoured onto Poinsettia Lane to avoid the police activity.Southbound lanes of I-5 at Palomar Airport Road were closed initially, but have since been reopened. Rules of the Road: California license plate rules The police activity was due to a pursuit that was initiated by Carlsbad police, with the suspect stopping on I-5, according to the California Highway Patrol.You can check the latest road conditions with the FOX 5 Traffic Map.The circumstances that led to the pursuit were not immediately available from authorities.This is a developing story. Check back for updates as new information becomes available.

Racist texts by California police lead to federal lawsuit

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The city of Antioch, California and members of its scandalized police force have been hit with a federal lawsuit for civil rights violations stemming from a barrage of racist text messages that have shocked the community. John Burris, an Oakland-based civil rights attorney known for his work exposing police brutality, filed the complaint in federal court Wednesday on behalf of four individuals who say they were targeted by police officers who sent text messages using slurs to describe Black people and boasting about fabricating evidence and beating on suspects. A fifth plaintiff is suing on behalf of his father, who was shot and killed by two of the officers involved in the text scandal. “This fact pattern is the most pervasive racial hatred case I’ve ever been involved in,” said Burris at a news conference Thursday outside the Antioch Police Department, during which he listed the racial slurs and derogatory terms used by officers. “This conduct itself was...

Arizona GOP loses bid to undo $18K in fees over 2020 lawsuit

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — An appeals court has rejected a bid by the Arizona Republican Party and its lawyers to undo $18,000 in attorneys’ fees that they were ordered to pay for bringing one of the party’s failed lawsuits challenging President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.In an order Thursday, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the party’s lawsuit, concluding that evidence supported a lower-court judge finding that the party’s legal claims were groundless and rejecting its allegation that the judge stuck them with the attorneys’ fees for primarily political motives. The appeals court wrote, “The First Amendment does not shield attorneys or parties from a court’s obligation” under a law requiring judges to impose attorneys’ fees against those who bring claims to court without substantial justification or to delay or harass. In a statement, the Arizona Republican Party said, “We were surprised by the court’s decision, and will be speaking with legal counsel soon to ...

Indigenous groups going to court over Quebec’s French-language reforms

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

MONTREAL — Two Indigenous groups are going to court over the reforms passed last year to Quebec’s French-language law, with lawyers filing a request for a judicial review on Thursday.The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador and the First Nations Education Council are asking Quebec Superior Court to look at 14 articles in the Charter of the French Language, which was amended by Bill 96 last June. They have argued the provisions infringe on their rights to self-determination and to teach children their ancestral languages, as stipulated in the Constitution Act of 1982.“The provisions reinforce, perpetuate and accentuate the disparities between Indigenous students and non-Indigenous people in education, deepened by policies and assimilationist laws implemented historically by the state and the education system towards Indigenous Peoples,” read the request for judicial review.The groups have accused the government of failing to consult them before adopting the law...

2050 a more important climate target than 2030, proponents of carbon capture say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

CALGARY — Alberta’s new climate plan drew criticism this week for its lack of interim emissions reduction targets, but proponents of carbon capture and storage technology say it’s important to be realistic about how quickly major projects can be deployed.“Whether we like it or not, it’s going to take time,” said James Millar, president and CEO of the International CCS (carbon capture and storage) Knowledge Centre, a non-profit organization based in Regina.“It comes down to getting these projects built. And in an optimal world, that will take six or seven years.”Most climate models suggest the large-scale deployment of carbon capture technology — which is used to trap harmful greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes and store them safely underground — will be necessary if Canada is to have a chance of meeting the net-zero-by-2050 target the federal government has committed to.There are currently more than 50 proposed carbon capture ...

Connecticut landlord to pay $400,000 for tenant harassment

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:56:06 GMT

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — A former Connecticut landlord must pay $400,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging he violated the Fair Housing Act by sexually harassing and victimizing his female tenants for at least five years, including evicting or threatening to evict those who objected to or refused his sexual advances. In an agreement reached by the U.S. Justice Department’s Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative and announced Thursday, $350,000 of the funds will be deposited in a settlement account to benefit tenants harassed by landlord Richard Bruno. The remaining $50,000 is a federal civil penalty. “No person should ever have to endure sexual harassment in order to get or keep housing,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. Bruno, who managed multiple rental properties in New London, is currently serving a 16-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2017 to producing child pornogra...