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Tempers flare at Catholic school board debate over raising Pride flag

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

Security guards removed angry parents from a Catholic school board meeting in Aurora on Tuesday night after tempers flared during a debate over raising the Pride flag.The York Catholic District School Board (YCDSB) was debating whether or not to raise the flag at its schools for Pride month in June.The agenda item was discussed in a packed board meeting that quickly boiled over.Security guards removed audience members following the first speaker, but the ruckus spilled out into the hallway where angry parents could be heard chanting “Shame!”TCDSB teacher and parent, Paolo De Buono, told CityNews he was set to speak in favour of raising the flag, but says he received an email this morning from the YCDSB canceling his delegation.“It’s so important for students to see themselves reflected in their school board,” he argued. “It’s for their safety, it’s for their learning.”De Buono said the email from the board said: “Based on y...

Japan’s Honda outlines global strategy for electric cars

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Honda is gearing up for an electrification shift in North America with two models developed with General Motors going on sale next year and a bigger EV with a new platform in 2025, a year earlier than initially announced. “We believe that the value society places on being kind to the environment will only build in momentum,” President Toshihiro Mibe said Wednesday in announcing a sprawling set of initiatives intended to put Honda on the global EV map. Mibe told reporters Tokyo-based Honda will forge ahead on investments and partnerships to realize such goals.Honda has set a goal to have all its models around the world electric or fuel cell, which runs on hydrogen and is emissions-free, by 2040. It aims to make more than 2 million EVs a year by 2030. In Japan, where EV demand is picking up gradually, an EV based on the tiny N-ONE model goes on sale in 2025. Two more EV models are planned for the following year. In China, the world’s biggest EV market, Honda Motor Co. has...

Australian leader to host Biden, Kishida, Modi at May summit

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday he will host President Joe Biden and the leaders of India and Japan for a security summit next month.The meeting at the Sydney Opera House on May 24 will be Australia’s first time hosting the Quad Leaders’ Summit. It will also include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Albanese attended a summit in Tokyo hours after he was sworn in as prime minister following elections last year. “We will be discussing the global economic environment that we know is under pressure due to global inflationary pressures,” Albanese told reporters.“We know that we live in a more insecure world with strategic competition in our region, with the ongoing impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Albanese added.The Quad partners were deeply invested in the success of the Indo-Pacific. The Quad was committed to supporting an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific that is respect...

This Lake View High School teacher hits all the right notes as April's Teacher of the Month

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

CHICAGO — In the fourth floor band room at Chicago's historic Lake View High School, Ms. Anne Gallery plays the flute, saxophone, trumpet and more."I wanted to be able to actually show students," Ms. Gallery said "So, if a part is very tricky, I can tell them I know and also here's a way to figure it out."In her tenth year of teaching at Lake View High, Ms. Gallery said it was her frustration with limited access to music classes for Chicago students that led her to the classroom."I became a teacher because I was a little frustrated with not having music in elementary school," Ms. Gallery said. "I wanted to teach high schoolers here to help students who need to catch up to students across the country, who get to start in 5th or 6th grade." Character and community building are suburban kindergarten teacher’s priority Now, she gets to work with her students everyday, building their confidence to perform in front of an audience"I like to make sure I move about the room and I'm playing...

Longhorns fall one short of program record for doubles in 18-3 rout of Texas Southern

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — With a rain delay of about an hour in the middle of the game, the Texas Longhorns made easy work of Texas Southern 18-3 in a game shortened by the mercy rule.The Longhorns hit 10 doubles in the game, one short of a program record, and used a 9-run third inning to turn a 5-0 lead into 14-0.MORE THAN THE SCORE: Stay up to date on sports stories like these, and sign up for our More than the Score sports newsletter at kxan.com/newslettersOf the Longhorns' 18 hits, Jared Thomas and Peyton Powell accounted for six of them. Thomas was 3-for-3 with a double and a home run while Powell hit three doubles. Mitchell Daly also hit a home run and finished 2-for-3 with three RBIs.Both Texas homers came in the big third inning. Thomas blasted a 2-run shot to right field that plated Daly, and then Daly came back to the plate and deposited a 3-run dinger over the left-field wall to score Porter Brown and Garret Guillemette.Guillemette finished 2-for-2 with a double and three RBIs and ...

Why it is more difficult to diagnose girls with autism than boys

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) – The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has grown rapidly in the last couple of decades. Though the number of girls diagnosed with the developmental disorder has risen along with the overall numbers, doctors say that diagnosing girls with ASD is more challenging than with boys. ASD is a developmental disability characterized by persistent difficulties in social interaction and repetitive behaviors, interests or activities that make communicating and participating in daily activities more challenging, according to the CDC. The CDC first began tracking autism in children in Atlanta in 1996. In 2000, it established the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, which expanded the tracking to nine more U.S. metropolitan regions. Since then, the prevalence of autism in children has markedly risen. In 2000, the network found that around one in 150 children had ASD. 18 years later, this number jumped to around one in 44.And sinc...

Austin-based Whole Foods cutting hundreds of corporate jobs

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

AUSTIN (AP) — Amazon-owned Whole Foods says it is cutting several hundred jobs as part of a process to simplify the grocery chain’s operations.The company plans to make changes to some regional and global support teams over the next two months, according to a memo sent to employees Thursday by the Whole Foods executive team.The layoffs will take place as part of that shift and will affect less than 0.5% of the company’s total workforce, a Whole Foods spokesperson confirmed.Whole Foods is headquartered in Austin.Under the changes, Whole Foods, which operates across nine regions, will shift to six. Among other things, it will also create a companywide operations team and transition some specific store support services from regions to a single team.“We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow,” the company’s executive team wrote in the memo. “We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational cha...

Mushroom hunter describes discovering body in the woods

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

PEVELY, Mo. - The mushroom hunter who found a woman's body in the woods Sunday night described the moments leading up to the tragic discovery.Two days after the body of a woman was discovered in the woods, police are calling it a suspicious death. The remains are believed to be evidence of the city's first murder since the 90s."When you're in a community that is a close-knit community, it's a shock,” said Chief Mark Glenn for the Pevely Police Department. Top Story: Mushroom hunter discovers human remains in Pevely Pevely police and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office await autopsy results from the medical examiner to find out the age and name of the woman, who is currently unidentified."That emotional part hit me because whoever it is—somebody's family member—is someone's friend,” Glenn said.The person who made the tragic discovery was looking for something else—morel mushrooms. Coincidentally, this marks the second time a Missouri mushroom hunter has found remains over the pas...

Inmate found dead hours after car crash in Franklin County

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

ST. CLAIR, Mo. - An investigation is underway after a man was found dead in a county jail hours after a car crash.The St. Clair Police Department in Missouri responded to several 911 calls Friday night about a car weaving in and out of both lanes of traffic on Interstate 44. Officers said they found a crashed car in the woodline, not far from the interstate."During that investigation, they found the driver to be under the influence of some type of intoxication," said Chief Michael Wirt for the St. Clair Police Department.An arrest report showed that 43-year-old Christopher Cox of Lebanon, Missouri, was taken into custody on Friday at 10:41 p.m.Wirt said while at the scene, EMS cleared Cox, but officers still took him to Mercy Hospital before going to jail. Top Story: Mushroom hunter discovers human remains in Pevely "Any time somebody's intoxicated or it seems like a higher level of intoxication, more than just what a normal person would be," Wirt said. "We take them to the hospit...

Trash remains a concern for residents in north St. Louis

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:56:51 GMT

ST. LOUIS - St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones has made cleaning up St. Louis a priority, but in certain spots, the city's garbage crisis is worse than ever.It's gotten so bad that a neighborhood south of O’Fallon Park is seeing makeshift landfills that homeowners say have been festering for months.Ann Wright said she was glad to see a city trash truck emptying overfilled dumpsters in the Holly Avenue alleys Tuesday after she filed a complaint Monday night.That hardly took care of the problem. The amount of trash that remains on the ground near the dumpsters is staggering and disgusting.A few blocks over in the alley behind Red Bud Avenue, food garbage, old mattresses, furniture, and clothing stretched out on the ground behind multiple homes. Tor Cox owns a property there. He said the scheduled monthly bulk waste pickup had not happened for months.“It’s been the same every three months, and it hasn’t changed," Cox said. "I was actually coming to take pictures of it, to give it to the ci...