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Petco Park named best MLB ballpark by USA Today

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

SAN DIEGO — With Major League Baseball Opening Day on the horizon, the San Diego Padres are getting some love for their home stadium.Petco Park, located in the heart of downtown San Diego, was named as the best MLB ballpark by USA Today in the 2023 version of their rankings.The ballparks were ranked on the factors of general atmosphere, design, location, amenities, food and character. Jake Peavy, John Moores to be inducted into Padres Hall of Fame Petco Park came in at the top spot for 2016, 2020 and 2022 editions of the USA Today rankings.With a beautiful ballpark centered right in the downtown skyline, plenty of local food and beer options, the great San Diego weather and an exciting team creating a buzz throughout the city, its no surprise that Petco Park ranked highly given the criteria. San Diego Padres: The starting pitcher for Opening Day has been announced "It’s really difficult to imagine any stadium topping Petco Park — it’s simply the best," said USA Today writer...

16-year-old male arrested in Vaughan after carrying replica firearm

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

York police have arrested a 16-year-old male following an incident that included possession of a replica firearm in Vaughan.Police responded to a call on Mar. 26 at approximately 6:45 p.m. after a male suspect allegedly threatened an employee of a retail store in the area of Rutherford Road and Highway 400 with what appeared to be a handgun.An airsoft gun was located in the suspect’s possession and he was arrested.The suspect, a 16-year-old male, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possession of a weapon, use of imitation firearm during commission of an offence, uttering threats, and two counts of failure to comply with judicial release order.

Woman wins Juno Award for album based on grandmother’s poetry written in concentration camp

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

A Canadian singer-songwriter won her first Juno this year for the “Thieves of Dreams” album based on her grandmother’s poetry written in a concentration camp in the 1940s.Lenka Lichtenberg, whose mother is also a Holocaust survivor, found a series of booklets on her mother’s desk in Prague over five years ago.“I found out that there are poems in my grandmother’s handwriting that are also repeated in this other booklet, which looks nice and worn out.”Lichtenberg’s mother and grandmother were prisoners at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. Her grandfather was a prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp but did not survive the war.She tells CityNews that when she first discovered the poems, Lichtenberg wasn’t sure what to do with them but realized that they were a historical artifact that should be shared somehow.“This is typically in a museum somewhere. And then I thought, Well, that’s great, except that nobody will ...

Feds say direction to bring men in Syria home amounts to ‘wholesale expansion’ of law

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

OTTAWA — A judge’s erroneous direction that Canadian officials should secure the release of four men from detention in northeastern Syria amounts to a “wholesale expansion” of the law, a federal lawyer told an appeal hearing Monday.Lawyer Anne Turley said the decision creates a new right to be returned to Canada, or even be rescued by Ottawa, when a citizen finds themselves in trouble abroad, despite no involvement of Canada in the foreign detention.Turley made the argument while asking a Federal Court of Appeal panel to overturn a January ruling by Federal Court Justice Henry Brown.In his decision, Brown said Ottawa should request repatriation of the men in Syrian prisons run by Kurdish forces as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents. Brown ruled the men are also entitled to have a representative of the federal government travel to Syria to help facilitate their release once their captors agree to hand them over....

S&P/TSX composite posts gain Monday on energy strength, U.S. markets mixed

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

TORONTO — Canada’s main stock index gained more than a hundred points Monday, buoyed by strength in the energy and financial sectors, while U.S. markets were mixed. The S&P/TSX composite index was up 123.25 points at 19,624.74.In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 194.55 points at 32,432.08. The S&P 500 index was up 6.54 points at 3,977.53, while the Nasdaq composite was down 55.12 points at 11,768.84.The Canadian dollar traded for 73.09 cents US compared with 72.66 cents US on Friday.The May crude contract was up US$3.55 at US$72.81 per barreland the May natural gas contract was down 15 cents at US$2.22 per mmBTU.The April gold contract was down US$30 at US$1,953.80 an ounceand the May copper contract was up less than a penny at US$4.08 a pound.This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2023.Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD=X)The Canadian Press

Fed official: SVB itself was main cause of bank’s failure

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top financial regulator is asserting that Silicon Valley Bank’s own management was largely to blame for the bank’s failure earlier this month and says the Federal Reserve will review whether a 2018 law that weakened stricter bank rules also contributed to its collapse. “SVB’s failure is a textbook case of mismanagement,” Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, said in written testimony that will be delivered Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee. Barr pointed to the bank’s “concentrated business model,” in which its customers were overwhelmingly venture capital and high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. He also contends that the bank failed to manage the risk of its bond holdings, which lost value as the Fed raised interest rates.Silicon Valley was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on March 10 in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Late Sunday, the FDIC said that First Citize...

Family of US couple kidnapped in Haiti plea for release

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Nikese Toussaint was at church, so she didn’t see the text message from her sister.All she knew at that point was that their brother and his wife, who live in the U.S., had landed safely in Haiti to visit ailing relatives and prepare for Rara, a colorful and boisterous festival born out of the dark days of slavery.It wasn’t until Toussaint got home and her sister followed up the unread text with a phone call that she learned her warnings had materialized: their brother, an accountant; his wife, a social worker; and another person were snatched off a public bus amid a surge in gang-related kidnappings.Toussaint took a deep breath. Not again, she thought.Seventeen years earlier, gangs had kidnapped two of her cousins in the capital of Port-au-Prince. They were eventually released but remain traumatized.This time, the gang that kidnapped her brother, wife and another person is demanding $200,000 — each.“How are we ever going to come up with that money?” Tou...

Family of girl killed by police during Kansas standoff sues

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

BAXTER SPRINGS, Kan. (AP) — The family of a toddler who was fatally shot by a police officer during a standoff last year between her father and law enforcement has filed a federal lawsuit over her death.Kansas authorities have said that 2-year-old Clesslyn Crawford was shot by a Joplin, Missouri, police officer during a confrontation March 26, 2022, in Baxter Springs. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation had said Crawford’s 37-year-old father, Eli Crawford, shot and killed the girl’s mother, 27-year-old Taylor Dawn Shutte, and fired at officers for more than three hours before fatally shooting himself.The Wichita Eagle reports that the girl’s family sued the cities of Baxter Springs and Joplin along with Cherokee County and the unnamed officer who fired the shot that killed the toddler. The lawsuit said they were responsible for the girl’s death. Those cities and Cherokee County didn’t immediately respond to calls from the newspaper seeking comment on the...

In Trump probe, key witness as grand jury is back at work

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A pivotal figure in the hush money payment investigation of Donald Trump was seen Monday leaving the Manhattan building where a grand jury has been meeting for months, though there was still no word on when the panel might vote on a possible indictment of the former president.David Pecker, a longtime Trump friend and the former chief executive of the parent company of the National Enquirer, was also seen weeks ago at the same building, suggesting that his testimony could be key as prosecutors continue to push toward potential criminal charges of the ex-president.This was the first time the panel was hearing testimony in the Trump probe since last Monday, when a witness favorable to the ex-president appeared before the grand jury. The jurors did not meet at all on Wednesday, one of the days when they ordinarily convene, and heard other matters on Thursday.The grand jury is now back on Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anon...

Two final bodies pulled from rubble after Old Montreal fire, five bodies identified

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:07:12 GMT

MONTREAL — The bodies of the final two missing victims of a fire in Old Montreal were pulled from the rubble on Monday, as investigators shifted their attention to uncovering the causes of the deadly blaze.The total number of people killed in the March 16 fire sits at seven, and fire operations chief Martin Guilbault said there was no reason to believe anyone else was inside the charred building.“At this stage of the investigation, we can reaffirm that, apart from the seven people who were initially missing, we have no information indicating that additional victims are in the rubble,” he told reporter at the scene. “Our effort will now focus on finding the cause of the fire.”Montreal police Insp. David Shane on Monday identified four victims as An Wu, 31; Dania Zafar, 31; Saniya Khan, 31; and Nathan Sears, 35. Another victim — 76-year-old photographer Camille Maheux — was identified last week. The remains of the final two victims would be sent to a lab to be ...