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Max Scherzer says the Mets told him 2024 would be a transition year, with eyes on ‘25

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Max Scherzer never anticipated being traded from the New York Mets, and said the sentiment in their clubhouse was that the underachieving team that had expected to contend for a World Series title this year would reload for 2024.Scherzer instead found out the Mets were shifting their focus past that date — until after his contract expires. The three-time Cy Young Award winner waived his no-trade clause to be dealt to the Texas Rangers after conversations with New York general manager Billy Eppler and owner Steve Cohen about the team’s plans following his final start for the Mets. “(Eppler’s) answer was that the team is now kind of shifting vision and that they’re looking to compete now for 2025 and 2026, and that 2024, that it was not going to be a reload situation in New York, and that it was going to be more of a transition in 2024,” Scherzer said when he was introduced by the Rangers on Tuesday, two days after the deal was announced. Since that...

Heaney strikes out 11, Garver and Garcia homer as Rangers beat White Sox 2-0 in less than 2 hours

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Andrew Heaney struck out 11 without a walk while throwing two-hit ball over six innings, Mitch Garver and Adolis Garcia hit solo homers and the AL West-leading Texas Rangers beat the Chicago White Sox 2-0 on Tuesday night.Josh Sborz and Aroldis Chapman each pitched an inning before Will Smith’s perfect ninth for his 18th save in 20 chances to wrap up the Rangers’ eighth shutout this season. Garver, the starting catcher with All-Star Jonah Hein on the injured list, put the Rangers ahead with his sixth homer when he went deep off White Sox rookie right-hander Jesse Scholtens (1-4) in the fifth inning of the game that took only one hour, 58 minutes to play.Garcia’s 26th homer, and AL-leading 85th RBI, came in the seventh. Heaney (8-6) won his third consecutive decision over his last four starts. Scholtens struck out six, walked one and hit a batter over his six innings. The starter and two relievers limited Texas to four hits — the two solo hom...

City of Kingston collects feedback for nuisance bylaw

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

The city is currently accepting input from community groups, partner organizations, businesses, and community members on a by-law aimed at “[deterring] certain types of nuisance behaviours.”The decision was made at a city council meeting on June 29, 2022, that city staff would prepare a nuisance by-law to be presented to council. The motion came forward after city staff received numerous reports of safety concerns downtown and in city parks. The motion passed with a vote of 6-5 at the time, with concerns surrounding the timing of the proposal due to encampments being discussed in the same meeting, as well as the possibility of increasing stigma against community members.“I don’t even think we should endorse the concept at this time,” stated Coun. Peter Stroud. “I think the optics are terrible and I hope that we will vote this down.”The City of Kingston does currently have a nuisance party bylaw, but no stand-alone general nuisance by-law.The draft, now available for revi...

Fired DPS principal responds to termination through letter

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) -- At Denver's Manual High School Tuesday night, dozens of students and parents spoke out against the termination of McAuliffe International principal Kurt Dennis.Dennis has been the principal at McAuliffe since the school opened 12 years ago. He believes he was fired after giving an interview criticizing Denver Public Schools’ policy to have administrators pat down students who need extra security screenings. The interview was with a local news outlet in response to a student shooting involving two deans during a screening at East High School. “It is questionable that DPS decided principal Dennis was suddenly not a fit manager immediately after he blew the whistle on the danger at his school,” said one student at the meeting. Community rallies to save fired principal’s job Outside the front entrance, Katie Rustici handed those walking into the meeting a letter from Dennis. Dennis said, in part, "I redacted all personal information that could be used to identify...

Key revelations, groundbreaking strategies and notable omissions in the new Trump indictment

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

The newest indictment against Donald Trump contains one of the gravest charges any citizen, let alone a former president, could face: undermining American democracy through a concerted effort to overturn the results of a presidential election.Trump’s efforts to derail the transfer of power triggered his second impeachment with just days left in his term and prompted a wide-ranging probe by the House Jan. 6 select committee. But the case filed Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith is the first attempt to hold Trump criminally accountable in a court of law for his actions between Election Day in 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors now say, with the blessing of a grand jury, that those actions amounted to four federal felonies.Here’s what Smith revealed in the indictment about his new evidence and his legal strategies — plus a few things he held back.Six co-conspiratorsThe indictment does not identify any of the six alleged co-conspirators who prosecutors say unlawfully agreed...

AI improves breast cancer detection rate by 20 percent

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

Artificial intelligence is able to accurately detect 20 percent more breast cancers from mammograms than traditional screening by radiologists, according to early results from a Swedish trial published overnight.The study is the first randomized controlled trial to look at using AI in breast cancer screening and comes amid a dramatically shifting landscape for the technology and how it’s regulated.The interim results, published in the Lancet Oncology late Tuesday, found that using AI-supported analysis of mammograms, alongside either one or two radiologists, was as good as using two radiologists without AI and led to 20 percent more cancers being detected. There was also a significant reduction in workload for radiologists, with the doctors having to spend 44 percent less time reading mammograms. The trial, which is still ongoing, was conducted in Sweden and looked at over 80,000 women. Half the participants had two radiologists look at their mammograms without AI, while the ot...

5 tripwires ahead for Scotland’s Humza Yousaf

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

LONDON — For Scotland’s embattled first minister, this might be as good as it gets.Humza Yousaf has spent much his first few months as leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party dealing with the fallout from the dramatic arrest of his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon and other senior SNP figures.And the ongoing police probe into the SNP’s finances is not all Yousaf has on his plate when Scottish politics returns from its parliamentary recess in September.POLITICO mapped the five tripwires lying in wait for Yousaf as he tries to turn around the SNP’s fortunes. 1. A tricky by-electionYousaf is braced for his first real electoral test since he became SNP leader in March when voters cast their verdict in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.The race has been a long time coming. As coronavirus raged across the U.K in 2020, then-SNP MP Margaret Ferrier took a train trip from the Westminster parliament in London to her home in Glasgow — despite learning she...

Rishi Sunak’s trying to drive in both lanes on net-zero

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

LONDON — Save the planet without offending motorists or your own warring MPs. What could be simpler?Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is languishing in the national polls as an election looms next year. But the U.K. prime minister has seized on a recent by-election victory to side with drivers against government environmental action, and enraged green groups by pressing ahead with a plan to allow more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.At the same time, Sunak is standing behind an ambitious — and legally-binding — Conservative pledge to cut carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. Not everyone in his party — which has vocal caucuses with opposing takes on climate policy — is convinced he can keep walking that tightrope.The Uxbridge factorThe symbolic shift has its roots in Uxbridge, a west London constituency the Tories had been tipped to lose in a recent by-election.But the governing party snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, tapping into local anger about the Labour...

Michel Barnier calls for post-Brexit UK-EU defense treaty

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

LONDON — The time is right for London and Brussels to negotiate a new treaty on defense and foreign policy cooperation, Michel Barnier, the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, told POLITICO.Speaking to the Ex Files newsletter for its 100th edition, Barnier — a former French presidential candidate and key player in Britain’s painstaking divorce from the EU — said it was now in both sides’ interest to collaborate in the face of shared challenges like the war in Ukraine, climate change and terrorism.Pointing to the “goodwill” built up between London and Brussels this year with the signing of a long sought-after deal on trading rules for Northern Ireland, Barnier argued: “We need to build a new kind of [U.K.-EU] cooperation.”During 2020 talks for the U.K. and EU’s post-Brexit trade deal, known as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided not to negotiate a security treaty with the bloc.That was despite such a plan being part ...

Hillary Clinton presents award on final night of national NAACP convention in Boston

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:51:35 GMT

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took the stage at the NAACP National Convention, the same day her 2016 opponent, former President Donald Trump, was indicted. Clinton was invited to present the Spingarn Medal, which honors the highest achievement by a living African American in an honorable field in recent years. This year’s recipient is Dr. Hazel Dukes, the president of the NAACP New York State conference and member of the National Board of Directors.“Throughout my career in public service, Dr. Hazel Dukes was a trusted advisor, someone I could call on at any moment for advice, even if I didn’t always hear what I wanted to hear,” Clinton said.91-year-old Dukes received the medal to a standing ovation and spoke about her years of fighting for civil rights, and the work still to come.“By God’s grace and mercy I want you to know, I’m not tired yet. With every breath in my body I want you to know I will continue to advocate and stop those who are try...