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Red Sox know they need their fans, but will raise season ticket prices again for 2024

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

Despite meager improvements over last year’s lackluster home attendance, the Red Sox will once again be asking their season ticket holders for more money next year.“We’ve had a very modest, low single-digit increase on season ticket prices,” team president and CEO Sam Kennedy confirmed during Monday afternoon’s end-of-year press conference.With that, the Red Sox extend their streak of upping the cost of admission to four consecutive seasons. Not exactly an olive branch to the Fenway Faithful after the team’s third last-place finish in these four years.Hours before Kennedy and manager Alex Cora fielded questions from the media, Major League Baseball announced that the 2023 season drew 70 million in collective attendance for the first time since 2017, with a 9.6-percent increase over 2022. Not including the COVID-impacted 2020 and 2021 seasons, it’s the highest percentage growth since 1983.The Red Sox are among the 24 teams that saw attendance rise this season, and one of 17 teams tha...

Celtics bid farewell to beloved Robert Williams: ‘It was really hard’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

Kristaps Porzingis has only been a member of the Celtics since June, and he’s had little time to get to know his new teammates. But even he could recognize how adored Robert Williams was in Boston.“I’ve been here for two weeks and I already could see how Rob is that charismatic guy for this group,” Porzingis said. “So it’s definitely, you know, hurts for this organization that he’s not here anymore.”Williams, of course, was suddenly traded on Sunday alongside Malcolm Brogdon in the blockbuster trade that brought Jrue Holiday to the Celtics. As Brad Stevens noted Monday, it takes good players to acquire other good players, and this case was no exception. But like the Marcus Smart trade earlier this summer, it didn’t make losing Williams – truly beloved in the Celtics locker room, and a player who was key in helping them make the NBA Finals two years ago – any easier.Yet again, Stevens had to make another difficult phone call on Sunday.“Really hard,” he said. “I said...

Massachusetts regulators sign off on another wind contract cancellation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

With legal deadlines looming on the path to more clean energy, Massachusetts has now lost three-quarters of the offshore wind capacity once in its pipeline after regulators allowed another developer to back out of contracts for a major installation.The Department of Public Utilities approved SouthCoast Wind’s proposal to pay utility companies a combined $60 million and terminate contracts it previously reached covering a combined 1,200 megawatts. The decision clears the way for the developer to seek more money for the clean power that state officials are under massive pressure to acquire in the next few years.Like Commonwealth Wind, another project that successfully backed out of its agreements for a 1,200-megawatt project, leaders of SouthCoast Wind have said they intend to submit a new bid in the next round of procurement that closes in January.Both developers have argued that because of changing economic conditions, their projects are no longer financially viable under the ...

California governor chooses labor leader and Democratic insider to fill Feinstein’s Senate seat

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When California Gov. Gavin Newsom needed to fill the U.S. Senate seat of his late mentor Dianne Feinstein, he could have turned to a big-city mayor, a member of Congress or a powerful legislator.Instead, he chose Laphonza Butler, a former union leader and Democratic insider who heads a national organization that raises money for women candidates who support abortion rights. She offered a familiar face who shares his vision for a progressive California. In choosing Butler, he also elevated someone who could become an important ally for a potential national campaign that many see in his future.Once she is sworn in, Butler will be the only Black woman in the Senate and the first openly LGBTQ+ California senator. That, alongside her background in the labor and women’s rights movements, helps harden Newsom’s ties to important national Democratic constituencies.Speaking to reporters Monday in San Francisco, Newsom praised Butler’s “deep knowledge” of the leg...

Elon Musk facing defamation lawsuit in Texas over posts that falsely identified man in protest

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A California man who says he was harassed after Elon Musk amplified posts on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that falsely placed the man at a confrontation involving far-right protesters sued the billionaire for defamation in a lawsuit filed Monday. Benjamin Brody, 22, is represented by Mark Bankston, a Texas attorney who won a defamation case last year against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a lawsuit brought by families of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Brody is seeking a jury trial in Austin, Texas, and unspecified damages of at least $1 million. Attorneys for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment left through a spokesperson. In June, video posted to X showed a confrontation involving protesters near a Pride festival in Oregon. Some of those involved wore the same colors of the Proud Boys extremist group, according to The Oregonian. On X, some users falsely identified one of the participants as Brody, highligh...

Government sues Union Pacific over using flawed test to disqualify color blind railroad workers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The federal government has joined more than a dozen former workers in suing Union Pacific over the way it used a vision test to disqualify workers the railroad believed were color blind and might have trouble reading signals telling them to stop a train.The lawsuit announced Monday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of 21 former workers is the first the government filed in what could eventually be hundreds — if not thousands — of lawsuits over the way Union Pacific disqualified people with a variety of health issues.These cases were once going to be part of a class-action lawsuit that the railroad estimated might include as many as 7,700 people who had to undergo what is called a “fitness-for-duty” review between 2014 and 2018. Lawyers for the plaintiffs estimate nearly 2,000 of those people faced restrictions that kept them off the job for at least two years if not indefinitely. But the railroad hasn’t significantly changed its policie...

5 died of exposure to chemical in central Illinois crash, preliminary autopsies find

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Five people died from exposure to a chemical that spilled after a semitruck overturned in central Illinois, according to autopsies conducted Monday. Effingham County Coroner Kim Rhodes said official results from the autopsies won’t be available for several weeks. The victims of the multi-vehicle crash in Teutopolis, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis, were Teutopolis resident Kenneth Bryan, 34, and his children, Walker Bryan, 10 and Rosie Bryan, 7; Danny J. Smith, 67 of New Haven, Missouri; and Vasile Cricovan, 31, of Twinsburg, Ohio, were killed.The tanker traveling on U.S. 40 Saturday night veered to the right to avoid a collision when another vehicle tried to pass it. It toppled and hit the trailer hitch of a vehicle parked just off the road. The tanker jackknifed and was left with a 6-inch (15-centimeter) hole in the chemical container, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The crash spilled more than half of t...

A man suspected of fatally shooting 3 people is shot and killed by police in Philadelphia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia police officers on Monday shot and killed a man suspected in a quadruple shooting hours earlier that left three people dead, authorities said.Shortly before 5 a.m., officers were called to a home in the Lawncrest section of northeast Philadelphia. They found a 43-year-old woman in the rear of the property who had been shot in the eye, a police statement said. She was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in critical but stable condition.Three other people were found dead inside the home with gunshot wounds to the head. They were later identified as 63-year-old Denise Snead-Doram, 61-year-old Gregory Doram and 42-year-old Nina O’Brien.Three hours later, in the East Mount Airy section of northwest Philadelphia, officers tried to pull over a vehicle that had been reported fleeing the shooting location, according to the police department’s interim commissioner, John Stanford. A man inside, said to be a relative of the victims, was believed ...

Army officer pepper-sprayed during traffic stop asks for a new trial in his lawsuit against police

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A U.S. Army lieutenant who was struck, pepper-sprayed and handcuffed during a traffic stop in Virginia asked a federal appeals court on Monday to overturn rulings by a trial judge after jurors found mostly in favor of the two police officers he sued.Video of the December 2020 encounter between Lt. Caron Nazario and Windsor police officers was viewed millions of times and highlighted Black drivers’ fears of police mistreatment.In a legal brief filed Monday, Nazario argues that the court erred when it found in a pretrial ruling that Officers Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker had probable cause to believe Nazario committed the crimes of eluding police, obstruction of justice and failure to obey an order.Nazario also contends that the court erred when it dismissed his claims of unreasonable seizure, excessive force and First Amendment retaliation. He also claims the court gave two erroneous jury instructions and is asking for a new trial. He filed his appeal wi...

Ronaldo gets 1st Asian Champions League goal. Saudi team refuses to play in Iran over statue dispute

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:11:52 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Cristiano Ronaldo scored his first goal in the Asian Champions League in a 3-1 win for Al-Nassr over Istiklol on Monday to put some of the spotlight back on soccer after an earlier match between host Sepahan of Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ittihad was controversially canceled.The Saudi team did not take to the field at Naghsh-e-Jahan Stadium in Isfahan because of busts of Gen. Qassem Soleimani — who commanded Iran’s elite Quds Force before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in neighboring Iraq in January 2020 — and other political banners, Saudi Arabia’s Al Ekhbariya TV reported.Three busts of Soleimani had been placed for the teams to walk past on their way out of the tunnel. After around a 30- minute delay, the Saudi Arabian champion, whose stars include N’Golo Kante and Fabinho, left the stadium where an estimated 60,000 fans were waiting.The Asian Football Confederation said in a statement that the Group C match was canceled “due to unanticipat...