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Moore: Battery fires on rise – is it time to ban electric vehicles?

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, “There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes.” The resulting fire is “very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous.”Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It’s ...

Lowry: NYC’s Adams vindicates immigration hawks

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

The public intellectual Irving Kristol famously said that the definition of a neoconservative is “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”By the same token, the definition of a convert to immigration restrictionism is a big-city mayor dealing with a surge of illegal immigration in his city.In his desperate pleas for federal help to deal with about 100,000 migrants who have come to New York City since the spring of 2022, Mayor Eric Adams is vindicating the hawkish position on immigration with almost every utterance.All that it has taken to explode the lazy cliches that have defined the progressive position on the issue is a heavy flow of illegal immigration.If immigration is an unalloyed good, this influx should be a boon to New York City and its future. Why stop at 100,000 if the city could have 200,000, or 300,000? If immigration has no cost, why is New York spending $5 billion this year absorbing this flow?According to Adams, New York City “is being destroyed b...

Klietmann: Expanding drug price controls will hurt innovation

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

Lawmakers in Washington are getting even more heavy handed in their approach to prescription drugs.House Democrats just proposed legislation to expand the dangerous price-setting provisions in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. This would decrease investment in cancer treatments and other medications — and cause major job losses, especially here in the Bay State.For the sake of our health and our livelihoods, Congress must abandon, not broaden, its price control schemes.The IRA requires Medicare officials and pharmaceutical companies to “negotiate” the price of drugs. But that’s not the right word: Companies that don’t agree to government-proposed prices will face excise taxes of up to 95%. That’s a shakedown, not a negotiation.The government will announce the first 10 drugs subject to IRA price controls in September. Which means we haven’t even seen this arrangement’s worst effects yet. Nonetheless, some lawmakers already want...

Dear Abby: Man unnerved by scantily clad stepdaughter

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been married to my second wife for 10 years. Most everything is fine, but we have one area of conflict. It is regarding her daughter, my stepdaughter, who has grown from a cute little 9-year-old into a beautiful 19-year-old. The problem is her attire around the house. She routinely wears a sports bra and panties around the house (around me). I find it distracting, to say the least. I have discussed it with her mother, but she sees nothing wrong with it, probably because she dresses pretty much the same way. I can’t get my wife to understand that what might be OK for her is inappropriate for her daughter. What should I do? By the way, I have never said or done anything inappropriate, but I find myself taking a look at her more often than I should. Help! — Stepdad Who Sees in TexasDear Stepdad: If you haven’t told your wife DIRECTLY that a beautiful young woman parading around in her underwear and a sports bra is arousing, and you would prefer her d...

An abandoned desert village an hour from Dubai offers a glimpse at the UAE’s hardscrabble past

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

AL-MADAM, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nestled in sand dunes an hour’s drive from the skyscrapers of Dubai, a desert village abandoned in the 1990s stands as an eerie relic of the rapid urbanization of the United Arab Emirates.Built in the 1970s to house semi-nomadic Bedouin, the village of al-Ghuraifa was abandoned two decades later as oil wealth transformed the country into a global hub of commerce and tourism, home to the futuristic cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.In recent years, the ghost village near the town of al-Madam in the Sharjah emirate has become something of a tourist attraction, offering an escape from the concrete jungles of the coastal cities and a glimpse at the Emirates’ hardscrabble past.The village, which comprises two rows of homes and a mosque, “can teach us a lot of the modern history of the UAE,” said Ahmad Sukkar, an assistant professor at the University of Sharjah who is part of a team researching the site.It was built as part of a public housing project aft...

Tech company behind Kentucky school bus problems had similar issues in Ohio last year

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The company behind a disastrous change to a Kentucky city’s school bus routes that resulted in more than a week of canceled classes had similar problems in two cities in neighboring Ohio last year.Touting its connections to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bus-routing vendor AlphaRoute pitched its mathematical models and machine-learning technology as a way of saving money and smoothing out complex bus routes in Louisville, Kentucky, and school districts across the U.S.But real-world problems often got in the way.Columbus began running new routes planned by AlphaRoute in fall 2022 after entering into a three-year, $1.6 million contract. But there were problems from the beginning. Most importantly, the district was not able to make adjustments quickly with the company’s software. It decided to pivot mid-year to the software it was previously using from another company, Versatrans, said district spokesperson Jacqueline Bryant. Cincinnati Public S...

Oil, aquatic trash and toxic algae threaten life in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (AP) — The fishermen of Lake Maracaibo say they face their worst nightmare everyday as fish stocks decline and pollution degrades the health of this great freshwater lake, one of the oldest — and largest — in the world.Lake Maracaibo, which once was at the heart of Venezuela’s oil boom, has turned into a polluted wasteland, according to environmentalists.The pollution of the lake, located about 600 kilometers (372 miles) west of the capital, Caracas, is the result of decades of excessive oil exploitation, poor maintenance of the obsolete infrastructure and a lack of waste treatment plants in the area. Tens of thousands of kilometers of pipes lie at its bottom, where crude oil leaks and system failures are frequent.The lake, which collects rainwater from more than a hundred tributaries, has also become the wastewater deposit for the western states of Zulia, Mérida and Trujillo, where 5.3 million people live. Waste from the Colombian department of Norte de S...

Pushing back on limits elsewhere, Vermont’s lieutenant governor goes on banned books tour

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

WATERBURY, Vt. (AP) — On a recent Sunday afternoon, Vermont’s lieutenant governor was at a local library, reading a book about two male penguins to a crowd of nearly two dozen. This was not the first stop for Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman nor would it be the last.While officials in some other states are banning or restricting certain books in schools and libraries, Zuckerman, in liberal Vermont, has taken a different tack: reading and discussing them at libraries and bookstores around the state.″ These bans often target books that feature LGBTQ+ characters; talk about gender and sexuality; highlight racial disparities; or talk about difficult issues such as substance abuse and cases of police violence,” Zuckerman, a Democrat, said in a statement when he announced the tour in June. “Students, teachers, and curious minds should be able to access materials that spark critical thinking, cover difficult topics, and appeal to diverse interests without fear of government interference.”While Ver...

Trump enjoys strong support among Republicans. The general election could be a different story

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — After every new indictment, Donald Trump has boasted that his standing among Republicans only improves — and he has a point.Nearly two-thirds of Republicans — 63% — now say they want the former president to run again, according to new polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up slightly from the 55% who said the same in April when Trump began facing a series of criminal charges. Seven in 10 Republicans now have a favorable opinion of Trump, an uptick from the 60% who said so two months ago.But in a crucial warning sign for the former president and his supporters, Trump faces glaring vulnerabilities heading into a general election, with many Americans strongly dug in against him. While most Republicans — 74% — say they would support him in November 2024, 53% of Americans say they would definitely not support him if he is the nominee. Another 11% say they would probably not support him in November 2024.The findings bolster...

UN envoy says ICC should prosecute Taliban for crimes against humanity for denying girls education

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:46 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The International Criminal Court should prosecute Taliban leaders for a crime against humanity for denying education and employment to Afghan girls and women, the U.N. special envoy for global education said.Gordon Brown told a virtual U.N. press conference on the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on Tuesday that its rulers are responsible for “the most egregious, vicious and indefensible violation of women’s rights and girls’ rights in the world today.”The former British prime minister said he has sent a legal opinion to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan that shows the denial of education and employment is “gender discrimination, which should count as a crime against humanity, and it should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.”The Taliban took power in August 2021, during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces’ pullout after 20 years of war. As they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban ...