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Biden administration plans to cap how much families pay for child care through a government program

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday that the government plans to put a cap on how much families pay for child care as part of the Child Care & Development Block Grant program.Speaking to reporters, Harris went through the details of a proposed rule by the Department of Health and Human Services that follows an executive order on the issue that President Joe Biden signed in April. Families would pay no more than 7% of their income for child care through the program and child care providers would find it easier to be paid on time. The proposal also wants to encourage states to let families apply online for care.Harris touted the possible savings for families.“Let’s take a family in Montana making $46,000 a year—they could save about $80 every month, or almost over $1,000 a year,” the vice president said. “That money could go to gas and groceries or to fix a leaky roof.”The program currently supports 1.5 million children. In 2016, the government established ...

Aaron Hernandez’s brother, Dennis, ordered re-arrested on brick-throwing charges at ESPN

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

A judge has ordered the re-arrest of Aaron Hernandez’s brother, Dennis, after he failed to appear in court last week on charges related to throwing a brick at the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut.The 37-year-old, who was known as DJ Hernandez when he played quarterback and wide receiver at UConn in the mid-2000s, was originally arrested in March. Police said he went to ESPN in a car, possibly an Uber, and threw a bag containing a brick and a note over a fence and onto the property before leaving.The note said: “To all media outlets, It’s about time you all realeyes the affect media has on all family members. Since you’re a world wide leader maybe you could lead how media and messages are delivered brick by brick. Clean it up! Yours truly, Dennis J. Hernandez,” according to police.Hernandez, the older brother of the late New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, was scheduled to enter a plea on July 7 to a misdemeanor charge of breach of peace. He did not show up for that...

BofA hit with $250 million in fines, penalties, refunds for ‘double-dipping’ fees, fake accounts

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

Bank of America must reimburse customers more than $100 million and pay $150 million in fines for “double-dipping” on overdraft fees, withholding reward bonuses on credit cards and opening accounts without customer consent.It is one of the highest financial penalties in years against Bank of America, which has largely spent the last 15 years trying to clean up its reputation and market itself to the public as a bank focused on financial health and not on overdraft fee income.BofA will need to refund $100 million to customers, pay $90 million in penalties to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and $60 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “Bank of America wrongfully withheld credit card rewards, double-dipped on fees, and opened accounts without consent,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, in a statement. “These practices are illegal and undermine customer trust.”Bank of America had a policy of charging customers $35 after the bank declined a transaction ...

Cold temperatures to continue in South Africa but no further snowfall is predicted

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African weather officials warned on Tuesday of continued extremely cold weather, but said no further snow was predicted for the rest of the week after parts of the country experienced unusual flurries.In Johannesburg, residents experienced snowfall on Monday for the first time since 2012.Snow was reported in the provinces of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and the Free State starting Monday morning, according to the South African Weather Services.On Tuesday, parts of Johannesburg remained very cold, with temperatures falling to 1 degree Celsius (34 F).“We will have these extremely cold weather conditions for the rest of the week,” forecaster Puseletso Mofokeng said.He said no further snow is expected for the rest of the week.“In parts of Mpumalanga we still have snow on the ground, but it will melt over the next few days. We are not expecting any more snowfall this week,” he said.Officials were still determining how much snow fell, since amounts varied ac...

NATO membership offer falls short of Ukraine’s hopes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

VILNIUS — NATO leaders on Tuesday said they would invite Ukraine to join the alliance only when conditions are met and allies agree — a move intended as a gesture of support for Ukrainians but which was met with disappointment in Kyiv. “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met,” the leaders wrote in a summit communiqué, published Tuesday evening.The carefully-crafted sentence is the outcome of intensive negotiations among the alliance’s 31 members. While all allies agree Ukraine cannot join NATO while the war against Russia is ongoing, many of Kyiv’s partners had pushed for a strong political gesture at the summit, saying that it is on the path toward membership. Washington and Berlin, however, opposed giving Kyiv concrete pledges. In the summit communiqué, the allies stressed that Ukraine is developing a closer relationship with the alliance and that Tuesday’s wording represents a step f...

Ukraine says cluster munitions will be ‘game changer’ against Russia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

VILNIUS — Kyiv sees cluster munitions as the next “game changer” in its battle against Russian forces, Ukraine’s defense minister said Tuesday.Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Oleksiy Reznikov rejected disapproval from some countries and humanitarian groups over the U.S. government’s decision last week to send Ukraine the controversial weapons. “As we got in May 2022 155-millimeter artillery systems, it became a game changer. In July, we got different types of [Multiple Launch Rocket Systems] it became [the] next game changer … And I hope that cluster munitions [become] a next game changer as weaponry or ammunition for liberation of our temporarily occupied territories,” he said.Reznikov insisted the use of these weapons would be limited to non-urban areas within Ukraine’s territory. Ukraine’s partners will also be informed about the use and effect of the cluster weapons, he said.Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State...

Police make arrest in connection with nighttime assault on woman in Medford

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

An 18-year-old man is facing assault and attempted kidnapping charges after being arrested in connection with a nighttime assault on a woman in Medford, according to authorities.The Medford Police Department said Nature Moncoeur was arrested in Somerville on Tuesday morning, a week after authorities began investigating an assault that occurred on Royall Street, near Tufts University.Police said a woman in her 20s was attacked in the area of Main and Royall streets while she was out for a walk on the night of July 2. According to Medford PD, a male suspect ran up to the victim and struck her several times after grabbing her from behind.“After a brief struggle in which the woman was fighting back and screaming loudly, the suspect fled back down Royall Street toward College Avenue,” Medford PD stated in a news release at the time.The police department later obtained and released nearby surveillance footage of a man they considered to be the assault suspect.Moncoeur was taken into custo...

Gunshot investigation leads to Shrewsbury PD seizing $11 million worth of counterfeit goods from storage facility

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

What started as a call for shots being fired in Shrewsbury led to police discovering a trove of counterfeit goods worth $11.3 million at a storage facility, according to officials.The Shrewsbury Police Department said the discovery came after officers were first called to the area of Holden and Bow streets on Saturday, June 17, for a report of multiple gunshots being fired earlier in the afternoon.While investigating, the search led officials onto the property of Extra Space Storage on Clinton Street where, according to the department, officers “observed multiple vehicles and encountered an individual in front of a storage unit.”“The investigation led officers into the storage unit which they observed this individual exiting,” the police department stated in a news release. “When officers entered the storage unit, they observed what appeared to be thousands of items of merchandise. The merchandise was neatly displayed on shelves, tables and boxes, and l...

Comedian Sarah Silverman sues tech firms over AI book capture

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

By Ethan Baron, Bay Area News GroupComedian and author Sarah Silverman is suing social media giant Meta and ChatGPT pioneer OpenAI in a pair of related lawsuits accusing the high-profile California technology companies of breaking state and federal laws by using her memoir “The Bedwetter” as fodder for their artificial intelligence products.Silverman and two novelists claim Menlo Park-based Meta and San Francisco-based OpenAI violated copyright and other laws by ingesting their books — and those of thousands of other authors — to train their artificial intelligence software.Both companies copied works protected by copyright law, including books by Silverman, Pennsylvania author Richard Kadrey and Massachusetts writer Christopher Golden “without consent, without credit, and without compensation,” according to the lawsuits filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.OpenAI, which sells ChatGPT via subscription, and Meta, which according to Silverman’s lawsuit is planning to c...

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ sentence reduced by almost two years

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:15:44 GMT

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is now scheduled to get out of prison nearly two years earlier than her original sentence mandated, according to an update from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.Holmes, 39, surrendered herself for imprisonment May 30, to start serving a sentence of 11 years and three months. But her updated release date is December 29, 2032, just over the 9½ years that federal prison rules say she must remain locked up at a minimum.The prisons bureau confirmed Holmes’ new release date, but said privacy, safety and security reasons prevent it from discussing inmates’ release plans.Generally, those incarcerated in federal prisons can earn 54 days of “Good Conduct Time” off their sentences for each year of their sentence, according to the prisons bureau. Eligible inmates can also earn time off from their sentences by participating and completing programs for reducing post-prison re-offending, and educational, health, recovery, victim-impact and employment-training programs. ...