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High-speed rail was touted as a game-changer in Britain. Costs are making the government think twice

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

LONDON (AP) — The British government confirmed Sunday it may scrap a big chunk of an overdue and over-budget high-speed rail line once touted as a way to attract jobs and investment to northern England.British media reported that an announcement is expected this week that the line will end in Birmingham – 100 miles (160 kilometers) from London — rather than further north in Manchester.The Conservative government insists no final decision has been made about the embattled High Speed 2 project. But Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said it was “proper and responsible” to reconsider a project whose costs have ballooned because of high inflation driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.“We’ve seen very, very high global inflation in a way that no government could have predicted,” said Shapps, a former transportation secretary who now serves as the U.K.’s defense minister.“It would be irresponsible to simply spend money, carry on as if nothing had changed,” he told ...

Death toll in a Taiwanese golf ball factory fire rises to 10. Four of the victims were firefighters

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Search teams found the bodies of the last three missing people on Sunday at the site of a golf ball factory fire in southern Taiwan, bringing the death toll to 10, according to Taiwanese media reports.Launch Technologies, the operator of the plant, is a major global supplier of golf balls.Four of the victims were firefighters. Taiwan’s Central News Agency, quoting a Pingtung County fire official, said an explosion caused part of the building to collapse about 6:10 p.m. on Friday, trapping firefighters and workers under rubble, A second explosion followed 20 minutes later.Two bodies were found Sunday morning and the final one was recovered in the afternoon. About 100 people were injured in the blaze at Pingtung Technology Industrial Park. The fire was not extinguished until the next day. The cause remained unclear.Taiwan is a major manufacturer of golf balls with factories supplying major brands including Callaway, TaylorMade, Bridgestone, Mizuno and Wilson, acc...

The death toll from a truck bomb at a checkpoint in Somalia rises to 21

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — The death toll from a bombing attack at a government checkpoint in central Somalia has reached 21, authorities said Sunday. The number of wounded in Saturday’s truck bombing in Beledweyne stood at 52, said Abdifatah Mohamed Yusuf, director general of the Hirshabelle ministry of humanitarian and disaster management. He told The Associated Press that 17 of those critically wounded were airlifted to the capital, Mogadishu, for treatment.There has been no immediate claim of responsibility. East Africa’s al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab often carries out such attacks in Somalia.Beledweyne has been the staging point for the Somali government’s ongoing military offensive against the extremists, who control parts of central and southern Somalia.___AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africaOmar Faruk, The Associated Press

‘Live With Kelly and Mark’: Till death (or cancellation) do they part

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

At the start of the Feb. 16 episode of the ABC morning talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” before actress Camryn Manheim demonstrated her knowledge of American Sign Language, before Ryan Seacrest and the show’s resident DJ competed in a game called “Love Songs,” the show’s host Kelly Ripa made an announcement: Seacrest, who had hosted with her for six years, would soon be departing. His replacement? “My husband, Mark Consuelos, in what Ryan and I are calling the nation’s weirdest social experiment.”“Live,” which began in 1988 as “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee,” hosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, has always depended, as its executive producer Michael Gelman told me, on the illusion that the hosts are a married couple who have invited some unusually glamorous friends over for morning coffee. He referred to the hosts — any hosts — as “this faux husband-and-wife, only they’re better looking and smarter and more vivacious than your normal neighbors,” he said.Kelly Ripa an...

Gophers tailback Darius Taylor’s injury looms over Northwestern loss

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

The Gophers’ 37-34 loss to Northwestern contains plenty of sting, but the possible extent of running back Darius Taylor’s injury also hangs over Minnesota’s defeat at Ryan Field in Evanston, Ill.“Hopefully (Taylor’s injury) is nothing serious, but we’ll see,” U head coach P.J. Fleck said postgame. “We will find out here very shortly, but again, next man up, if that’s where it gets to.”With two minutes left in regulation, Taylor was stopped for a loss of one yard on third and 2 and didn’t return to the field for overtime. Taylor had bounced his run outside, and after being tackled by Wildcats linebacker Xander Mueller, Taylor initially grabbed behind his left leg.The true freshman tailback rushed for 198 yards on 31 carries (6.4 yards per rush) and two touchdowns. He added three receptions on three targets for 18 yards on Saturday.Taylor has been the brightest spot on the U offense, winning Big Ten freshman of the week honors after the Eastern Michigan win in Week 2 and the North Car...

Skywatch: Harvest moon 2023 has good company

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

Sadly, summer officially came to an end this weekend. Saturday at 1:50 a.m. was the moment of the autumnal equinox. That’s when the sun slips below the celestial equator, a projection in the sky of the Earth’s terrestrial equator. From day to day and week to week until Dec. 21, the sun’s arc across the sky will get lower, and the days will become shorter as we dive toward winter.In the meantime, we still have plenty of daylight, and our nighttime hours are bright with moonlight. That’s because we start this week with a football-shaped waxing gibbous moon. We’ll have a full harvest moon on Friday since it’s close to this year’s autumnal equinox.The harvest moon was named because it lights up the night sky around harvest time. Like any full moon, it rises at sunset and sets around sunrise. What makes the harvest moon so unique is that it rises only about 20 minutes later each night instead of the usual 45 to 50 minutes, so there isn’t as much of a gap between the time the sun goes dow...

Readers and writers: Author Hampl and artist/printer partner on project again after four decades

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

“Forty years,” Gaylord Schanilec says with a laugh. “Forty years it took for me to get a manuscript from Patricia.”Schanilec is an internationally known artist and printer and the owner of Midnight Paper Sales printing company. He’s talking about Patricia Hampl, award-winning poet and author.Artist, illustrator and fine press printer Gaylord Schanilec, left, worked with author John Coy on the Minnesota Book Award-winning “My Mighty Journey” in 2019 before he partnered with Patricia Hampl on her new book “It’s Come to This.” (Paul Nylander / Minnesota Historical Society Press)They first partnered in 1982 when Schanilec did a two-color drawing frontispiece and ornamental rose decoration for the fine press edition of Hampl’s second poetry collection, “Resort and Other Poems,” published by Bookslinger Editions.“Working on ‘Resort’ was pivotal for me,” Schanilec continues, “and I b...

Trudy Rubin: Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children under the spotlight at United Nations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

When President Joe Biden urged world leaders on Tuesday not to diminish support for Ukraine, he used a phrase whose importance you may have missed. Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, Biden charged (correctly) that Russia’s price for peace is “Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine’s children.”I’ve added emphasis to those last two words because of Moscow’s policy of illegally transferring tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia proper, or Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and trying to transform them into good little Ukraine-hating Russians.In his own speech to the United Nations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also denounced Russia’s seizure of his country’s children as “purely a genocide.” That Russian war crime goes to the heart of why Ukraine believes it must win this war.According to official data from the Ukrainian government, at least 19,546 children have been tran...

Minnesota lawmakers approved up to $1 billion for housing. Where is it going?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

Amina Deble’s heart breaks every time she visits her elderly aunt or another Somali-American senior trying to get by in a cramped, one-bedroom Twin Cities apartment. She likens the housing units she’s seen to small prison cells.“They take depression medicine,” said Deble, who lives with her daughter, a doctor and homeowner. “They’d love to live like other people.”One of the key challenges confronting her community isn’t so much financial as cultural. Based on the tenets of their faith, many Muslims reject giving or receiving interest-bearing loans, referred to in Arabic as “reba,” or “exploitive gains.” In other words, traditional mortgages are culturally off-limits, though fee-based workarounds are not.“For the Muslim community, it’s really hard for them, even if you make enough income,” said Deble, of Columbia Heights. It’s just one aspect of what many call a housing crisis in the Twin ...

Literary calendar for week of Sept. 24

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:32:47 GMT

BAKOS/WEBER: M. E. Bakos signs copies of her Home Renovation Mysteries, the latest of which is “Killer Flip,” and Frank Weber signs his book, “The Haunted House of Hillman.” 10-11:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 29, Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Square, White Bear Lake.Shannon Sanders (David Choy / Graywolf Press)GRAYWOLF LITERARY SALON: The first in-person fundraising Salon since 2019 hosted by this Minneapolis-based literary press highlights Graywolf writers Roger Reeves, award-winning Texas-based author of two poetry collections; Sally Wen Mao, New York-based author of three poetry collections; and Shannon Sanders, Washington, D.C., whose debut novel “Company” is drawing critics’ raves, with starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. This often-hilarious story collection follows three generations of the Black Collins family (four, if you count two babies), who experience generational disputes and envies, adult sibling ...