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Franklin blanks Methuen, 4-0, returns to state championship game

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

WORCESTER – For the first time in 60 years, a rematch in the Division 1 state final is on deck.Austin Campbell threw five shutout innings while Esig Chin collected a pair of hits and scored two runs as No. 1 Franklin blanked No. 21 Methuen, 4-0, on Tuesday night at Holy Cross to earn a date with Hockomock Kelley-Rex foe Taunton in the championship game.Franklin will look to avenge last year’s defeat at the hands of the Tigers in the final game. It’s the first Division 1 state title rematch in Massachusetts since 1962-63 when Chicopee beat Somerville in consecutive seasons.“I think we have great leadership,” Franklin coach Zach Brown said. “It hasn’t always been easy, especially with off the field situations, but guys have stayed together. I am really proud of their effort.”The win provided a sliver of joy in an otherwise emotionally turbulent time for Franklin. For the second time this spring the Panthers lost a classmate as sophomore ...

Golden Knights blast Panthers 9-3 in Game 5 to capture first Stanley Cup title

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Golden Knights delivered their city a true Vegas-style party from dazzling passes to Mark Stone’s hat trick to all-out goal celebrations, capturing the young organization’s first Stanley Cup with a 9-3 romp over the beaten up and exhausted Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.Coach Bruce Cassidy, in a nod to the Knights’ brief history, started five of the original Vegas players known as the Misfits and put the sixth on the second shift. Cassidy sounded confident the day before the game that his team would play well, and it certainly did, blowing open a one-goal game in the second period to lead 6-1. The nine goals tied the record for the most in a Cup Final.“Vegas, you certainly know how to throw a party,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told the crowd. “What’s going on inside this arena and outside is incredible and a testament to what a great hockey market this is.“What has happened here has been simply incredible. Not only is Vegas a ...

Australian prosecutors drop murder charge over German backpacker’s death in 2005

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian prosecutors dropped a murder charge Wednesday against German immigrant Tobias Moran over the death of his German backpacker girlfriend Simone Strobel in 2005.Charges of murder and perverting the course of justice were withdrawn in Lismore Local Court in New South Wales state, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said in an email. No reasons were given.The naked body of 25-year-old Strobel from Rieden, Bavaria, was found hidden under palm fronds in a Lismore park on Feb. 17, 2005. She was found six days after she was reported missing and close to where she had been camping in a Lismore trailer park with Moran, then known as Suckfuell, his sister Katrin Suckfuell, and friend Jens Martin.Moran, now 43, was arrested in July 2022 in the west coast city of Perth where he lived. He was extradited to New South Wales and charged with murder and perverting the course of justice. A Sydney court released him on bail and allowed him to return to...

110 million people forcibly displaced as Sudan, Ukraine wars add to world refugee crisis, UN says

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

Some 110 million people have had to flee their homes because of conflict, persecution, or human rights violations, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says. The war in Sudan, which has displaced nearly 2 million people since April, is but the latest in a long list of crises that has led to the record-breaking figure. “It’s quite an indictment on the state of our world,” Filippo Grandi, who leads the U.N. refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva ahead of the publication Wednesday of UNHCR’s Global Trends Report for 2022. Last year alone, an additional 19 million people were forcibly displaced including more than 11 million who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what became the fastest and largest displacement of people since World War II.“We are constantly confronted with emergencies,” Grandi said. Last year the agency recorded 35 emergencies, three to four times more than in previous years. “Very few make your headlines,” Grandi added, arguing that the w...

Syria says Israeli airstrikes over southwest Damascus wounded soldier and caused damage

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes attributed to Israel over Syria’s capital early Wednesday critically wounded one soldier, Syrian state media reported.Syria’s state news agency, SANA, citing military officials, said the strikes over southwest Damascus also caused “material damage” without giving further details.It reported that Syrian air defenses shot down some of the missiles.Israeli authorities did not comment immediately.Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment next door, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of neighboring Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them.The last suspected Israeli airstrike on Syria was on May 29, targeting locations in the vicinity of Damascus. Israel has also targeted the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo several times this past year, often putting it out of commission.The Associated Press

Vegas Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

The Vegas Golden Knights have won their first Stanley Cup, defeating the Florida Panthers in five games.THE VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS ARE YOUR 2023 STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS! ???? pic.twitter.com/skZ7FvMZ9S— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 14, 2023The Stanley Cup Final matchup saw the eighth-seeded Panthers meet Vegas after sweeping the Eastern Conference Finals.In game five, the Golden Knights dispatched the Panthers in dominant fashion with a score of 9-3. The game saw Vegas captain Mark Stone score the first hat trick in a Cup-clinching game since 1922. Nine goals for one team is also a record for a Cup-clinching game.Vegas forward Jonathan Marchessault was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the 2023 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.MARCHY! ????Jonathan Marchessault is the 2023 Conn Smythe trophy winner, becoming the first undrafted player to win the trophy since Wayne Gretzky. pic.twitter.com/NBexGl5ACz— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 14, 2023The win is a first fo...

Task force & tech tackle rise in retail theft

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

OAK BROOK, Ill. —  The surveillance videos were startling: Mobs of thieves descending on high-end stores and stealing thousands of dollars in merchandise in a matter of moments.  They targeted shopping centers in the city and suburbs.  The crimes seemed hard to prevent because they happened so fast.It was against that backdrop in 2021 that the Illinois Attorney General created a retail crime task force that would take a different approach.  They would view the thefts not as one-off’s done by individuals, but as part of a larger organized crime pattern. The bill closing the Illinois property tax loophole may help residents buy abandoned homes Attorney General Kwame Raoul has distributed out almost $5 million to nearly two dozen communities, including Oak Brook, Gurnee, Naperville and Orland Park. "We've funded 25 police departments throughout the state, all the way down to Carbondale," Raoul said.  It pays for everything from overtime to license plate reade...

Report: Most Mount Bonnell break-ins around sunset

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- By May, there were already 93 car break-ins at Mount Bonnell, according to an Austin Police Department report requested by Council Member Mackenzie Kelly.She said that number is high ahead of the spike we typically see over the summer. 2021 COVERAGE: Theft rate at Mount Bonnell already 4 times higher this year than all of 2019 "It's really concerning to me to learn there's that many break-ins at a local spot," she said. The report she requested also broke down the number of break-ins in 2021 and 2022.2021: 3312022: 370Council Member Kelly said she requested the report after a police officer addressed concerns with her about the topic at an HOA meeting she attended. She said the report also detailed the time of day break-ins were the most common, which was typically around sunset. What's the fix?Last year, we reported on the city installing dummy cameras in hopes of deterring crime. When the numbers didn't go down, the city removed the fake devices. Currently, the...

One person dead after 2-vehicle crash in Manor, ATCEMS says

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

MANOR, Texas (KXAN) -- One person is dead after a two-vehicle crash in Manor on Tuesday, Austin-Travis County EMS said on Twitter.Shortly after 9:15 p.m., medics responded to the crash in the 14500 block of N. Farm to Market Road 973, the tweet said. Medics said one person was pinned in their vehicle.Medics said one adult person, who was not identified Tuesday, was pronounced dead on the scene. No other patients were reported.Drivers should expect extended traffic delays near the scene, medics said.The incident remained under investigation Tuesday.

Obituary: Retired Ramsey County jurist Mary Louise Klas, 93, was longtime women’s rights advocate

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:53:43 GMT

Judge Mary Louise Klas photographed in her chambers) in 2000. (Jim Gehrz / Pioneer Press)Soon after former Ramsey County District Judge Mary Louise Klas was assigned to oversee cases in family court, she began working to ensure fair treatment for victims of domestic violence.Charged with issuing protection orders in abuse cases, sometimes more than 100 a month, Klas was horrified by the lack of concern for the victims, most of them women. As for their abusers, she said, the system was protecting them.“Police weren’t arresting them. Prosecutors weren’t prosecuting them. And judges weren’t trying them,” she told the Pioneer Press in 2000. Women weren’t being protected, she added, despite laws that could guard against such abuses.Klas went to work revising judicial practices on behalf of victims of domestic violence, said her daughter Patricia Montalbano.“No one else really had a fire in their belly about the issue,” she said. “She had the attitude, You di...