Iraq threatens to cut ties with Sweden over planned burning of Quran
Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador on Thursday in protest at a planned burning of the Quran in Stockholm that had prompted hundreds of protesters to storm and set alight the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
NJ Transit racing to build Transitway in time for World Cup 2026
What started in 2021 as an alternative to find another way to move people going to and from special events at MetLife Stadium is now a project racing toward a deadline for NJ Transit to build its Transitway in time for the FIFA World Cup 2026 games.
20 N.J. arts/entertainment events to check out this weekend and beyond (July 21-27)
WHAT’S GOING ON? Here is a small sample of area happenings you may want to check out in the coming days.
Teamsters Issue Strike Notice at Yellow
Teamsters Issue Strike Notice at Yellow
By Todd Maiden of FreightWaves
Shortly after less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Corp. said Tuesday it would go through with plans to defer required contributions to funds managed by Central States Funds, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters issued a strike notice.
The notice said a work stoppage could occur as soon as Monday.
“Yellow has failed its workers once again and continues to neglect its responsibilities,” said Sean O’Brien, Teamsters general president. “Following years of worker givebacks, federal loans, and other bailouts, this deadbeat company has only itself to blame for being in this embarrassing position.”
On Monday, Central States issued a delinquency notice to plan participants working at Yellow (NASDAQ: YELL) operating companies YRC Freight and Holland. The letter said the companies had deferred health and welfare and pension contributions due this past Saturday and would do the same for payments due August 15.
“The Company advised Central States Funds that it would defer payment of health and pension contributions for June (due July 15) and July (due August 15) to preserve liquidity as it worked to obtain meetings with the IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters] as well as secure additional financing,” a Tuesday evening statement from Yellow read.
The combined payments total $50 million for the two-month period.
A recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed Yellow had in excess of $100 million in cash as of June 30.
Yellow has said it will repay the amounts with interest in the future.
If unpaid, the carriers’ participation in the pension plan would be terminated on Sunday and health care claims incurred by employees after Saturday would not be paid.
Employees have the option to pay for health care out of pocket. In a separate notification, Central States said the cost is $471.86 per week through July 29. The amount increases to $507.08 per week after that. Payments must be received by August 23.
Yellow and the Teamsters have been unable to reach an agreement on operational changes that the carrier says are necessary for it to remain in business.
The Teamsters statement said the company has until Sunday to make the payment.
“Yellow has a responsibility and obligation to workers. Our members should not suffer because of management’s incompetence and financial irresponsibility,” said Fred Zuckerman, Teamsters general secretary-treasurer. “The Teamsters are working with our local unions, and we will continue to regularly update members as this situation unfolds.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 07/20/2023 – 10:55
Wildlife authorities kill dingo pack leader that mauled jogger on island in Australia
Wildlife authorities have killed the leader of a pack of dingoes that mauled a jogger on a popular Australian tourist island in a ferocious attack that a rescuer said could have been fatal.
Sarah Peet, 23, was attacked by three or four Australian native dogs on Monday as she jogged along a beach at Queensland state’s K’gari, the world’s largest sand island formerly known as Fraser Island.
The Brisbane resident was flown by helicopter to a mainland hospital in a stable condition. The health department refused to provide an update on her condition Thursday, citing patient confidentiality.
Wildlife rangers captured and humanely euthanized the leader of the pack on Wednesday, the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service said.
“Euthanizing a high-risk dingo is always a last resort and the tough decision by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service was supported by the island’s traditional owners, the Butchulla people,” a service statement said.
AUSTRALIAN WOMAN, DACHSHUND MAULED BY BULL TERRIER WEEKS BEFORE WEDDING DAY
The dingo was the second on the island in recent weeks to be killed for biting and threatening behavior. Authorities blame dingoes’ increasing fearlessness on tourists who ignore rules by feeding them or encouraging them to approach in order to post social media images.
Wary young dingoes avoided humans when pandemic travel restrictions were first eased in late 2021. But their dangerous human interactions are increasing with tourists’ encouragement as visitor numbers rise.
Peet did not deliberately encourage dingoes to approach her. But visitors to the World Heritage-listed Great Sandy National Park are warned against running or jogging outside fenced areas because of the risk that dingoes will chase them.
The dingoes forced Peet into the surf, deploying the same hunting strategy that rangers say they use against large prey such as kangaroos and wallabies.
Tourists Shane and Sarah Moffat were driving along the beach in their SUV when they saw Peet being attacked.
“We’ve seen two dingoes hanging off the side of her,” Shane Moffat told Nine News television.
AUSTRALIAN WOMAN ATTACKED BY DINGOES DURING RUN ON ISLAND OF K’GARI: ‘LUCKY TO BE ALIVE’
“She was walking towards me with a hand up yelling out, ‘Help, help,’” Moffat said. “I could see fear in her face, that she wasn’t in a good way.”
Moffat said he ran to Peet, forcing himself between her and the pack leader. Moffat bloodied his fingers on the dingo’s fangs as he punched it.
Moffat said Peet’s injuries included a chunk of flesh missing from her right upper-arm and bite marks to her legs.
He doubted she would have survived if he had arrived at the scene any later.
Wildlife rangers agreed that Peet would have died without the Moffats’ help.
“We believe the people who intervened saved her life that day,” principal ranger Danielle Mansfield said.
The pack leader was one of three dingoes on the island fitted with tracking collars because of their high-risk behavior.
When he was collared in April, he was around 2-year-old and weighed 37 pounds which was heavy for a dingo and indicated he had been fed by humans, authorities said.
The dingo killed by authorities in June after separate attacks on a 7-year-old boy a 42-year-old French woman was the first to be destroyed on the island since 2019.
Rangers said that dingo was the offspring of a collared mother that had taught her pups their dangerous ways.
K’gari is home to some of Australia’s purest dingoes because domestic dogs have long been banned. Dingoes are a protected species and authorities are considering how they can more safely coexist with humans on the island.
Tourists who breach wildlife rules on K’gari to take selfies with dingoes have been warned that the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service monitors social media to impose fines that can be as high as $8,191.
Two tourists had recently been each fined $1,569 for getting too close to dingoes to “get selfies and videos,” Environment Minister Leanne Linard said after visiting the island in response to the attack.
The women, aged 29 and 25, were only caught because they posted the images on social media.
One woman had videoed three sleeping dingo pups.
“I’m sure they were very cute, but there would have been a mother nearby and any mother will defend their child and their babies really voraciously,” Linard told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
New York City agrees to pay Black Lives Matter protesters $13 million in new mass arrests settlement
New York City will give more than $13 million to more than 1,000 protesters arrested or interacting with police during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests following a civil rights lawsuit settlement filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday.
Experts said the settlement, which allows the city to avoid a trial, would be among the most expensive payouts ever for mass arrests. It still needs to be approved by a judge before it is finalized.
The lawsuit focused on 18 protests that erupted in New York City in the week following George Floyd’s death in May. According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, eligible persons can receive $9,950 in compensation.
Protests and riots following the 2020 killing of Floyd resulted in at least 18 deaths, $350 million worth of property damage in the Minneapolis area, and nearly $2 billion nationwide. About 10,000 people were arrested in the span of a few days.
NEW YORK CITY COULD PAY BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTERS $21K EACH OVER RIGHTS ‘VIOLATIONS’ IN 2020
Several other cities across the U.S. are negotiating their own settlements concerning officers’ handling of protesters who spilled into the streets, with some causing fires, throwing objects, breaking windows and damaging buildings.
Protesters arrested in connection with violence – those arrested on charges including trespassing, property destruction, assaulting an officer, arson or weapons possession – will be excluded from the settlement. Those seen on video blocking police from making arrests may also be ineligible.
The lawsuit named former Mayor Bill de Blasio and retired NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, as well as other police leaders, as defendants. Under the settlement agreement, neither the city nor the NYPD is required to admit any wrongdoing.
BLM CALLED OUT FOR RECEIVING MILLIONS, NOT HELPING BLACK AMERICANS: ‘BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER’
Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild, representing the plaintiffs in New York, accused these NYPD leaders of depriving protesters of their First Amendment rights through brutal tactics and unlawful arrests.
Attorneys for the city maintained police officers were responding to a chaotic and unprecedented situation and highlighted unruly protests where police vehicles were set on fire and officers pelted with rocks and plastic bottles.
Attorneys for the city said there was no systematic effort to deprive people of their right to protest.
“There is no history – or present or future – of unconstitutional policing,” Georgia Pestana, an attorney for the city, wrote in a memo. “There is no frequent deprivation of constitutional rights.”
BLACK LIVES MATTER AT SCHOOL WEEK OF ACTION KICKS OFF FOR THOUSANDS OF US SCHOOLS
The city also invoked qualified immunity, which protects police officers from lawsuits stemming from lawful work performed in the line of duty.
The settlement does not force the NYPD to change its policing practices, unlike several other lawsuits aimed at injunctive relief, which remain ongoing, such as one brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Another class action settlement announced earlier this year would award $21,500 to demonstrators in the Bronx who were arrested. The payout could total around $10 million, including legal fees.
Separately, more than 600 people have brought individual claims against New York City related to police action during the 2020 protests, according to the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander. Settlements in these cases have cost the city nearly $12 million.
Fox News’ Brian Flood and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Expert appointed to oversee Oregon agency struggling to end foster care housing in hotels
A federal judge this week appointed an outside expert to help Oregon end its practice of housing kids in foster care in hotels, years after the agency promised it would do so in a legal settlement.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane on Tuesday took the unusual step of appointing Marty Beyer to oversee the state’s Department of Human Services, noting the agency has not figured out how to stop “temporary lodging” on its own, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Oregon has spent more than $25 million housing 462 kids in foster care in hotels since the state promised to largely end the practice as part of a legal settlement in 2018.
In the first six months of this year, 75 kids ranging in age from 6 to 19 years were placed in hotels. Twenty of those kids have lived in a hotel for more than 60 days.
“This is incredibly harmful for these kids,” said Maggie Carlson, an attorney for Youth, Rights & Justice, which was one of the groups that filed a 2016 lawsuit to stop the practice. “They are spending months and months in hotels with a rotating cast of caregivers all the while getting the message they are unwanted and can’t do well with a regular family and they are different and unlovable. It really affects their mental health in the long term.”
When the state of Oregon removes a child from their home, child welfare officials are responsible for their care. Placing vulnerable youth in hotels for extended periods of time is widely recognized — even among Department of Human Services officials responsible for kids placed in state care — as an inappropriate placement.
Attorneys and advocates with Youth, Rights & Justice and the Oregon Law Center had asked a judge earlier this year to consider appointing a special master.
Beyer, during a one-year contract with the state, will gather information before making recommendations on how to find better placements for vulnerable children. The judge could then order the state to follow Beyer’s recommendations. Beyer is a child welfare and juvenile justice consultant with a Ph.D. in clinical/community psychology from Yale University, according to her website.
Oregon DHS officials said they struggle to find adequate places to house kids after removing them from families because of a lack of capacity in foster homes and residential treatment centers, the latter of which help treat kids with extensive behavioral health needs.
When the state was questioned about sending foster kids to facilities outside the state, officials initially said kids had such complex needs there was no adequate spot for them in Oregon.
In recent legal filings, advocates said the state was again relying on the same rationale to explain the need for lodging kids in hotels, writing that the agency consistently failed to undertake systemic changes.
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For seven years, the state has said there was a lack of suitable placements for kids and it was working diligently to increase capacity, McShane wrote, adding, “this argument has become nothing more than a stale mantra and the Court has lost faith in ODHS’ ability to end this entrenched policy on its own.”
Jake Sunderland, a Department of Human Services spokesperson, said Wednesday in an emailed statement that the department is committed to transforming its child welfare system into one focused on prevention and safety, and that it welcomes working collaboratively with Beyer.
“We look forward to showing Dr. Beyer all of the extensive efforts ODHS (Oregon Department of Human Services) has engaged in to comply with the settlement agreement and hearing her ideas about how to address existing barriers,” Sunderland said.
He also said the department will continue to work to reduce hotel stays for kids by supporting children in their homes and expand options for placement in a facility when children need a high level of care.
Annette Smith, a public defender representing kids placed in foster care, has watched Oregon struggle to find appropriate placements for kids for years. In 2019, she represented a 9-year-old girl who was sent to a facility in Montana where she was drugged and largely abandoned by the state of Oregon. Shortly after that story became public and the child returned to Oregon, other cases of abuse were raised and the facility was shuttered.
What is truly needed in Oregon for kids placed in foster care is in short supply, Smith said.
“(We need) really skilled, well-paid community based resource parents, or to the largest extent possible we keep kids within their family,” Smith said.
Officials warn of contaminated water as mass flooding continues in Northeast
State officials across the U.S Northeast are warning residents about contaminated water following mass floods last week that swept raw sewage, pesticides, runoff fuel and other types of pollutants into private and public water systems.
Health officials in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts have issued advisories this week cautioning that water sources across the region might not be safe to drink and physical contact could lead to rashes, sore throats and bacterial infections.
The warnings follow storms that dumped more than a foot of rain on some areas, prompting flash floods that inundated rivers and streams and killed at least seven people in the region. Run off from the storms has also polluted local waterways and wells with contaminants from fuel tanks, farms and flooded homes, officials said.
VERMONT TOWN HIT WITH HISTORIC FLOODING
“If you’re in a flooded area and get your water from a well or spring, assume your water is contaminated,” the Vermont Department of Health warned as part of its flood recovery plan.
Well water is not currently recommended for drinking, cooking, washing food or for brushing teeth until testing can be done, the health department said.
Because of Vermont’s heavy concentration of dairy and produce farms, it is likely that large amounts of pesticides and other chemical contaminants were washed into local waterways, said Ben Truman, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health.
“Even though they usually do a good job, most of the farms were hit pretty badly, so whatever was on the soil, from manure to pesticides … that ends up in the lakes and streams,” he said.
SEVERE WEATHER FROM MIDWEST TO MID-ATLANTIC BRINGS TORNADO, FLASH FLOODING RISKS
In Massachusetts, the city of Holyoke said this week that millions of gallons of discharge consisting of rainwater and untreated sewage or partially treated sewage had leaked into the Connecticut River.
City pipes in western Massachusetts were designed to open into the river in the event of severe overflow instead of into homes or streets.
As New England’s longest river, the Connecticut River runs through Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont and provides 70 percent of all the fresh water entering Long Island Sound, according to the Connecticut River Conservancy.
Boil water advisories are in effect across much of Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of Massachusetts.
Yankees’ Aaron Judge weighs in on Shohei Ohtani’s home run pace: ‘Records are meant to be broken’
New York Yankees star Aaron Judge stole the show in 2022, setting the American League record for home runs in a single season with 62.
Judge passed Roger Maris on Oct. 4, 2022, 61 years after Maris broke Babe Ruth’s AL single-season record.
Nine months later, the baseball world is already discussing Judge’s record being broken.
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Los Angeles Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani entered Wednesday night’s game against the Yankees with a league-leading 35 home runs, on pace to finish the season with 60.
Judge would be perfectly fine if Ohtani got even hotter in MLB’s second half, taking the AL home record away from the Yankees star.
“Records are meant to be broken, It would be exciting for the game if he went out there and got 63-plus. So, we’ll see what happens,” Judge said Wednesday before the Yankees lost to the Angels.
Ohtani had a torrid month of June, launching 15 home runs and hitting .394 at the plate while posting a 3.26 ERA on the mound.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
On Monday, Ohtani hit his 35th home run as the Angels came back to take the first game of a three-game series from New York.
“Physically, even like Shohei he can hit 100 home runs, 80 home runs. He’s got that type of talent just like so many other guys in this league, But it’s moments like that, it’s about just mentally being able to block out the noise or lack of noise in those moments,” Judge said.
Judge has not played since June 3, when he injured his toe against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Since the injury, the Yankees have gone into a nosedive, going 15-22 without their star.
New York was swept by the Angels on Wednesday, dropping their fourth game in a row.
“We stink right now. We acknowledge that,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We’ve got to be better. We all understand where we are at. We’re seeing some guys make progress and move the needle a little bit and get a little bit healthier, but we still got a ways to go.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report