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WestJet CEO pledges fares will not rise due to airline mergers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech says bringing Swoop and Sunwing Airlines under its banner won’t lead to higher airfares, since integrating the discount carriers will also tamp down costs.Canada’s second-biggest airline will be able to swap out planes more easily and expand the range of destinations for travellers on the hunt for cheap tickets, the chief executive said in a phone interview Wednesday.“I don’t think this will mean higher fares,” he said.“With the scale, we will actually be able to operate more efficiently and also more reliably, because if something goes wrong, if it’s a small airline then it’s far more difficult for them to recover,” von Hoensbroech said. He pointed out the broad pool of reserve aircraft WestJet can draw on — unlike Swoop and Sunwing on their own, which count 16 and 18 planes, respectively.Nearly all 150-odd planes now under the WestJet, Swoop and Sunwing brands — the figure does not include reg...

EPA boosts use of biofuels but holds steady for corn-based ethanol production

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday increased the amount of biofuels that must be blended into the nation’s fuel supplies over the next three years, but held production totals steady for corn-based ethanol, disappointing the biofuel industry and farm advocates.A plan finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency sets biofuel blending volumes at 20.94 billion gallons in 2023, 21.54 billion gallons in 2024 and 22.33 billion gallons in 2025. The totals under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard are higher than levels set for 2022 and earlier years, but include just 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol in all three years.Most gasoline sold in the U.S. contains 10% ethanol, and the fuel is a key part of the economy in Iowa, Nebraska and other Midwest states. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the final rule would reduce reliance on foreign sources of oil by up to 140,000 barrels per day and support continued growth of biofuels that produce fewer greenhouse gas...

Former AP journalist and spokesman Jack Stokes dies at 73

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Jack Stokes, a veteran journalist with The Associated Press who was the news cooperative’s steadfast supporter and served as its spokesman during the last years of his decades-long career before his retirement, has died. He was 73.Stokes, an avid cyclist and athlete, died unexpectedly after collapsing at his home in Queens on Sunday evening, said his longtime partner, Lorene Bradshaw.He was remembered fondly by former colleagues as a calm, funny and charming presence everywhere from shifts working overnight in his early days to the company’s basketball league that ran for a few years toward the end of his time at the AP.“Jack was a beloved colleague to generations of AP employees and at many times felt like our center of gravity,” said Josh Hoffner, national news director for the AP. “He loved the camaraderie of the AP and enhanced it every day.”The widely known and outgoing Stokes was often a bridge among AP’s various departments, making regular st...

Maryland’s highest court limits use of ballistics evidence at trials

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A firearms expert who testified at a Maryland murder trial shouldn’t have been allowed to offer an unqualified opinion that bullets recovered from a crime scene came from the suspect’s gun, the state’s highest court concluded in a ruling that will limit the use such testimony in the state’s courts.The Supreme Court of Maryland ruled in a 4-3 decision this week in an appeal by Kobina Ebo Abruquah, who was convicted of murder in 2013 after the court allowed a firearms examiner to testify without qualification that bullets at a crime scene were fired from a gun that Abruquah had acknowledged was his. Chief Judge Matthew Fader, who wrote the ruling, noted that the majority doesn’t question that firearms identification is generally reliable. He wrote that it can be helpful to a jury in identifying whether patterns and markings on “unknown” bullets or cartridges “are consistent or inconsistent with those on bullets or cartridges kn...

Rules allow transgender woman at Wyoming chapter, and a court can’t interfere, sorority says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A national sorority has defended allowing a transgender woman into its University of Wyoming chapter, saying in a new court motion that the chapter followed sorority rules despite a lawsuit from seven women in the organization who argued the opposite.Seven members of Kappa Kappa Gamma at Wyoming’s only four-year state university sued in March, saying the sorority violated its own rules by admitting Artemis Langford last year. Six of the women refiled the lawsuit in May after a judge twice barred them from suing anonymously.The Kappa Kappa Gamma motion to dismiss, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, is the sorority’s first substantive response to the lawsuit, other than a March statement by its executive director, Kari Kittrell Poole, that the complaint contains “numerous false allegations.”“The central issue in this case is simple: do the plaintiffs have a legal right to be in a sorority that excludes transgender women? They do not,” t...

House poised to censure Rep. Adam Schiff over Trump-Russia investigations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff was defiant Wednesday as the Republican-led House prepared to censure him over his comments made several years ago during investigations into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. He said he will wear the formal disapproval as a “badge of honor” and charged his GOP colleagues of doing the former president’s bidding. “I will not yield,” said Schiff, who is running for Senate in his home state of California, during debate over the measure. “Not one inch.” More than 20 Republicans voted with Democrats last week to block the censure resolution, but they are changing their votes this week after the measure’s sponsor, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, removed a provision that could have fined Schiff $16 million if the House Ethics Committee determines he lied. Several of the Republicans who opposed the resolution last week said they opposed fining a member of Congress in that manner. The revised resolution says that Sc...

Live updates | Undersea robots may be key to finding missing submersible

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

Follow along for live updates on the submersible that vanished while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic. ____UNDERSEA EXPLORATION ROBOTS CRITICAL IN SEARCH FOR MISSING SUBMERSIBLERemote-operated robots that are typically used for undersea exploration will instead be critical to any hope of finding the Titan.There were two such remotely operated vehicles — or ROVs – in North Atlantic waters on Wednesday, with more on the way.Designed to scan the sea floor in real time, the ROVs are outfitted with cameras and travel to depths many other vessels cannot.ROVs have been used for undersea exploration since at least the mid-1980s, according to deep-sea explorer Katy Croff Bell, who is president of Ocean Discovery League.The vessels are expensive to use and their method of data collection can be slow and painstaking, which is partly why scientists know so little about the ocean floor even after years of exploration.But the ROVs might be the only way to find the Titan after t...

Cost of search for missing submersible ‘irrelevant,’ fisheries minister says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

HALIFAX — As the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard continued about 700 kilometres south of Newfoundland, two federal cabinet ministers came forward Wednesday to say the Canadian government’s focus is on saving lives, not on the cost of the rescue operation.In Ottawa, the minister responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard, Joyce Murray, said the mounting bills for the United States-led mission were “irrelevant” as long as there was a chance of saving those on the 6.4-metre Titan submersible, which was reported missing Sunday after it set off to explore the wreck of the Titanic.“We are going to do everything that we can,” Murray told reporters. “We have a chance to find this submersible and bring people to the surface …. I think there’s nothing that’s too much. These are human beings and we need to do what we can to save them.”Defence Minister Anita Anand said much the same later when she confirmed the Royal Canadia...

Employees angry after Toyota's Kansas City office serves only watermelon for Juneteenth

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) — A national employer is under fire from some of its own Kansas City workers after they said the company served only watermelon to celebrate Juneteenth.Those employees also said they have photos to prove it.“Acknowledge us as people. Stop taking us as a joke," said Jarret Bolden, an employee at Toyota.It happened at the Toyota distribution center in Kansas City. Two workers spoke exclusively to Nexstar's WDAF, and the company explained how it all happened. In pictures below provided to WDAF, you can see the only food offered was watermelon.(Kimberly McCarthy)"I turned around and asked a member that's on the DNI team — which is the diversity and inclusion team — I said, 'What the heck? This isn't OK.' And he just laughed," said Kim McCarthy, who has worked at the plant for nine years.WDAF asked McCarthy if they served anything else, and she responded, "No, just watermelon."Bolden has worked at the plant for four years. As a Black man, he said things like ...

Travis County doctors encourage opioid treatment to reduce 'rapid rise' in overdose deaths

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:23:24 GMT

Editor’s Note: The video above shows KXAN News Today’s top headlines for June 21, 2023AUSTIN (KXAN) – In a town hall Wednesday, Travis County medical professionals encouraged doctors to provide drugs like buprenorphine to patients with opioid use disorders to try and slow down the growing number of opioid-related deaths in Central Texas. “The most recent Travis County coroners report shows increasing opioid-related overdose deaths in our community. This is not only a national trend but a local one,” said Dr. Blair Walker, Chief of Psychiatry at Dell Seton Medical Center, one of the physicians speaking at the town hall. Opioid deaths by the numbersLast year, more Americans died of opioid-related overdoses than any year on record. While the national trend is evening out – the number of deaths increased by only .6% percent nationwide – the number of fatalities in Texas increased by a rate of over 9%.“Texas is not good at capturing and reporting overdose deaths. There are a lot of chall...