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Div. 1 softball: Central Catholic holds off Peabody

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

LOWELL — It was pretty ugly at times for Central Catholic on Tuesday in the Div. 1 softball semifinals against No. 5 Peabody. But with one swing of an unlikely hero’s bat, the ugliness turned to beauty.No. 9 batter Bella Boyer rocked River View Field with a two-run homer in the fifth inning that gave the top-seeded Raiders a lead it never relinquished in a 4-2 win over the Tanners.Central (23-1) advances to face either Taunton or King Philip at UMass Amherst this weekend for a state title.“I’m just happy that I could get a hit like that for the team,” Boyer said.One of those people not truly surprised that Boyer came up huge was Central coach Stacy Ciccolo.“We have a lot of faith in Bella,” Ciccolo said. “We like having her in that spot so we can turn the order around.”The Raiders were fortunate to be in a 2-2 tie as they left nine on base over the first four innings against Peabody’s Abby Bettencourt. Central also committed three errors and saw Logan Lomasney and Bettencourt homer ...

Defense dominates, Bailey Zappe sees reps increase and more Patriots Day 2 minicamp takeaways

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

FOXBORO — The Patriots offense will be a slow burn.Progress is the message and focus as they rebuild from the rubble of last season. Mac Jones has dusted himself enough off to believe Bill O’Brien’s system can and should inspire hope, if not belief, for the 2023 season. Life will be different in Foxboro when the Patriots have the ball.But when they don’t? When Bill Belichick’s defense prowls the field, sneering and hunting from sideline to sideline? Forget hope.It’s time to convert already.Early signs are the next Patriots defense will be fast, deep and multiple. Violent, vicious and deceptive. This unit forced Jones and Bailey Zappe to pump the ball and hang in the pocket repeatedly during team drills this spring, including Tuesday’s minicamp practice.Jones tossed two picks, while thumping safeties, freak man-cover cornerbacks and pass-rushers took turns flashing all across the field. Defense dominated every 11-on-11 period to the point players b...

Connecticut’s David Pastore leads Massachusetts Open after two rounds

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

David Pastore of Stamford, Conn., will take a two-shot lead into Wednesday’s third and final round of the 113th Massachusetts Open Championship.Pastore fired rounds of 68 and 66 to reach 10-under at TPC Boston in Norton. In second place was amateur John Broderick. Broderick, playing out of Dedham Country & Polo Club, has been consistent, carding rounds of 68 and 68.One shot back of Broderick in a four-way tie for third place at 7-under were Kyle Gallo of Berlin, Conn. (70-67), Brad Adamonis of Ponte Vedra, Fla. (68-69), Mike Van Sickle of Wexford, Pa. (71-66) and Nicholas Pandelena of Atkinson, N.H. (68-69).The inaugural event was won in 1905 when the legendary Donald Ross was the winner at Vesper Country Club in Tyngsboro. 

Bodycam video shows armed man killed in police shooting on MTS trolley

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- San Diego police on Tuesday released bodycam video of an officer shooting and killing an armed man at a South Bay transit center.Police received a call on June 6 about a report of a disturbance with a weapon at the Iris Avenue Trolley Station in San Ysidro.Around 8:45 p.m., surveillance video on the MTS UC San Diego Blue Line initially caught the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Mauricio Sanchez Ramos, acting erratically as he rocked back and forth in his seat on the trolley.Moments later, the video shows the suspect pull what appeared to be a gun from his waistband and then pace and wave the weapon in front of passengers on the trolley. As the train arrives at the San Ysidro Station, Ramos is seen walking up to the security camera and pointing the gun at it. Bartender fighting for life after hit-and-run while walking to work When officers arrived on scene, they approached the trolley where there appeared to be no one onboard besides the suspect.Officers open the t...

Teacher who was shot by 6-year-old student in Virginia has resigned, school officials say

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

The first-grade teacher who was shot by her 6-year-old student in Virginia has resigned from her position, school officials said Tuesday, more than two months after she sued the district for $40 million. The last day of Abby Zwerner’s contract was Monday, Newport News Public Schools said in a statement. The district said that Zwerner notified human resources in March that she wouldn’t be returning next school year.Zwerner, 25, was shot in the hand and chest as she sat at a reading table in her first-grade classroom on Jan. 6. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, has endured multiple surgeries and told NBC that she sometimes “ can’t get up out of bed.”Zwerner filed her lawsuit in early April, alleging that school officials ignored multiple warnings that the boy had a gun and was in a violent mood that day. The school board has pushed back, asking a judge to dismiss the case and arguing that Zwerner should get workers compensation instead. WAVY-TV first reported tha...

Michigan Republican chairperson Karamo, others ordered to pay legal fees for failed election lawsuit

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — A judge this week ordered Michigan Republican Party Chairperson Kristina Karamo and others to pay more than $58,000 in legal fees incurred by the Detroit clerk’s office to fight a lawsuit they filed challenging absentee voting in the city.In an order signed Monday, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kenny said the Oct. 26 lawsuit in which Karamo was the lead plaintiff was “rife with speculation, an absence of facts and a lack of understanding of Michigan election statutes and Detroit absentee ballot procedures.”At the time, Karamo was the Republican nominee for secretary of state, a position that serves as Michigan’s top election official. Two weeks after the suit was filed, Karamo lost to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 percentage points before being elected the state GOP chairperson in February.“Plaintiffs merely threw out the allegation of ‘corruption in Detroit’ as the reason for disregarding the Michigan Constitution in this state’s largest city,” Kenny wrote...

Amazon says AWS is operating normally after outage that left publishers unable to operate websites

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services experienced an outage on Tuesday, affecting publishers that suddenly found themselves unable to operate their sites.The company said on its website that the root cause of the issue was tied to a service called AWS Lambda, which lets customers run code for different types of applications.Roughly two hours after customers began experiencing errors, the company posted on its AWS status page that many of the affected AWS services were “fully recovered” and it was continuing to recover the rest. Soon after 6:30 pm E.T., the company announced all AWS services were operating normally.Amazon said it had experienced multiple error rates for AWS services in the Northern Virginia region where it clusters data centers. The company said customers may be dealing with authentication or sign-in errors when using some AWS services, and experiencing challenges when attempting to connect with AWS Support. The issue with Lambda also indir...

Biden dispatching Sullivan to Tokyo for talks with Japan, Philippines, South Korea officials

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is dispatching White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Tokyo this week for talks with his counterparts from Japan, Philippines and South Korea.Sullivan will also take part in “the first-ever trilateral meeting of the Japanese, Philippine, and U.S. national security advisers” while in Japan, the White House National Security Council said in a statement Tuesday. The White House offered scant details about Sullivan’s two-day visit that begins Thursday, saying Sullivan and his counterparts “will discuss ways to deepen collaboration on a number of key regional and global issues.”Sullivan’s visit comes after U.S., Japanese and Philippine coast guard ships staged law enforcement drills in waters near the disputed South China Sea earlier this month. Washington has stepped up efforts to reinforce alliances in Asia amid an increasingly tense rivalry with China.Washington lays no claims to the strategic South China Sea, whe...

Prosecutors accuse weapons expert in Baldwin case of drinking, smoking

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The weapons supervisor on the film set where Alec Baldwin shot and killed a cinematographer was drinking and smoking marijuana in the evenings during the filming of “Rust,” prosecutors are accusing, saying she was likely hungover when she loaded a live bullet into the revolver that the actor used. They leveled the accusations Friday in response to a motion filed last month by Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys that seeks to dismiss her involuntary manslaughter charge. The prosecutors accused her of having a history of reckless conduct and argued that it would be in the public interest for her to “finally be held accountable.”Jason Bowles, Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney, said Tuesday that the prosecution has mishandled the case.“The case is so weak that they now have chosen to resort to character assassination claims about Hannah,” Bowles told The Associated Press. “The prosecution has abandoned the idea of doing justice and getting to the actual truth apparently.”...

Court exonerates Ontario man convicted of killing toddler decades ago

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:31:00 GMT

A man who was labelled a “baby killer” for nearly three decades says he’s relieved to be exonerated in the 1996 death of his 17-month-old stepson after a conviction that relied on the testimony of a disgraced pathologist.“The justice system has worked for me at last,” Bernard Doyle said in a statement.Doyle, who was found guilty of manslaughter in 1997, said he was dancing with Tyler Cunningham in his arms when he accidentally tripped and fell, dropping his partner’s son on construction tools that were scattered nearby. Tyler died in the hospital soon after.The Ontario Court of Appeal said in a decision published Tuesday it is acquitting Doyle because flawed evidence from then-pathologist Charles Smith convinced the court at the time that Tyler died from a combination of blunt force trauma and shaken baby syndrome, but fresh evidence has discredited those claims.“I am very relieved and grateful for what happened,” Doyle said, adding th...