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Sports betting advocacy group tagged with largest elections board fine in Maryland history

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

A consortium of top gambling companies was slapped Tuesday with the largest fine in the history of the Maryland State Board of Elections.The $48,000 fine levied against Sports Betting Alliance was assessed for failing to comply with the state’s 48-hour disclosure requirements.“We’re cracking down hard on disclosure with independent expenditure entities and that was the biggest one that was collected so far,” said Jared DeMarinis, director of candidacy and campaign finance for the board.DeMarinis will become the state elections administrator in September.The state Board of Elections collected nearly $75,000 in fines between April and May. The penalties are for violations including failures to keep campaign donation and expenditure records properly, as well as failures to record contributions and expenditures.Most of the penalties assessed were $1,200 or less. Many of those were for $100 or less.In all, 28 entities were fined a total of $74,900. Of that, nearly 91% — about $68,000 inv...

Stock market today: Falling tech stocks slow Wall Street’s rally and leave it mixed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Tech stocks are falling Wednesday, keeping Wall Street mixed and sapping more momentum from its five-week rally. The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower in afternoon trading. It’s on pace for a third straight pullback after rallying last week to its highest level in more than a year. The Nasdaq composite was lagging the market and down 0.7% as of 3 p.m. Eastern time. Slightly more stocks were rising than falling on Wall Street, though, particularly in the energy and industrial industries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 5 points, or less than 0.1%, at 34,059.Wall Street has been on a tear this year, and the S&P 500 has rallied roughly 14% amid hopes that inflation is coming down quickly enough for the Federal Reserve to stop hiking interest rates soon, which could allow the economy to avoid a recession. Some analysts say the rally ran too far, too fast while inflation has remained stubbornly high, which may force the Fed to keep rates higher for longer.Fed Chair J...

Aventura police officer arrested by Broward Sheriff’s Office on multiple charges

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

A police officer from Aventura was arrested and booked into the Broward County Jail. David Esteban Delgado, 30, is facing charges including two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of being armed while engaged in a criminal offense, and one count of battery.The arrest comes after a complaint was filed on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, regarding an incident that occurred in Pompano Beach on Saturday, May 20, 2023, at approximately 10:15 PM. The initial allegations against the officer involved misuse of authority and false arrest. Following the complaint, an immediate internal affairs investigation was launched by the Aventura Police Department, and the officer in question was suspended with pay.Given that the incident occurred within Broward County’s jurisdiction, the Broward County Sheriff’s Public Corruptions Division took over the investigation. The Aventura Police Department has fully cooperated with the Broward Sheriff’...

Pentagon documents leak suspect Jack Teixeira pleads not guilty to federal charges

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking highly classified military documents on a social media platform, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal felony charges.Teixeira, 21, entered the pleas during a hearing in Worcester’s federal court days after he was indicted by a grand jury on six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.Handcuffed and wearing orange jail garb, Teixeira smiled at family seated in the gallery at the start of the hearing. He stood at the defense table next to his lawyers and leaned over to say “not guilty, your honor” into the microphone after the judge read each count. The judge also denied a defense request to reconsider his detention order.Teixeira, of North Dighton, has been behind bars since his April arrest on charges stemming from the most consequential intelligence leak in years. A mag...

State rests in trial of former school resource officer who stayed outside during Parkland shooting

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

(CNN) — The prosecution rested its case Wednesday in the trial of the former school resource officer who stayed outside a Parkland, Florida, high school while 17 people were killed and 17 others were wounded during a February 2018 mass shooting.Throughout their case, prosecutors sought to portray Scot Peterson, then a deputy with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, as a law enforcement officer who failed to appropriately respond during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School despite years of service and active shooter training.Instead, the state alleges, Peterson took cover outside the scene, the school’s 1200 building, for more than 45 minutes.“You’re supposed to go towards the shots to find out, investigate what’s going on,” Detective John Curcio of the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the state’s final witness, testified Wednesday. He was the lead investigator in the case against the shooter.“The goal is to stop (the shooter) from killing people,” said Curcio,...

‘It’s going to be a challenging couple of weeks’: Fire chief discusses damage after lightning strike at Hudson fire station

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

Hudson Fire Chief Bryan Johannes said the cost of repairs will be significant after a lightning strike damaged one of the Hudson Fire Department’s fire stations over the weekend. The strike happened during a thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon. The fire department’s station at 1 Washington Street is now closed, as a result, and crews are instead responding out of the department’s headquarters on Cox Street in down. “It’s going to be a challenging couple of weeks,” Johannes said of the road ahead. The town of Hudson was incorporated back in the 1860s. The 1 Washington Street fire station was then built in the 1890s. Well over 100 years later, this weekend’s lightning hit the structure’s historic bell tower, damaging computers, the phone system and the building’s fire alarm system, according to Johannes. “Those shingles disintegrated and shards were thrown all over the place,” Johannes said. The hole left behind by the lightning strike was still visible in the ...

Healey leading new push for sex ed updates

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

Gov. Maura Healey moved Wednesday to update the state’s sex education guidelines for the first time in 24 years.The updates are “inclusive, medically accurate and age appropriate,” Healey said at a State House press conference about the proposal, which she said covers LGBTQ+ health and wellness, mental and emotional health, personal safety, bodily autonomy, dating safety, violence prevention, physical health and hygiene, nutritionally balanced eating, physical activity, substance use disorder, and public, community and environmental health.In proposing the regulatory updates, the governor is trying to accomplish by the start of next school year something that lawmakers have been unable to accomplish for over a decade.Healey’s description of the framework covers much of the same ground and language as legislation aimed at updating schools’ approaches to sex education, a bill that has died several sessions in a row in the Massachusetts House.The Senate ha...

Aquarium welcomes Bray, a recently hatched endangered African penguin

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

A new African penguin made her public debut at the New England Aquarium Wednesday. Bray hatched in late March and is now fully grown and able to join the rest of the penguins. Aquarium staff said breeding more of these penguins could help save the endangered species.“Their population has diminished by about 97% over the past 100 years so unfortunately there’s only about 10,400 pairs left in the wild as of last summer,” Brendan Dugan of the New England Aquarium said. “We’ve had 108 African penguin chicks over the New England Aquarium’s history, (Bray) being our first African penguin chick since 2019.” Bray joins some of her relatives in the penguin exhibit, including her great-grandmother Deco, the oldest penguin at the aquarium at age 41.

MASN: Orioles, Nationals reach agreement on some past payments, but others are headed to more arbitration

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

After more than a decade of dispute over precisely how much the Orioles and Washington Nationals each were owed by the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network for 2012 to 2016, the two clubs have reached a settlement, according to a person familiar with the agreement.The network, majority-owned by the Baltimore club, will pay both teams $99.2 million, according to the person, who said the calculation of interest payments, had been among the sticking points. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because neither team had made an announcement.The settlement closes a lengthy, bitter chapter between the teams during which they disagreed over the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars for the broadcast rights to each teams’ games.But it does not necessarily end the quarrel between the clubs.Going forward, they must agree on how much each are owed beyond 2016. That determination is to be made by a Major League Baseball arbitration panel that has not yet convened a hearing on th...

Accused military secrets leaker Jack Teixeira pleads not guilty to the charges

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:20:50 GMT

WORCESTER — The Massachusetts Air National Guard member who is accused of sharing sensitive military secrets has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.Jack Teixeira, 21, of North Dighton, appeared in federal court in Worcester Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to all six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relating to national defense a federal grand jury leveled against him six days before.Teixeira was walked into Courtroom One right on time, 3:45 p.m., and offered his family seated in the front left benches a sustained smile, with a quick glance toward the media on the other side of the courtroom, as he was uncuffed. His attorneys waived a reading of his indictment.“We remain as committed as ever and our entire family continues to share complete and unwavering support of Jack as he faces this matter,” his family wrote in a statement distributed right after the hearing.“The important thing is Jack will now have his day in ...