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Guregian: Emptying the notebook after a 38-year run at the Herald

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

Muhammad Ali clenched his fists, put up his dukes, and urged me to engage.Standing a few feet in front of him, looking at the sparkle in his eyes, I was equal parts amused, awed, and perplexed. Was he really asking me to throw a few jabs?You bet he was. And if a boxing legend asks you to shadow-box with him during the course of an interview, there shouldn’t be any hesitation. Just dive right in.And I did so with absolute pleasure.This was one of the countless pinch-yourself type of assignments the Herald sent me on during my 38-year run with the paper. Ali, who was in town in November 1994 to receive the Courage of Conscience Award at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, also made an appearance at a local college during his stay.That’s where I found him, along with his unusual greeting.I guess this was the champ’s way of playfully testing me before we chatted. While it still seems surreal many years later, Ali and I actually traded shadow punches for a bit. He won by TKO, since I was ...

MassGOP identifies $262G+ in media invoices it says Geoff Diehl campaign responsible for

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

The Massachusetts Republican Party says that its own audit of its whopping debt shows that at least $262,620 in media invoices should properly be billed to the campaign of Geoff Diehl, who lost his campaign for governor last year.“Thus far, while we continue to review various documents, we have determined that at least two invoices that were included in the total billed to the MassGOP for Diehl campaign TV ads should in fact be billed to the Diehl for Governor campaign,” MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale wrote to Bruce Mittman, the president of Needham marketing agency MITTCOM, in a letter dated Thursday.In total, MITTCOM had billed nearly $440,000 to the state party — part of the huge $600,000 debt the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) said the party was on the hook for.At the time of the audit finding, Carnevale — who beat out former Chairman Jim Lyons, who was running for a third term, in January — wrote that $404,000 of the unpaid invoices she inherited upon a...

Tree Alliance program to help preserve Boston’s canopy

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

Mayor Michelle Wu has organized a coalition dedicated to providing resources to residents who have trees growing on their properties but might not be aware of how to properly care for them.Mass Audubon will lead a group of two dozen strategic nonprofits from under-resourced communities in collaborating with residents about the tools that are needed to preserve tree growth.“If we are serious about preserving and expanding this tree canopy, we not only have to take public efforts where we have full jurisdiction but also make sure we can provide support on private land,” Wu said Friday when announcing the creation of the Tree Alliance.More than 60% of the city’s trees are on private land, the mayor said, and the Tree Alliance will at first focus on what environmentalists call ‘environmental justice communities,’ those that are primarily of color and have many residents below the poverty line.“Because of redlining and systemic disinvestment,” Wu said, “tree canopy is already less ...

Thailand counts votes in key election with opposition favored to win

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Vote counting was underway Sunday in Thailand’s general election, touted as a pivotal chance for change nine years after incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha first came to power in a 2014 coup. He is now running against the daughter of the politician who is the military’s top nemesis.The polls closed at 5 p.m. and some results were expected in early evening, with a fuller picture coming later Sunday night. Thai elections use paper ballots that are counted publicly at polling stations. The opposition Pheu Thai Party, headed by Paetongtarn Shinawatra, is widely predicted to win at least a healthy plurality of the seats in the 500-member lower House. After casting her ballot, Paetongtarn said every vote is important for effecting change in Thailand and that she has high hopes for the final result.But who heads the next government won’t by decided by Sunday’s vote alone. The prime minister will be selected in July in a joint session of the Ho...

Powerful Cyclone Mocha makes landfall in Myanmar, tearing off roofs and killing at least 3

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Thousands of people hunkered down Sunday in monasteries, pagodas and schools, seeking shelter from a powerful storm that slammed into the coast of Myanmar, tearing the roofs off buildings and killing at least three people.The center of Cyclone Mocha made landfall Sunday afternoon in Myanmar’s Rakhine state near Sittwe township wind speeds up to 209 kilometers (130 miles) per hour, Myanmar’s Meteorological Department said.Myanmar’s military information office said the storm had damaged houses, electrical transformers, cell phone towers, boats and lampposts in Sittwe, Kyaukpyu, and Gwa townships. It said the storm also tore roofs off of sport buildings on the Coco Islands, about 425 kilometers (264 miles) southwest of the country’s largest city, Yangon.Rakhine-based media reported that streets and basements of the houses in Sittwe’s low-lying areas were flooded. Much of the area is cut off from telephone and internet service after high winds crumpled cell phon...

Ukrainian president says counteroffensive does not aim to attack Russian territory

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday his country is preparing a counteroffensive designed to liberate areas occupied by Russia, not to attack Russian territory.Speaking during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s goal is to free the territories within its internationally recognized borders.Scholz told Zelenskyy that Germany will support Ukraine “for as long as necessary.”Zelenskyy was welcomed with military honors Sunday as he made his first visit to Germany since Russia invaded Ukraine.The Ukrainian president is visiting allies in search of further arms deliveries to help his country fend off the Russian invasion, and funds to rebuild what’s been destroyed by more than a year of devastating conflict.A Luftwaffe jet flew Zelenskyy to the German capital from Rome, where he had met Saturday with Pope Francis and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.On the eve of his arrival — which is taking place amid ti...

A timeline of negotiations toward the Volkswagen battery plant in Canada

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

OTTAWA — March 15, 2021: Volkswagen AG announces its intention to build six new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plants by 2030.March 17, 2022: Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne cold calls Scott Keogh, who was then the CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, and invites him to Canada for a meeting.April 27, 2022: The regional board members of Volkswagen in North America travel to Toronto to meet with Champagne and Vic Fedeli, minister of economic development in Ontario. Some executives from Volkswagen’s headquarters in Germany join virtually.May 9-13, 2022: Champagne travels to Germany for the first time and meets with Volkswagen executives.May 22-26, 2022: Champagnes speaks again with Volkswagen leadership on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.July 7: Volkswagen launches a new subsidiary, PowerCo, to manage its battery factories and breaks ground on its first gigafactory in Salzgitter, Germany.Aug. 16, 2022: President ...

How an ‘energizer bunny,’ cheeseburgers and $14 billion helped Canada woo Volkswagen

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

The $14-billion deal that will see Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, set up a manufacturing presence in Canada for the first time in history, took a year of negotiations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.But the talks that led Volkswagen to choose southwestern Ontario for the location of its first battery plant outside Europe all started with a whim.Out of the blue in early 2022, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne decided he should call the company’s then-North American CEO, Scott Keogh. His staff dug up the number.Champagne said in an interview with The Canadian Press that he’d never met Keogh before, but he got him on the phone on St. Patrick’s Day last year. “I introduced myself, and I said, ‘Listen, here I am, Minister Champagne from Canada. I would like to start a discussion.'”Volkswagen has sold cars in Canada for decades, but it has never made them here. Still, like other large automakers, it is making the transi...

Pipeline plot twist: where Line 5 threatens nature, now nature is a threat to Line 5

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

WASHINGTON — The controversial Canada-U.S. oil and gas conduit known as Line 5 could be facing its toughest challenger yet: the very watershed the pipeline’s detractors are trying to protect. Spring flooding has washed away significant portions of the riverbank where Line 5 intersects Wisconsin’s Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course through Indigenous territory that feeds Lake Superior and a complex network of ecologically delicate wetlands.The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa has been in court with Alberta energy giant Enbridge Inc. since 2019 in an effort to compel the pipeline’s owner and operator to reroute Line 5 around its traditional territory.But last month, Mother Nature raised the stakes. “There can be little doubt now that the small amount of remaining bank could be eroded and the pipeline undermined and breached in short order,” the band’s lawyers argued in an emergency motion filed last week. “Very little ma...

Literary calendar for week of May 14

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:25 GMT

ABOUT “YOUNG MUNGO”: Authors Euan Kerr and Deborah Schlick introduce and discuss Douglas Stuard’s “Young Mungo,” in a book appreciation event. 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 16, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.ANTONIA DEIGNAN: Presents “Underwater Daughter.” 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 16, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.TOVE DANOVICH: Taps into the renewed interest in keeping chickens in urban areas with “Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them,” inspired by the eight chickens in her suburban yard in Portland, Ore. In her book she looks at the history of domesticated chickens and interviews people breeding, training, healing and adoring chickens, from a hatchery in Iowa to a chicken show in Ohio to a rooster rescue in Minnesota. 7 p.m. Monday, May 15, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.EVELYN KLEIN: Minnesota independent scholar discusses the poet as historian an...