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Republican Mike Johnson has secured enough votes to become House speaker as ballot draws to a close

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., vice chair of the House GOP Conference talks to reporters as he arrives to the Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)(AP/Jose Luis Magana) Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., vice chair of the House GOP Conference talks to reporters as he arrives to the Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)(AP/Jose Luis Magana) WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Mike Johnson easily secured enough votes to be elected House speaker on Wednesday, as Republicans were eagerly elevating the little-known conservative leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their ...

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana has secured enough votes to become speaker of the House as the ballot draws to a close

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana has secured enough votes to become speaker of the House as the ballot draws to a close.Source

Browns QB Deshaun Watson out against Seahawks because of right shoulder injury

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

BEREA, Ohio (AP) — Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson will not play again this week with a strained right shoulder, a nagging injury that has already cost him three games and lingered much longer than expected.Coach Kevin Stefanski said P.J. Walker will start for Watson on Sunday when the Browns (4-2) visit the Seattle Seahawks (4-2). Stefanski made the announcement before Wednesday’s practice, and said Watson won’t practice this week to focus on his rehab.Stefanski said Watson, who started last week at Indianapolis but left after just 12 plays, did not sustain any additional damage to his shoulder in the brief outing against the Colts. He initially hurt it on Sept. 27 against Tennessee.Stefanski said Watson has “residual swelling” in his shoulder. There has been no consideration for surgery, the coach said.Watson returned to practice last week for the first time since hurting it on a running play against the Titans. Although he was listed as questionable, he started ...

1st major storm of the season drops up to a foot of snow in Montana

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The first major snowstorm of the season dropped up to a foot (30 centimeters) of snow in the Helena, Montana, area by Wednesday morning, canceling some school bus routes on the western side of the city as snow continued to fall throughout the morning.Residents woke up to swirling snow, the sound of shovels on sidewalks and snowplows on pavement just days after temperatures rose into the lower 80s. Trees with orange leaves and Halloween decorations were weighed down with snow. The National Weather Service warned of hazardous travel on snowy mountain passes and ice on some highways when snow initially melts and then freezes as road temperatures drop. The storm was forecast to come in waves, beginning with precipitation that fell Tuesday as rain at lower elevations in Washington state and as snow in the mountains. The snow was then forecast to spread across northern Idaho, Montana, northwestern Wyoming and North Dakota into Friday.Cold air moving down from northwes...

CSP warns motorists to stay sober or off the road this Halloween weekend

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — While kids are roaming the streets in search of candy, good-natured frights and fun, adults may be seeking less innocent pastimes during Halloween.The Colorado State Patrol is warning anyone consuming alcohol or other substances during the holiday weekend to plan ahead for a sober ride home. When was the last time Denver saw snow? There are many options in the Denver area, including ride-sharing applications like Lyft and Uber, as well as public transportation, like RTD.So far in the month of October, the Colorado Department of Transportation has distributed more than $23,000 in Uber discounts throughout its partnership with Uber and the Governors Highway Safety Association. This has resulted in over 6,900 sober rides.In 2022, CDOT reported 278 deaths from impaired driving, out of the total 754 lives lost on Colorado roadways throughout the year. Colorado's impaired fatalities rose almost 6% from 2021, and officials are hoping to curb this year's deaths.Last year,...

Spain calls for humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

BRUSSELS — Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday called for a “halt and humanitarian cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war to allow for the “urgent introduction of humanitarian aid in Gaza in a manner that is systematic, permanent, and proportionate to the extraordinary needs of the Palestinian people.”Spain’s call for a cease-fire comes amid intense debate among EU countries ahead of a summit on Thursday about whether to call for a “humanitarian pause” or “humanitarian pauses” in the conflict to allow aid into Gaza. While Sánchez’s language is unusually direct, countries such as Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic are still reticent about agreeing to anything that resembles a cease-fire call for fear it would be seen as impinging on Israel’s right to fight Islamist militants from Hamas. While diplomats said Germany could accept the idea of a pause, Berlin’s chief government spokesper...

Trump is fined $10,000 over a comment he made outside court in his New York civil fraud trial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial fined the former president $10,000 on Wednesday, saying Trump violated a limited gag order barring personal attacks on court staffers.The fine came after Trump was called to the witness stand to explain his comment outside the courtroom about “a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” the judge in the case, Judge Arthur Engoron.Weeks ago, Engoron ordered all participants in the trial not to comment publicly about his staff. The narrow gag order imposed on Oct. 3 came after Trump made a social media post maligning the judge’s principal law clerk, who sits beside Engoron in court.The judge ordered Trump to take down that post and Trump did. But it lingered on his campaign website for weeks, prompting a $5,000 fine for Trump on Friday.Trump and his lawyers said his comment Wednesday was about witness Michael Cohen, not the clerk.Three of Trump’s attorneys objected to the fine, insisting that the comment was r...

Dinosaur footprints uncovered on beach on England’s Isle of Wight

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

London (CNN) — For any fans of Jurassic Park, now could be the chance to tread the same path as the prehistoric giants before us, after a set of well-preserved dinosaur footprints were unearthed on a beach off the south coast of England.Engineers from the government’s Environment Agency were investigating how to reinforce sea defenses along the Yaverland seafront on the Isle of Wight, when they uncovered the fossils, according to a press release Monday.“Dinosaurs existing right where our team is working brings old and new together – the modern challenges of combatting climate change with a period of time we can only imagine,” the agency’s regional flood and coastal-risk manager Nick Gray, said.“We’ve all read the stories and seen the films, but this gives us just a hint of what life was like,” he added in the statement.The dinosaur footprints were dicovered on a beach next to a café, a car park and a bus stop.Experts believe the 125 million-year-old pri...

Wyc Grousbeck reveals when and why he wanted Celtics to make changes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

Before the Celtics’ season even ended last spring, the top of their leadership was already thinking about making some changes.Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck was sitting courtside at TD Garden as he watched his team getting blown out by the Heat in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. His thoughts about the future quickly began running through his mind.“I sat there probably the whole second half of that game starting to think about it,” Grousbeck said Wednesday in an appearance on WEEI’s ‘The Greg Hill Show.’ “And then I took two days to let everything settle down and then went and met with Brad Stevens and Joe Mazzulla, and we formulated a plan. … I just said, ‘We’re not bringing back the same team.’ It’s been two seasons in a row of really good play but inconsistencies and they showed in the Finals two years ago and then in the conference finals last year. It just felt inconsistent and I said, I just want to change the mix so that there’s just a freshness, a fresh approach, so ...

Quick genetic test offers hope for sick, undiagnosed kids. But few insurers offer to pay

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 18:58:09 GMT

Phil Galewitz | (TNS) KFF Health NewsJust 48 hours after her birth in a Seattle-area hospital in 2021, Layla Babayev was undergoing surgery for a bowel obstruction.Two weeks later, she had another emergency surgery, and then developed meningitis. Layla spent more than a month in neonatal intensive care in three hospitals as doctors searched for the cause of her illness.Her parents enrolled her in a clinical trial to check for a genetic condition. Unlike genetic tests focused on a few disease-causing variants that can take months to produce results, the study at Seattle Children’s Hospital would sequence Layla’s entire genome, looking for a broad range of abnormalities — and potentially offer answers in under a week.The test found Layla had a rare genetic disorder that caused gastrointestinal defects and compromised her immune system. The findings led doctors to isolate her, give her weekly infusions of antibiotics, and contact other hospitals that had treated the same condition, sai...