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A Denver basketball fan — from the very start

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Perhaps nobody will be cheering harder for the Denver Nuggets in Game 3 of the NBA Finals than a woman who both roots and works for the team. Loretta Harmon said she has worked for the Denver basketball franchise since 1974, when the team was known as the Denver Rockets and played in the old American Basketball Association. "We love basketball. And then, when I was hired in the ticket office, why, we were in seventh heaven,'" she said. Decades later, Harmon said she still works for the team in the accounts payable department, working most days from home. Nuggets fever showing big in Denver neighborhood Harmon is 90, with her 91st birthday around the corner at the end of June. “They were my life for so long,” she said of the locals. The Nuggets face the Miami Heat on Wednesday night in Game 3 of the finals. “Oh, I don’t think you can get any higher than we are right now. I think this is as high as you can go,” she said. Asked what it would feel like if the Nuggets f...

New MLS team coming to San Diego needs your help

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- Officials tied to the new Major League Soccer Team that is coming to San Diego are now turning to the public for help. They want fans to help create the team identity.Fans poured into Kilowatt Brewery, just off Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Tuesday for their chance to shape what they want the new Major League Soccer in San Diego to look like.“It’s exciting,” fan Morgan Teder said. “It will be fun.”The owners are asking San Diego fans to help decide the team’s name, colors and values.“I want it to feel like San Diego,” fan David Chamberlain said. “I’m not sure what that is yet but something to do with the beach, and the water, and the sky. I think the values we have is to support the team and to support the community.”The new MLS team still doesn’t even have players or a coach, but the owners want this team to be built around the San Diego community. 5 waterfalls to see in San Diego County “The team needs to represent the city which is a very welcoming city,” fan Quinn Ho...

New tool could fix ongoing streetlight vandalism leaving San Diegans in dark

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

SAN DIEGO - The City of San Diego is cracking down on streetlight vandalism downtown. Homeless there have been opening the bottom of the lamp posts, to then steal or destroy the wires inside. Now, a company from Orange County is providing a new tool that could fix the problem. Streetlight vandalism has been an ongoing issue leaving streets pitch black after sundown. So much so, FOX 5 caught one unsheltered person crouching near a streetlight Tuesday along E Street, tampering with the electricity to charge his phone, which has caused surrounding poles to stop working in the past. Walking along the Gaslamp Quarter, you may be able to catch unhinged openings on the back of a streetlight where extension cords will connect power from the pole to nearby encampments."It’s not really safe for our customers and people coming and going to our businesses here," shared Mark Hamilton who owns 'Feel it Records' on E Street and 9th Avenue. A solution to the recent vandalism and theft could all beg...

‘Home is like a jail’: Afghan soldier weathers injuries, uncertainty in US asylum bid

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — The April visit to a Houston clinic was just one of a never-ending assembly line of medical appointments Abdul Wasi Safi has had since his January release from an immigration detention center.The former Afghan soldier, called Wasi by family and friends, sat in a dental chair and conversed in Pashto with his older brother Sami as Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” played in the background. It was a scene thousands of miles from the places he’d been the past two years.After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, fear of retribution from the Taliban for sharing information with American soldiers while he was an intelligence officer drove Wasi Safi to flee to Brazil. The goal? Reaching the U.S. and applying for asylum.He eventually made it after crossing 10 countries, but the journey came at a high cost. A brutal beating by police officers in Panama severely damaged his teeth and jaw and left him with permanent hearing loss.Wasi Safi didn’t appear ne...

Stock market today: Asian stocks mixed as Wall St inches toward bull market

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Wednesday after a day of listless trading on Wall Street in the absence of market-moving data.China reported its exports fell 7.5% from a year earlier in May and imports were down 4.5%, adding to signs of a slowing of its economic recovery following the lifting in December of anti-virus controls that disrupted travel and commerce.The decline in exports was the first year-on-year drop in in three months, with export volumes falling below their levels at the start of the year. “And with the worst yet to come for many developed economies, we think exports will decline further before bottoming out later this year,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a commentary. The Shanghai Composite index was nearly unchanged at 3,195.88 while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong jumped 1% to 19,285.10. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost 0.8% to 32,234.21. In Seoul, the Kospi added 0.3% to 2,623.20 while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.2% highe...

Virginia regulators expected to vote on Youngkin plan to withdraw from climate initiative

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia regulators are expected to take a final vote Wednesday on whether to advance Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s plan to withdraw from a multistate carbon cap-and-trade program.Virginia spent years under Democratic administrations moving toward participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which environmental advocates say is a proven tool to help reduce pollution and address climate change. But that has been thrown into reverse since Youngkin, a Republican who says the program has functioned as a regressive tax on electricity users, took office in January 2022. A final decision to repeal by the state Air Pollution Control Board — which is controlled by Youngkin appointees and backed withdrawal in a previous vote by 4-1 with two abstentions — would clear one of the last remaining hurdles to the governor’s proposal, though it is ultimately expected to face a legal challenge.The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, is an effort by 12 mid-...

Leaders gather in Paris to accelerate wringing more out of every ounce of fuel

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

As 30 energy environment and trade ministers plus 50 CEOs assemble in Paris for the 8th international conference on energy efficiency, the International Energy Agency is urgently calling for greater investment in energy efficiency for factories, cars and appliances to meet international climate goals.The agency touted recent global progress: A report released Wednesday says that demand for energy is growing, yet emissions are not growing as fast. Efficiency is increasing every year as technology improves, and last year that increase was twice the average of the previous five years. “We’re at a real juncture where more efficient, more clean, more affordable technology is starting to dominate,” said Brian Motherway, chief of energy efficiency at the IEA, during a press conference Tuesday.Eliminating wasted energy is the most affordable way to bring goods and services to the people who need them — while slowing greenhouse gas emissions — the main driver of global warming, energy expert...

Plea change set for man accused of backing plot to kidnap Michigan governor

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

BELLAIRE, Mich. (AP) — A man prosecutors describe as an anti-government extremist who backed a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer plans to change his plea from not guilty, court records show.Shawn Michael Fix is one of five men charged with providing material support for an act of terrorism in the scheme to abduct the Democratic governor in 2020 at her northern Michigan vacation home. Police broke up the plan and Whitmer was not physically harmed.Fix, 40, of Belleville, was scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in Antrim County Circuit Court in Bellaire. He also is charged with possessing a firearm while committing a felony.His lawyer and the state attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting the case, did not respond to phone and email messages Tuesday.Another man, Brian Higgins, pleaded guilty in March to the lesser charge of attempting to provide material support for terrorism. Three others — Eric Molitor and brothers Michael and William Null — await trial in Augu...

The pause on student loan payments is ending. Can borrowers find room in their budgets?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a good month, Celina Chanthanouvong has about $200 left after rent, groceries and car insurance. That doesn’t factor in her student loans, which have been on hold since the start of the pandemic and are estimated to cost $300 a month. The pause in repayment has been a lifeline keeping the 25-year-old afloat.“I don’t even know where I would begin to budget that money,” said Chanthanouvong, who works in marketing in San Francisco.Now, after more than three years, the lifeline is being pulled away.More than 40 million Americans will be on the hook for federal student loan payments starting in late August under the terms of a debt ceiling deal approved by Congress last week. The Biden administration has been targeting that timeline for months, but the deal ends any hope of a further extension of the pause, which has been prolonged while the Supreme Court decides the president’s debt cancellation.Without cancellation, the Education Department predicts borrowers will ...

Catalytic converter thieves target auto dealership in Cerritos

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:34:50 GMT

Video captured the moment catalytic converter thieves threw car parts at a car dealership security guard in Cerritos.  The incident happened at around 6 a.m. on Sunday at the Cerritos Mitsubishi dealer and service center located at 10944 South Street in Cerritos.  The night guard, Jaero Barba, spotted the suspects, and after calling police, he drove around the lot in his car, honking his horn to distract them, he told KTLA. That’s when the men can be seen getting aggressive.  Video shows the suspects throwing side mirrors they had broken off customer vehicles that were at the guard’s car. Then, one of the suspects threw a catalytic converter at his car and shattered the window.  The dealership’s service director, Rigo LaFontaine, said the thefts are an ongoing problem. “This year alone we’ve been hit three, maybe four times and last year, I want to say at least another four times,” he tells KTLA.  LaFontaine said the thieves are quick too, able to steal four catalytic...