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Housing market doldrums: Prices rise across state as inventory dwindles

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

The start of summer wasn’t quite enough to heat up the state’s housing market, a Massachusetts Association of Realtors report on June housing data released Monday indicated, with prices still on the rise and inventory sinking.“Inventory continues to hamper any year-over-year growth, despite the monthly growth we have seen in sales,” said MAR President and realtor David McCarthy.The median price for a single-family home bought in June hit $650,000, a 4% increase compared to June 2022, while condominium prices remained flat, the report stated. New listings dropped by 33.2% for single family homes and by 28.7% for condominiums compared to last year.The number of closed sales did increase for the fourth month in a row but remained well below last year’s. Single-family home sales hit 4,440 for the month, a 23.2% drop off from June 2022.Despite the monthly uptick in sales, McCarthy said, many realtors are forecasting the second half of the year will remain si...

Yankees seeking improvement from Luis Severino after tweaks and time off

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

ANAHEIM — Whether it was rehabbing a lat injury or withstanding several shellings on the mound, the first half of the 2023 season was not kind to Luis Severino. The pitcher — and the Yankees — are praying that the second half brings a fresh start and better results.Severino, who will start Monday night against the Angels in Anaheim, owns a 7.78 ERA over nine starts and 42.2 innings this year. And while the former Cy Young finalist pitched well in his first two starts and on June 24, he’s allowed a whopping 53 hits, 33 earned runs and 10 home runs over his last seven starts. That stretch includes 31.1 innings, and Severino has a 9.48 ERA over that span.Severino most recently surrendered seven earned runs over 2.2 innings against the Orioles on July 6. Afterward, he said, “I’m not doing my job right now.” He’s shared similar sentiments after other poor performances this season.Severino also said that he wanted to use some of the All-Star...

Healey admin names 7 recipients of $3.5 million in workforce development grants

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

Gov. Maura Healey announced $3.5 million in grants for workforce development programs aimed at matching unfilled jobs with skilled workers in the state, a problem haunting economies across the country.Seven initiatives were chosen as the recipients of a Senator Kenneth J. Donnelly Workforce Success Grant, Healey announced in Andover at the Greater Lawrence Technical School on Monday, alongside Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Lauren Jones and U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan.“We were just down the way at Raytheon, actually,” Healey said. “And one of the things they talked about was the need, the real need, for this pipeline of workforce and talent.”Funded through the state’s Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund, the grants are awarded to organizations striving to increase residents’ access to steady, good paying jobs. The program specifically aims to remove barriers for those who might otherwise not be eligible or able to join skilled training programs, like adult students and t...

Pour House memories hit the auction block

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

Patrons of the Back Bay’s long-standing bar, the Pour House, may remember the wide array of vintage signs, memorabilia and even a six-foot tall female pirate statue.On Wednesday, those items and others from the shuttered Boylston Street establishment hit the auction block.The Paul E. Saperstein Company will be holding the online auction, scheduled for Wednesday at 11 a.m., through BidSpotter.com. Nearly 200 souvenirs that lined the Pour House walls for more than three decades will be auctioned off.Michael Saperstein, executive vice president of the firm, said they had been holding onto the Pour House relics following the bar’s 2020 closure. BidSpotter, he said, allows for an international audience to take part in the auction, with some people from various parts of the country already asking about some assets.“A lot of people have memories from this bar and it pulls on the heartstrings sometimes,” Saperstein told the Herald. “People who want to see some of the assets are able to come...

Kids lost in flooding as US endures extreme weather, from smoke up north to heat in the West

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania authorities drew on 100 people, drones and cadaver dogs Monday in their search for two missing children whose family car was swept away in flash flooding that ravaged the East Coast over the weekend. Other parts of the country endured threateningly high temperatures and severe air pollution from Canadian wildfires.In eastern Pennsylvania, authorities described Monday’s search for missing Matilda Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother Conrad Sheils as a “massive undertaking” along a creek that drains into the Delaware River. The children are members of a Charleston, South Carolina, family that was visiting relatives and friends when they got caught in a flash flood Saturday. The children’s father, Jim Sheils, grabbed their 4-year-old son, while the children’s mother, Katie Seley, and a grandmother grabbed the other children, said Upper Makefield Township Fire Chief Tim Brewer. Sheils and his son made it to safety, Seley a...

Georgia’s top court rejects Trump attempt to thwart prosecutor in 2020 election investigation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

Georgia’s highest court Monday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to block a district attorney from prosecuting him for his actions in wake of the 2020 election. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously shot down a petition that Trump’s attorneys filed last week asking the court to intervene. Trump’s legal team argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be barred from seeking charges and that a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry should be thrown out.Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.The state Supreme Court noted in its five-page ruling Monday that Trump has a similar petition pending in Fulton County Superior Court. The justices unanimously declined to overstep the lower court, writi...

Advocates claim racism as African asylum seekers forced to sleep on Toronto sidewalk

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

Dozens of asylum seekers camped out on a downtown Toronto sidewalk were joined by angry advocates on Monday who accused politicians of racism and dereliction of duty for welcoming the refugees with open arms, but greeting them with closed doors once they arrived.The makeshift refugee camp outside Toronto’s shelter intake office at 128 Peter Street continues to grow, with some calling it home for as long as four weeks because of a lack of space at City shelters.The asylum seekers sleeping on the sidewalk are all from African nations.“If we were not Black would we have been treated this way?” asked Kabu Asante, African Canadian Social Development Council. “That is the question we need to be asking ourselves.”Canada’s first Black MP, Jean Augustine, decried the failure to find shelter space for the desperate people. “This is not the Canada that we are building. This is not the Canada that speaks about diversity.”She was joined by an infur...

5 people killed and 8 injured in Poland when a small plane crashes into a hangar during bad weather

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Five people were killed and eight others were injured Monday when a Cessna 208 plane crashed into a hangar at a sky diving center during bad weather, authorities said.The plane’s pilot and four people sheltering in the hangar from stormy weather died in the afternoon crash in Chrcynno in central Poland, firefighters spokesperson Monika Nowakowska-Brynda said. An additional eight people were injured, two of them seriously, police said. A child was among the injured, the provincial governor, Sylwester Dabrowski, said. Chrcynno is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) northwest of Warsaw. Firefighters and airborne ambulances took the injured to hospitals in the Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki area. Rescuers were still checking the hangar for additional victims, said Katarzyna Urbanowska, another spokesperson for local firefighters. Prosecutors and police were investigating the cause of the accident.It was the worst accident related to sky diving in Poland since 2014, when 11 ...

4 slain in Georgia mass shooting memorialized as neighbors gather for prayer vigil

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

HAMPTON, Ga. (AP) — Four victims of a mass shooting in an Atlanta suburb were remembered as loving relatives, an expert locksmith and a beautiful singer as people in Hampton gathered Monday to hold a prayer vigil in their honor.Neighbors were still shaking off disbelief at the 10-minute span Saturday when Scott Leavitt, 67; his wife, Shirley Leavitt, 66; Steve Blizzard, 65; and Ronald Jeffers, 66, were shot and killed. Police and witnesses named 40-year-old Andre Longmore as the shooter.The killings set off a massive search that ended Sunday with Longmore dead in a shootout in another suburb about 15 miles (25 kilometers) north. The exchange of gunfire wounded a sheriff’s deputy and two police officers, who are all recovering.Residents of the bucolic Dogwood Lakes subdivision, where about 40 houses with tidy yards flank a lake on two streets, were surprised that gun violence had come to their peaceful neighborhood about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Atlanta. Hampton had not prev...

Music Review: Greta Van Fleet soars on new album, ‘Starcatcher’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:10:47 GMT

Greta Van Fleet, “Starcatcher” (Lava/Republic Records)“Starcatcher” is the third studio from Greta Van Fleet, and the latest confirmation that the band’s love affair with the bombast of ’70s-era rock has not grown stagnant.We’ve come to know Greta Van Fleet from their early and obvious Led Zeppelin comparisons to the Grammy-winning ground they now lay claim to. We now accept this is not merely a trick of mimicry. They’ve grown.“Starcatcher” offers lofty, searing songs right out of the gate. “Fate of the Faithful” is in immediate overdrive, and “Waited All Your Life” is full of powerful fits and starts, led by Josh Kiszka’s soaring vocals. “You’ve come from so far away! / And do you intend to stay? / Swim to shore / If this is what you’re looking for,” Kiszka belts out, his voice the additional instrument that moves the needle for the band’s sound. His brother, bassist Sam Kiszka, said in a press release that the album represents “going back to our roots while moving forw...