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King: From plumbers to mechanics, U.S. gasping for skilled workers

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

There is a terrible shortage of people who fix things. I am thinking of electricians, plumbers, glaziers, auto mechanics and many more skilled workers who keep life livable and society running.It is frustrating if you can’t get a plumber when you need one. But the skilled worker shortage has much more significant consequences than the inconvenience to the homeowner. The very rate of national progress on many fronts is being affected.More housing is desperately needed, but architects tell me some new construction isn’t happening because of the skilled worker shortage. Projects are being shelved.The problem in electric utilities is critical — and interesting because the utilities offer excellent pay, retirement and healthcare, and still, they are falling short of recruits. They are aware that many of their workers will be retiring in the next several years, adding to the problem.Auto dealerships are scrounging for mechanics, now euphemistically called “technicians.” Skilled workers ar...

Active Xavier wants to be a construction worker

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

Xavier is a charming teen boy.  Xavier has a very curious and kind personality. His many interests include art, electronics, LEGOs or anything having to do with building, SpongeBob and Disney movies. Xavier loves spending time outdoors, especially if that means shooting hoops at a local basketball court, swimming, building sandcastles, riding his bike, or playing “Dr. Dodge.” His dream job is to be a construction worker.Xavier is described as very caring, a hard worker who is eager to succeed, with a great sense of humor. When you first meet Xavier, there is a good chance he will share a smile and make you laugh.Xavier loves learning, especially if it’s interactive. He’s a very inquisitive child who is very happy to have conversations and ask questions about how different things work. Xavier is described as very bright academically.Xavier holds great hopes about growing up in a loving family with similar interests. He has remained very patient and open-minded about the k...

Western Mass. band High Tea serves up indie-folk-roots

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

High Tea went looking for a way to represent the themes of new album “The Wick and The Flame” that felt artistic and off kilter. The folk-roots-indie duo decided to set a dollhouse ablaze.“We ended up lighting this dollhouse on fire for the cover art,” singer-guitarist Isabella DeHerdt told the Herald. “But before we lit it on fire, we decorated it. We put fake moss on it. We covered it in glitter. We painted it. We put pinecones on it. We put in TLC before burning it down.”“It felt like an apt metaphor for creation and music and life,” DeHerdt added. “You create something and then you have to let it go.”“The Wick and The Flame” starts off with a tender, introspective tune about staring into the void. The Western Mass-based duo’s second LP rolls on with angry blues stomps and furious love songs and gentle ballads of survival. So, yeah, creation and music and life feels about right.DeHerdt and singer-percussionist Isaac Eliot struck up a friendship at a Berklee College of Music summe...

Dear Abby: Fiance’s shocking reveal puts wedding on hold

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

Dear Abby: My daughter and her fiance are intelligent, successful professionals in their early 30s. Her fiance just informed her he was a sperm donor for a friend and his wife a few years ago, resulting in two biological children with one more on the way.He never mentioned this to my daughter before. She suspected that something wasn’t right because he would hide his phone (he keeps the children’s pictures on it), and she finally confronted him last week.He bonded with the children during the first year of their lives with frequent visits, then tapered off because the friends had become uncomfortable with his being around (the children both closely resemble him).Her fiance says he hasn’t seen the children since my daughter began dating him two years ago. He says he tried to put the situation behind him, but confessed that he misses them and didn’t realize he would feel this way at the time he donated. Neither he nor the children’s parents have legal doc...

'Like Tatis right now': High school students play baseball series at Petco Park

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- While the Padres took to Mexico City, several local high school baseball teams got the chance to play a game in Petco Park Saturday afternoon.As part of the annual CIF High School Baseball series in Petco Park, Carlsbad High School took on La Costa Canyon in the last of seven student games that took place this weekend."I've been in this park many times, but I've never seen a high school team play here," one LCC student, Emerson Ostanik, told FOX 5. "It's kind of cool."The series kicked off Friday with three match-ups: Valhalla vs. West Hills, Mater Dei Catholic vs. San Ysidro, and Imperial vs. Brawley.Two schools, La Jolla Country Day and Maranatha Christian, took to the field the day prior, however, that game as not part of the Padres-sponsored series. Padres, Giants to play two-game series in Mexico City Saturday marked the final day of the High School Baseball Series at San Diego's downtown stadium. Before CHS and LCC, Kearny and Foothills Christian took on Mountai...

Battle for late Johnny Winter’s music to play out in court

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Nearly nine years after Johnny Winter’s death, a battle for control of the legendary blues guitarist’s music is being fought in court with allegations of theft and greed flying back and forth.The legal fight pits Winter’s former personal manager and bandmate, Paul Nelson, against the family of the bluesman’s late wife, Susan, who died in 2019.Winter’s in-laws say Nelson and his wife improperly took more than $1.5 million from Winter’s music business, including auctioning off some of the late musician’s guitars.Nelson and his wife have countersued, saying Susan Winter’s siblings swooped in when she was medicated and dying of cancer and tricked her into giving them control of Winter’s music, stripping away Nelson’s rights as the beneficiary of Susan’s Winter’s estate.The case was scheduled to go to trial in a Connecticut court in April, but was rescheduled for September. At stake is ownership of Winter’s music catalogue, proceeds from rec...

150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nation’s worst

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

DIXON, Ill. (AP) — Gertie Wadsworth was in the arms of her grandmother that bright day when sunshine dissolved distasteful memories of a long, brutal winter. Christan Goble held the 3 1/2-year-old girl in a crowd of more than 200 on the bridge over the Rock River. After a procession down Galena Avenue from the Baptist Church on May 4, 1873, the Rev. J.H. Pratt began baptizing parishioners in the brisk, rapid current. Then, with a sharp crack and a crescendo of shrieking spectators loaded on the pedestrian walkway in front of towering trusses, the 4-year-old bridge twisted, splintered and rolled over. Forty-six people perished, many immured by the unrelenting gridiron just below the water’s surface. Along with 56 injuries, the Truesdell bridge tragedy, 150 years ago Thursday, remains the worst vehicular-bridge disaster in American history. “It’s not as though the bridge just collapsed and went straight down,” says Tom Wadsworth, 70, a retired magazine editor and expert on...

Opposition bloc seeks to oust Paraguay’s long-ruling party

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — A broad-based opposition coalition in Paraguay is seeking to unseat South America’s longest-governing party Sunday in elections focused on corruption, the economy, health care and even ties with Taiwan. The Colorado Party has governed Paraguay almost uninterrupted since 1947 and the landlocked nation has been practically immune to the political change and social movements that have swept the region.All this could change with Sunday’s vote, which is focused on Santiago Peña of the Colorado Party and Efraín Alegre, the candidate of the Pact for a New Paraguay coalition who is also head of the Liberal party, the second-largest political force in Congress. Paraguay doesn’t have a runoff, so whoever of the 13 candidates receives the most votes will be the next president. Voters are also casting ballots for Congress members.Analysts expect a tight contest, with the opposition fueled by anger over high levels of corruption and the deficiencies in the h...

Roof collapse at house near Ohio State University injures 14

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Part of a house collapsed and 14 people were injured near The Ohio State University Saturday evening when people climbed onto a roof that was not designed to hold significant weight, authorities said.Columbus Division of Fire Battalion Chief Steve Martin said his department received a report around 7:40 p.m. of a roof collapse on East 13th Avenue and arrived to find the roof above a front porch had collapsed while the rest of the home remained intact.“The few people that were trapped, I believe, were probably unpinned,” Martin said. “It was like their leg was caught under some of the structure and some of the students lifted that off the students. So everybody was kind of out.”First responders initially found 10 injured people and eventually transported 14 accident victims to area hospitals with “various states of injuries” but they all were in stable condition, Martin said. “It appears the roof was overloaded with students,” Martin said, with estimates r...

Reynolds guides Siena to first postseason win in nine years

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:55 GMT

LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- From a barn-burning scoring fest in the opening period to a hardened defensive second half, Siena and Sacred Heart played in a competitive back-and forth-game in which the fourth-seeded Saints were able to outwork the fifth-seeded Pioneers on their way to a 13-11 Opening Round MAAC Tournament playoff win at Hickey Field on Saturday afternoon. It marks the first MAAC postseason victory for Siena Men’s Lacrosse since the 2014 season when the Saints also last won the MAAC Championship.  The win also coincides with head coach Liam Gleason’s first MAAC postseason victory since taking the reins of the Green and Gold in 2019 as well as the first MAAC Tournament home game played at Hickey Field.    Sophomore attack Pratt Reynolds was key throughout the afternoon in stopping the Pioneers’ momentum by scoring four of his game-high five goals following a goal that was scored by SHU.  Reynolds scored a goal in both the first and second...