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CEO of Hachette Book Group will step down at end of the year

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The head of Hachette Book Group, Michael Pietsch, is retiring as CEO and will be succeeded by Hachette UK CEO David Shelley. Pietsch, who has worked with authors ranging from Keith Richards to Donna Tartt, will serve as chairman of the U.S. publisher starting Jan. 1 of next year.“I’m proud of everything that all of us at Hachette Book Group have accomplished in the past decade, in close partnership with our authors — thriving, growing, and reinventing ourselves through complex and challenging times,” Pietsch, 67, said in a statement Tuesday. Shelley, who will also remain as UK CEO, said in a statement that “Hachette Book Group publishes some of my favorite authors of all time and it’s hugely exciting to be able to get to know them and work on their books with the talented team in the U.S. I’d like to pay special tribute to Michael as he has been a key figure for me over the years.”Richard Kitson, deputy CEO of Hachette UK, will also take on the same role for Ha...

Northern Manitoba First Nation says member who went to fight in Ukraine has died

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

THE PAS, Man. — The chief of a First Nation in northern Manitoba says one of the community’s residents has died after going to fight in Ukraine.Chief Maureen Brown of Opaskwayak Cree Nation says Austin Lathlin-Bercier went to fight with the Ukrainian army shortly after the war broke out last year.She says his family received word Monday that he had died.The First Nation did not provide more details about his death.Global Affairs Canada has not released any information.Brown says flags in the community have been lowered and there will be a service to honour Lathlin-Bercier at a later date.This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2023.The Canadian Press

GOP senator stands up and challenges Teamsters head to a fight in a fiery exchange at a hearing

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional hearing devolved into an angry confrontation between a senator and a witness on Tuesday after Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to “stand your butt up” and settle longstanding differences right there in the room.Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Senate panel that was holding the hearing, yelled at Mullin to sit down after he challenged O’Brien to a fight. Mullin had stood up from his seat at the dais and appeared to start taking his ring off.“This is the time, this is the place,” Mullin told O’Brien after reading a series of critical tweets O’Brien had sent about him in the past. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”The two men never came face to face in the hearing room. But they hurled insults at each other for around six minutes as Sanders repeatedly banged his gavel and tried to cut th...

New Jersey casinos, track forfeit $77K in money won by prohibited gamblers, many of them underage

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Five Atlantic City casinos and a horse racing track are forfeiting over $77,000 worth of money won by underage gamblers or those who had placed themselves on a list to be excluded from gambling activities.New Jersey gambling regulators also fined DraftKings, the online sportsbook and casino platform, $7,500 for similar violations, and online gambling company Rush Street Interactive $2,000 for taking bets on unapproved events and taking pre-match bets on games that had already begun.The forfeited money will go to the state to be used for programs to treat compulsive gambling, as well as on programs benefiting senior citizens and those with disabilities.Most of the cases involved patrons who were either asked to provide identification when claiming a manual payout from slot machines or other games, and were either found to be underage or to have produced inadequate identification. The casinos then withheld the patrons’ winnings, placing them in an escr...

Texas school reverses decision that banned transgender student from role in musical

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

SHERMAN, Texas (AP) — A Texas school district has apologized and reversed a decision that ousted a transgender student from a part in the musical “Oklahoma!”The school board in Sherman voted unanimously Monday to reinstate the original show and cast after a meeting in which dozens criticized them and spoke in support the 17-year-old transgender boy who’d lost his role in the production because of a new policy.“We want to apologize to our students, parents and our community regarding the circumstances that they have had to go through to this date,” President Brad Morgan said in a statement on behalf of the board following the vote.Sherman, a city of 45,000 about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Dallas, became the latest community embroiled in the national debate over the rights of transgender students this month over its production the the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. In early November, Max Hightower, a senior and theater enthusiast, was cast in a prominent part tha...

Matriarch is charged with arranging her ex-son-in-law’s death, 1 week after son convicted of murder

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The matriarch of a South Florida family who made their fortune practicing dentistry has been arrested at Miami International Airport on charges of orchestrating the hit-man murder of her ex-son-in-law, one week after her oral surgeon son was convicted on the same first-degree murder charge.Authorities said Donna Adelson, 73, was arrested Monday night as she and her husband were about to use one-way tickets to board a flight to Dubai and Vietnam, countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States. She is charged with arranging the 2014 murder of Florida State University law professor Daniel Markel, who was shot in the head inside his Tallahassee garage.Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell said in a Tuesday phone interview that while he believes his prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Adelson before Monday, plans for her arrest had to be accelerated when investigators learned of her plans to leave the country.“It was...

A Georgia county is fighting a ruling requiring it to pay for a transgender deputy’s surgery

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia county asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn a ruling that it illegally discriminated against a sheriff’s deputy by failing to pay for her gender-affirmation surgery.But lawyers for Houston County Sgt. Anna Lange urged a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the appeal. They said during a hearing in Atlanta that the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that denying Lange insurance coverage for the procedure is illegal sex discrimination. Lange, an investigator for the Houston County sheriff’s office, sued Sheriff Cullen Talton and the county in 2019 after she was denied coverage.U.S. District Court Judge Marc Treadwell ruled in 2022 that the county’s refusal to cover Lange’s prescribed gender-affirmation surgery amounted to illegal sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Treadwell’s order cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision finding that a Michigan funeral home couldn’t fire an emplo...

PGA Tour parsing private investment deals as the clock ticks on its Saudi deal

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

The PGA Tour has created a program that would give players equity ownership in a new commercial enterprise, provided it finalizes a deal with Saudi Arabia’s national wealth fund and five other private groups that want to invest.Commissioner Jay Monahan laid out the proposal in a memo to players on Tuesday, which followed a board meeting where tour officials reviewed some of the proposal.Monahan said the board reviewed the bids from private investors and would keep negotiating to select finalists. Still at the center of the deal is the Public Investment Firm of Saudi Arabia, the financial backer of rival league LIV Golf, which agreed to a for-profit commercial venture in June with the PGA Tour and the European tour. The framework agreement set a Dec. 31 deadline, though that can be extended.Monahan said the equity program first was mentioned at a player meeting at the Travelers Championship, which was held weeks after the Saudi deal was announced.He said in the memo the program...

Real estate market notches downward amid climbing interest rates, association says

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

VANCOUVER — British Columbia real estate sales and prices bumped up slightly in October compared with a year ago in what is being described as a balanced market.Figures from the B.C. Real Estate Association show 5,373 residential units sold last month, a 1.8-per-cent increase from the same month last year, while prices rose by 4.1 per cent over the same period. The association’s chief economist Brendon Ogmundson says home sales have slowed as expected given the high borrowing costs and stricter stress tests for buyers. However, he says sales inventory of homes remains low, which balances the market to a “very low level of activity.” Residential sales were down 13.6 per cent to $63.1 billion for the first 10 months of this year compared with last year.The association says residential unit sales between the same period this year and last dropped 105 per cent, while the average price fell 3.4 per cent to $971,802. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2023. The...

In federal lawsuit, owner of medical marijuana dispensary says Mississippi censors business owners

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:37:00 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The owner of a Mississippi medical marijuana dispensary filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging state regulations that he says censor business owners by preventing them from advertising. After Mississippi legalized medical marijuana for people with debilitating conditions in 2022, Clarence Cocroft II opened Tru Source Medical Cannabis in Olive Branch, Mississippi. But he says he has struggled to reach customers because Mississippi’s Department of Health has banned medical marijuana businesses from advertising in any media. That violates business owners’ First Amendment rights, Cocroft’s attorneys wrote in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. “All I want to do, like any other business owner, is have the opportunity to advertise. If I pay taxes in this business, which I do, I should be able to advertise,” Cocroft said at a news conference. “All I’m asking from this state is to provi...