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A study of hot spots for collisions between ships and whales around the world, including Canadian waters, offers a map for measures to prevent the deadly strikes that could drive some species to extinction, one of the British Columbia-based authors says. Chloe Robinson said reported strikes represent a fraction of their true extent, and a lack of protection measures leaves whales vulnerable as global shipping expands. The study found shipping takes place across 92 per cent of the ranges for humpback, blue, fin and sperm whales worldwide, but measures to reduce vessel strikes have been implemented in less than seven per cent of high-risk areas. “That could really spell, you know, potential extinction for some of these species,” said Robinson,director of whales for Ocean Wise, a B.C.-based organization that provided data for the paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science. “A recent study estimated anything up to 20,000 whales are killed a year through ship strikes, globally, and that’s just an estimate, a best-case estimate.” Robinson said she was surprised to see Swiftsure Bank, off the west coast of Vancouver Island, emerge as a risk hot spot for strikes of fin, blue and humpback whales. The area is a “migration highway” for humpbacks, she noted. The study also identified a hot spot for the same three species in the Gulf of St. Lawrence between Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. “This is something that Ocean Wise has been looking into because a lot of the management measures occur offshore and not sort of within the Gulf of St. Lawrence itself and even the St. Lawrence Seaway, (which) leads down to the Great Lakes,” she said. “That was a huge hot spot, which was really interesting for me.” Robinson said there have been smaller studies on the risk of ship strikes in different regions, but the study published Thursday is the first to map the distribution of the four whale species, using a variety of data sources, then compare it with the Automatic Identification System, a tool used for tracking vessels worldwide. “This was really the first of its kind to map these two on top of each other,” she said. The researchers found the highest levels of risk in the Indian, western North Pacific and Mediterranean, while it also identified high-risk areas in the eastern North Pacific, North and South Atlantic Ocean along with the South China Sea. The Southern Ocean was the only region that did not contain any ship-strike hot spots due to low levels of shipping, despite high use by whales, the study found. Robinson said the findings support a strong case for maritime authorities to adopt measures such as whale alert systems, speed limits and no-go zones. “We know where there are areas where there are lots of whales and lots of ships, so this is where we need to target for management,” she said in an interview. Robinson said Canada is home to many “eyes on the water” and researchers exploring innovative techniques for monitoring whales. But the country lacks mandatory mitigation measures, and it’s not alone. “Next to none of the measures globally are mandatory. So, having voluntary measures (is) great, provided people comply,” Robinson said. Ocean Wise launched an alert system in 2018 that notifies large vessels of the presence of whales in Pacific Northwest waters, and Robinson said about 80 per cent of mariners from Washington state up to Alaska have signed up. The WhaleReport alert system mainly functions in what she describes as “inshore” waters around busy ports in Seattle, Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The Port of Vancouver has also seen a high rate of compliance for its ECHO program, Robinson noted. The program encourages vessels to take voluntary steps, such as slowing down or staying farther away from whales, in order to reduce underwater noise and the potential for strikes in busy shipping areas. Robinson favours a multi-pronged approach to reducing ship strikes, but she said one single measure she believes could have a big impact would be equipping vessels with an infrared camera to detect whales within several kilometres. “Maybe some mariners ... respond better to knowing there 100 per cent is a whale 200 metres in front of your vessel, versus, ‘slow down, there might be a whale here.’” Robinson said such cameras can cost betweenUS$50,000 and $75,000. But the cost was a “drop in the bucket” of major companies’ profits, she said. The cameras also present a public-relations opportunity for businesses to advertise themselves as operating in a more whale-friendly manner, Robinson said. “I know people who have had to go and have therapy after killing a humpback whilst at the helm,” she added. “I think there’s a lot to be said (for) the long-term benefits of this kind of technology.” The study also found areas with lower traffic that could provide refuge for whales, especially with added protections. It shows the Arctic Ocean, for example, has very few high-risk areas for vessel strikes, and Robinson said some researchers view it as potential sanctuary. But without protections, Robinson said Arctic waters could become the next high-risk hot spot as sea ice melts with climate change, opening up shipping routes. “Knowing the plans to expand shipping routes into these areas to cut shipping time, make things faster, right through prime whale habitat, I think this is a really good opportunity to get ahead of the issue before it becomes an issue,” she said. Whales play crucial roles in their ecosystems, including cycling nutrients that support other species, and they’re a boon for tourism, Robinson said. They’re also “magical” creatures that people feel connected to, she said, and they remain vulnerable after many species were hunted to the brink of extinction. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2024.Dominion Energy Inc. stock underperforms Tuesday when compared to competitors despite daily gains
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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Robert Lewandowski converted a first-half penalty kick to become the third player to score 100 goals or more in the Champions League, behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Lewandowski calmly sent a low shot into the net from the spot in the 10th minute to give Barcelona a 1-0 lead against Brest. Lewandowski trails the 129 goals of Messi and the 141 of Ronaldo, according to UEFA. Lewandowski needed 125 games to reach his milestone — two more games than Messi and 12 fewer than Ronaldo. It was Lewandowski's sixth Champions League goal this season. It's the ninth season in which the Poland striker has scored six or more goals. The 36-year-old Lewandowski is having a standout campaign, having scored 21 goals for Barcelona in 19 appearances. He is the Spanish league’s scoring leader with 15 goals from 14 matches. He scored 14 goals in the team’s last 10 matches in all competitions. AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
LEVERETT — Leverett residents are asking town officials to be skeptical of plans for turning the sprawling, 60-acre estate of Yankee Candle founder Michael J. Kittredge II into a 400-home development reserved for people 55-and-over, even if a portion of the dwellings are set aside for low- and moderate-income individuals. “Definitely people in town would love to see affordable housing, and more housing in general,” said Nancy Grossman, vice chairwoman of the Leverett Finance Committee. “But the bigger issue is one of trust, and a perception that Kittredge has always been a negative influence on town.” For Carol Heim, whose Amherst Road home sits across from the compound that was developed by absorbing numerous residential properties beginning in the 1990s, there have been no market studies indicating a demand for such housing, and whether such a project is financially viable. “I haven’t seen anything establishing that kind of demand,” Heim said in an interview, adding that it’s unclear if the plans, as shown by Josh Wallack, the development manager working on behalf of Kittredge’s son, Mick Kittredge, are realistic. “He’s presenting this as a project for downsizing, but it’s not clear to me that this can happen.” Both Grossman and Heim were on hand for a listening session following a November special Town Meeting that packed the Leverett Elementary School gymnasium with more than 100 residents, as was the case at Wallack’s first presentation on the development in December 2023. The concern for residents is whether Leverett will move forward with a Local Initiative Project under the state’s Chapter 40B affordable housing law, which would give the town more control and lead to a “friendly” process, as opposed to a “hostile” process. Because the town doesn’t meet the state’s 10% requirement of affordable housing under the subsidized housing inventory, such a project, with some affordable homes, could be exempted from the town’s various zoning rules. Select Board member Jed Proujnaky has been among those at the forefront of conversations about what should happen at the property if no buyer is found for the estate which has been on the market for $23 million for more than two years. “The town is not opposed to low-income housing and senior housing, and considers that desirable,” Proujansky said. “I’m not sure that in the long run, though, there will be a viable place where the town and developer will come into alignment.” Article continues after... Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess The plans currently call for 48 affordable homes in Leverett, the maximum that could be built based on affordable rules that limit to 6% of the existing housing stock in town, with the remaining 352 homes in Amherst. Wallack said in an interview that he is waiting for a project eligibility letter from the Department of Housing and Community Development. Once this is in hand, the local process would be initiated with the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, likely within 50 to 90 days of receiving the letter. He wants to get buy-in from both Leverett and Amherst officials, as well as Leverett residents. “Everyone has an opinion, and we want to hear from everybody,” Wallack said. “We have an open mind and open ears to both stakeholders in Leverett and Amherst.” Already, using the feedback at the first presentation a year ago, plans have been scaled back, reducing overall density and pushing more into Amherst, as well as limiting the homes to those 55-and-over to reduce the school-age children who might populate the local schools. “We’ve kept an open mind and an open heart,” Wallack said. “The project is now less than half of the density that had been proposed.” Wallack is also promoting the development as a place for people to downsize and open up existing housing stock for young families, especially in Amherst. “At the end of the day, we’d like to build these homes, which will free up and ease some of the region’s supply crunch,” Wallack said. Many residents are observing the proposals closely. Phil Carter, a member of the Finance Committee who lives on Amherst Road across from the estate, has advised the Select Board against making it a Local Initative Project and undertaking any negotiations as just three residents who would be making decisions for the entire town. “The thing most worrying is the Select Board negotiating with Josh Wallack and coming up with a Local Initiative Project,” Carter said. He also questions whether it’s even doable. “It seems impossible to me,” Carter said. “It’s a long way from the nearest water and sewer lines, it’s not near any stores. It seems it’s not a good place to put a dense development like that.” Heim characterizes much of what has been presented to townspeople and officials so far as misinformation and incomplete information. But Heim said she, like many in Leverett, support the development of affordable housing. The mistrust for Grossman comes from hearing before the state’s Tax Appellate Board in 2019 that successfully reduced the Kittredge estate assessment from $9.9 million to $6.5 million in both fiscal years 2014 and 2015, meaning that the town both years lost out on more than $67,000, money that had to be paid from other property owners, or by cuts in town and school operations. Jacob Park, a Planning Board member and Juggler Meadow Road resident near the estate, said Wallack has no track record of developing affordable housing. “At both meetings, there was overwhelming opposition to Josh Wallack and his vision for the property,” Park said. Some of the skepticism focuses on Wallack saying that $1.5 million to $2 million is needed each year to maintain the existing estate’s amenities, including an indoor water park, a bowling alley and tennis courts and a video arcade. Even if 400 total housing units are built, that would mean up to $5,000 a year for each one in association fees for the amenities. “It seems like a dubious model from a business perspective,” Park said. “It’s hard to see how the finances work out,” Grossman said. Heim said there are questions about whether those in the affordable homes would be denied access to the on-site amenities if they had lower association fees. Proujansky said the Select Board would have concerns about unloading the costs of maintenance onto tenants. Park said that Wallack undertook two rollercoaster and associated projects in Orlando, Florida and in Atlantic City, New Jersey that never got off the ground “There is a lot of very significant red flags about his track record and business model,” Park said. “He has no record of doing this kind of development,” Heim said. One of Wallack’s successes was a 14-story, mixed-use parking garage in Orlando, but the scale of the Kittredge redevelopment would dwarf that. Any development will likely depend on whether Amherst officials are willing to provide the water and sewer such a large project would need. Wallack has admitted as much. “It all comes down to what Amherst wants to do,” Park said. But he noted Amherst’s master plan, as a guiding document, strongly encourages in-fill development in already developed areas, with the bulk of new housing and commercial for downtown and village centers. Amherst Town Manager Paul Bockelman said the hope is to have a meeting with Leverett officials at some point in the near future. Previously, Bockelman said any extension of sewer and water lines would only come at the appeal of Leverett officials, much as Amherst extended the town’s water to Teawaddle Hill Road in East Leverett to help residents with water contaminated by a capped landfill. The impact on roads and infrastructure also is unknown. Proojansky said that access to the estate includes using a narrow and low bridge on Juggler Meadow Road, a gravel road on Teawaddle Hill and a two-lane paved Amherst Road, though that has no shoulders. Wallack said while he has been based in Florida, he is familiar with the region and his parents have lived in the Berkshires. With the state’s housing department, he believes that the favorable project eligibility letter will come and that more defined plans can be presented. “In the end of the day, they’re mandated to get housing,” Wallack said. He is already working with experts on 40B. SEB Housing of Needham is the 40B consultant. “We’re here to build a project that everybody can be proud of and which will bring a lot of tax revenue,” Wallack said.COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Victims’ families and others affected by crimes that resulted in federal death row convictions shared a range of emotions on Monday, from relief to anger, after President Joe Biden commuted dozens of the sentences . Biden converted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The inmates include people who were convicted in the slayings of police, military officers and federal prisoners and guards. Others were involved in deadly robberies and drug deals. Three inmates will remain on federal death row: Dylann Roof , convicted of the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2013 Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev , and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. Opponents of the death penalty lauded Biden for a decision they’d long sought. Supporters of Donald Trump , a vocal advocate of expanding capital punishment, criticized the move as an assault to common decency just weeks before the president-elect takes office. Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by an inmate whose death sentence was commuted, said the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.” “The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” Heather Turner, whose mother, Donna Major, was killed in a bank robbery in South Carolina in 2017, called Biden’s commutation of the killer’s sentence a “clear gross abuse of power” in a Facebook post, adding that the weeks she spent in court with the hope of justice were now “just a waste of time.” “At no point did the president consider the victims,” Turner wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.” There has always been a broad range of opinions on what punishment Roof should face from the families of the nine people killed and the survivors of the massacre at the Mother Emanuel AME Church. Many forgave him, but some say they can’t forget and their forgiveness doesn’t mean they don’t want to see him put to death for what he did. Felicia Sanders survived the shooting shielding her granddaughter while watching Roof kill her son, Tywanza, and her aunt, Susie Jackson. Sanders brought her bullet-torn bloodstained Bible to his sentencing and said then she can’t even close her eyes to pray because Roof started firing during the closing prayer of Bible study that night. In a text message to her lawyer, Andy Savage, Sanders called Biden’s decision to not spare Roof’s life a wonderful Christmas gift. Michael Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Hurd, was killed, told The Associated Press that Roof’s lack of remorse and simmering white nationalism in the country means he is the kind of dangerous and evil person the death penalty is intended for. “This was a crime against a race of people,” Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were Black.” But the Rev. Sharon Richer, who was Tywanza Sanders’ cousin and whose mother, Ethel Lance, was killed, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof and clearing out all of death row. She said every time Roof’s case comes up through numerous appeals it is like reliving the massacre all over again. “I need the President to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victims’ families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” Richer said in a statement. Richer, a board member of Death Penalty Action, which seeks to abolish capital punishment, was driven to tears by conflicting emotions during a Zoom news conference Monday. “The families are left to be hostages for the years and years of appeals that are to come,” Richer said. “I’ve got to stay away from the news today. I’ve got to turn the TV off — because whose face am I going to see?” Biden is giving more attention to the three inmates he chose not to spare, something they all wanted as a part of what drove them to kill, said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action’s executive director. “These three racists and terrorists who have been left on death row came to their crimes from political motivations. When Donald Trump gets to execute them what will really be happening is they will be given a global platform for their agenda of hatred,” Bonowitz said. Biden had faced pressure from advocacy organizations to commute federal death sentences, and several praised him for taking action in his final month in office. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that Biden “has shown our country — and the rest of the world — that the brutal and inhumane policies of our past do not belong in our future.” Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, on the other hand, criticized the move — and argued its moral ground was shaky given the three exceptions. “Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton wrote on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.” Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, criticized the commuted sentence of Len Davis, a former New Orleans policeman convicted of orchestrating the killing of a woman who had filed a complaint against him. “We can’t trust the Feds to get justice for victims of heinous crimes, so it’s long past time for the state to get it done,” the tough-on-crime Republican said in a written statement to the AP. Two men whose sentences were commuted were Norris Holder and Billie Jerome Allen, on death row for opening fire with assault rifles during a 1997 bank robbery in St. Louis, killing a guard, 46-year-old Richard Heflin. Holder’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, said in an email that Holder, who is Black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. She said his case “reflects many of the system’s flaws,” and thanked Biden for commuting his sentence. “Norris’ case exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said. “Norris has always been deeply remorseful for the pain his actions caused, and we hope this decision brings some measure of closure to Richard Heflin’s family.”
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