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Family sues Florida cheer gym after co-owner sent to prison for child porn

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

CLERMONT, Florida (WESH) — Outside of the federal courthouse in downtown Orlando on Wednesday, attorney Jessica Arbour announced that her law firm filed a new lawsuit against World Cheer Center – Home of the Rush All Stars.“Where you find kids, you will find predators. And this is no exception,” said Jessica Arbour.The cheerleading gym in Clermont shut down last year after one of its owners, Vigiland D’Haiti, was arrested on molestation charges. D’Haiti is accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old and two 15-year-old girls, according to Clermont police.Arbour said one of those girls is her client. Now, they are filing a lawsuit against the gym that D’Haiti and his wife owned.“She’s a child,” said Arbour. “Her parents had the right to believe that she was safe and that she was in a place where she was developing her cheer skills and her tumbling skills, not in a place where they felt she was going to be a victim to a p...

Tampa woman shares her story of surviving a stroke at only 34 years old to raise awareness

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

TAMPA, Florida (WFTS) — For years, Tampa resident Ashley Nessler was always on the go, prioritizing work.It was no different on the day her life changed forever.“I was at my office. It was an ordinary Monday, and I was in meetings, and I went downstairs just to get a drink, and I suddenly collapsed in front of an elevator,” said Nessler.She couldn’t speak or move.“I could not raise my arms. I could not even vocally say I needed help. My body just shut down on me,” said Nessler.She had no clue what had happened when she came to.“I just all of a sudden lost my balance. I felt perfectly normal two minutes before it happened, and I just like kind of just fell to my knees because I couldn’t stand up anymore,” said Nessler.Her coworkers helped her up, and she convinced them that she was fine.She thought she maybe fainted because she hadn’t eaten enough that day, just wanting to get back to work because she had meetings that afternoon.“I even went home for an hour and took a nap and ...

Revealed: EU’s plan to sex up the European Parliament

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament knows it has a reputation for being boring. Now it’s trying to sex things up.MEPs don’t bother showing up to debates during the monthly plenary sessions in Strasbourg; journalists barely pay the place any attention; and the Parliament’s procedures are a mess — that’s according to the Parliament’s own civil servants who issued the grim diagnosis in a “background note” to senior MEPs earlier this year.Obtained exclusively by POLITICO, an obscure working group cooked up a document considering ways to overhaul the Parliament’s machinery in time for European elections in June 2024. “Debates are less lively because Members often come to plenary only for their intervention, they read out their speeches and leave right after without listening to the entire debate,” the document states.It also bemoans that there is “insufficient media attractiveness of some plenary agenda items resulting from...

See inside a new hotel in Chile where you’ll feel you’re sleeping on Mars

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

Mark Johanson | Bloomberg News (TNS)Glittering salt flats. Sky-poking volcanoes. Teal lagoons painted pink with flamingos. These are the wonders that await guests traveling to the resort town of San Pedro de Atacama — an oasis amid the greater Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which is the driest (non-polar) place on Earth.The 51-room Our Habitas Atacama, which opened on Sept. 15, is shaking things up as the most recent opening in a destination that rarely sees them. “The timing for Habitas is bang-on because the Atacama is red-hot right now,” says Harry Hastings, founder of bespoke travel company Plan South America. He says it’s one of his best-selling destinations.What sets the property apart, Hastings says, is not just the design and culinary ambitions but something far simpler: With starting rates from $300 per night, it’s the only luxurious hotel in the area that isn’t priced on an all-inclusive basis. It gives travelers rates far lower than those of such competitors as Awasi, ...

Ask a travel nerd: Environmentally friendly air travel for cheap stoics

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

By Sam Kemmis | NerdWalletAs someone who cares about my environmental impact and spending as little money as possible, life is full of fraught decisions.Should I buy organic milk even though it’s twice as expensive? Or choose an electric car for $40,000 rather than a friend’s run-down Corolla for $3,000?Should I make eye contact with the person on the street raising money to fight climate change or awkwardly pretend to be on a phone call?The point is that my aversion to spending money often means I’m cutting corners environmentally. Yet when it comes to air travel, these preferences aren’t in conflict. In fact, reducing one’s travel carbon footprint can actually mean spending less on airfare.The only downside: It means flying with airlines that pack you in (and treat you) like sardines.The high cost of legroomFlying burns a lot of fossil fuels — there’s no way around that fact. If the entire commercial aviation industry were a country, it would rank sixth (between Japan and Germany)...

What’s 12 feet tall, dead and taking the country by storm? A coveted skeleton, of corpse

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

Despite his name, Fred the Dead doesn’t have the guts to scare neighborhood kids. He doesn’t have the heart, either. He doesn’t have any internal organs at all.Fred is a 12-foot-tall Home Depot skeleton — and he’s a hot commodity. The metal-framed monsters can be spotted this time of year towering over Colorado neighborhoods, from cityscapes to rural farmland.Halloween fiends lucky enough to get their hands on the coveted décor can consider themselves members of an exclusive club; Home Depot won’t say how many of the skeletons it has sold, but Tyler Pelfrey, brand communications manager for the home-improvement giant, confirmed the behemoth box of bones has sold out every year since its 2020 debut.Calls to Home Depot stores in Glendale, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Fort Collins this week confirmed — occasionally with a harumph of incredulous laughter from a sales associate for even deigning to hope — that the 12-foot-tall skeleton was out of stock.On Facebook Marketplace, price goug...

Stephen King sounds off on Maine mass shooting: ‘Stop electing apologists for murder’

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

Maine native Stephen King called out the “madness” that led to Wednesday’s mass shooting in a Tweet on Thursday.“The shootings occurred less than 50 miles from where I live,” wrote King, an outspoken advocate against gun violence. “I went to high school in Lisbon. It’s the rapid-fire killing machines, people.“This is madness in the name of freedom,” he continued. “Stop electing apologists for murder.”

For Native viewers, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ is an imperfect triumph

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

Greg Braxton | (TNS) Los Angeles TimesFrom the moment it was announced as a major feature film, “Killers of the Flower Moon” has sparked plenty of excitement — and anxiety.An adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller about the murder of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma, by white settlers plotting to acquire the rich oil deposits under Osage land, was most highly anticipated because of the elite names attached — in particular director Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.But the project also prompted considerable concern from the Osage nation and other Native Americans. With Scorsese at the helm instead of an Indigenous director, Osage people feared that the film would be yet another example of Hollywood’s traditionally stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans.“I was worried we were going to get exploited again — not so much in losing resources and our land, but in the telling of the story of how we lost our resources a...

Israeli air and ground strikes intensify in Gaza; internet collapse cuts territory off from outside

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

By WAFAA SHURAFA, JOSEF FEDERMAN and BASSEM MROUE (Associated Press)DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Internet and phone services collapsed in the Gaza Strip under intensified Israeli bombardment Friday night, largely cutting off its 2.3 million people from the outside world and each other, as Israel’s military said it was “expanding” ground operations in the besieged territory.The military’s announcement signaled it was moving closer to an all-out invasion of Gaza, where it has vowed to crush the ruling Hamas terrorist group after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.Explosions from a barrage of airstrikes lit up the sky over Gaza City after nightfall Friday when the blackout in internet, cellular and landline services hit. Already plunged into darkness after most electricity was cut off weeks ago, Palestinians were now thrown into isolation, huddled in homes...

Hundreds arrested for shoplifting in latest Vancouver police blitz

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:17 GMT

VANCOUVER — Retailers across Canada are concerned about an uptick in violence as a “tsunami” of retail theft plagues businesses that threatens the safety of employees and customers, says the general manager for loss prevention at London Drugs. Tony Hunt told a news conference Friday at Vancouver police headquarters that most retailers have seen at least a 20 per cent increase in retail theft in recent years, so he is grateful city police are cracking down on the problem. “Our primary concern as employers is the abuse of front line employees with aggressive and violent behaviours with increasing frequency and intensity,” he said. “This isn’t a Vancouver problem. We’re hearing across the province, across the country, employees and customers are afraid and this is simply not OK.”This comes as Vancouver police reported on its latest shoplifting crackdown on Friday with 258 arrests, along with the recovery of almost $57,000 in stolen goods ...