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GREENFIELD — Members of the Zoning Board of Appeals and the public have expressed an interest in hearing a presentation by an expert from New Hampshire before taking any further action on the 170-foot monopole cell tower being proposed for Newton Street. Dr. Kent Chamberlain is regarded as a leading authority on electromagnetics and served on New Hampshire’s Commission to Study the Environmental and Health Effects of Evolving 5G Technology, which was established in 2019 to study impacts of cell towers and wireless radiation. He recently delivered a presentation in Heath and is scheduled for another one in January. The telecommunications company Viridi Wireless wants to construct the cell tower but some residents and ZBA members are hesitant, citing concerns over health, safety and property values. ZBA Chair David Singer is anxious to learn the specifics of the construction of the proposed tower’s base. These calculations incorporate the soil on which the tower would be built, but the company cannot go onto a property to analyze it until a building permit is issued. Under the current proposal, Singer said, the tower would snap in half as a safety precaution under stress conditions. “The ground would have to be holding that pretty firm for the thing to snap,” he said at Thursday’s public hearing at the John Zon Community Center. “So if the pressure is low at that area then the tower could actually fall down. So for me, that’s a threshold question, the safety piece.” Michael Cronin, an attorney representing Viridi Wireless, attended the hearing remotely but did not answer questions regarding the tower’s specifications, stressing that he is not an engineer. ZBA Clerk Peter Wozniak said Building Inspector Mark Snow is “a one-person office” who has requested professional support for a peer review of the base’s construction. Resident Andrew Vernon, who said he lives on Sunset Square and works at Greenfield Community College, expressed his support for this project and the planned peer review. Article continues after... Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess “The absence or diminished [cell] service provided to Greenfield Community College ... in general is a concern today, and based on at least the Viridi diagram of [radio frequency], it also should be a continued concern for ZBA,” he said. Elana Kirshenbaum , of South Shelburne Road, said several like-minded residents could not attend Thursday’s public hearing due to illness, work, child care issues and holiday travel. She acknowledged that the community wants and needs good cell service — in a safe way. “For this reason, it is imperative that the ZBA, along with members of our community, become truly informed on the diverse, significant impacts of placing a 170-foot cell tower so close to residential homes and a school,” she read from a prepared statement. She said there are many unanswered questions and she proposed inviting Chamberlain for a presentation. Singer noted Viridi Wireless is expected to deliver its own presentation at the ZBA’s meeting slated for Thursday, Jan. 9. Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

Man City stumble again while Arsenal and Bayern Munich earn dominant wins

Saskatchewan NDP MLA Jared Clarke tore into Premier Scott Moe during a speech in the legislature on Tuesday, criticizing Moe's actions during the recent provincial election campaign and demanding an apology for a proposed policy Clarke believes was targeted at his children. "[The Saskatchewan Party's] legacy is attacking vulnerable kids. Prove me wrong," Clarke said. Clarke's speech during question period Tuesday lasted roughly 13 minutes, much of it spent taking Moe to task for a policy the Saskatchewan Party leader touted during the campaign as his "first order of business" if re-elected . Moe said his government would establish a policy restricting students' use of change rooms in schools to their sex assigned at birth. Throughout the announcement Moe frequently used the term "biological boys," which can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. WATCH | Sask. MLA says premier 'put a target on the back' of his trans kids with proposed change room policy: Sask. MLA says premier 'put a target on the back' of his trans kids with proposed change room policy 9 minutes ago Duration 4:37 Sask. NDP MLA Jared Clarke criticized Premier Scott Moe and demanded an apology for a proposed policy that would restrict students' use of changerooms in the province's schools to their sex assigned at birth. Clarke's transgender children were singled out in a newspaper story about the policy. The policy was not part of the party's election platform, which had been released just days before Moe's announcement. It was immediately flagged by experts and families who said it would put transgender children at risk . Before Moe announced the policy, news outlet the Western Standard published a story featuring a parent saying their daughter had been uncomfortable in a change room with two other students who identified as female, but were assigned male at birth, at a south Saskatchewan school. Sask. Party's '1st order of business' to be gendered change room policy in schools: Scott Moe Premier Scott Moe unveils new, smaller Sask. cabinet and says change room policy no longer 1st priority In his comments Tuesday, Clarke confirmed that the two children referenced in the Western Standard story were his. "The premier put a target on the back of my two 12-year-old kids," Clarke said. In response to a request for comment on Clarke's speech, a government spokesperson provided a statement. "The Minister of Education and then the Premier commented on this matter in response to questions from the media," it said. "At no point did they identify any students. The Premier and his campaign consistently stated that, 'the identity of individual minors should never be part of any political debate.'" Gendered change room policy in Sask. schools would put trans kids at risk, say advocates, families Teachers were sent degrading messages after Sask. Party promised change room ban: STF Clarke said his children's photos were circulated on social media and his family was targeted by hateful comments. The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation says teachers received degrading messages in response to the news in the following days . Clarke described the proposed policy as part of the premier's "legacy" and demanded an apology from Moe. "Transgender kids are not scary. Transgender people are not scary. They are not people that we should be afraid of. They are people who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and love," he said. Moe backed off the policy after securing another majority government , saying it would be part of discussions held between elected school boards and Minister of Education Everett Hindley.

Trump's tariff threat a grim reminder of turbulent trade in first administrationWhere is Santa Claus right now? Use NORAD 2024 map to track himBut it is not the largest prize a person has won in this country. Here are the 10 biggest UK lottery winners – all from EuroMillions draws – and what some of them did with their fortunes. – Anonymous, £195,707,000 A UK ticket-holder scooped the record EuroMillions jackpot of £195 million on July 19 2022 – the biggest National Lottery win of all time. – Joe and Jess Thwaite, £184,262,899.10 Joe and Jess Thwaite, from Gloucester, scooped a then record-breaking £184,262,899 with a Lucky Dip ticket for the draw on May 10 2022. At the time, Joe was a communications sales engineer, and Jess ran a hairdressing salon with her sister. – Unclaimed ticket holder, £177 million Tuesday’s winner is wealthier than former One Direction member Harry Styles and heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, who are both worth £175 million, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. Players have been urged to check their tickets to see if they can claim the prize. – Anonymous, £170,221,000 The fourth biggest winner of the National Lottery to date scooped £170 million in October 2019, after matching all the numbers in a Must Be Won draw. – Colin and Chris Weir, £161,653,000 Colin and Chris Weir, from Largs, North Ayrshire, bagged their historic winnings in July 2011, making them the biggest UK winners at the time. Colin used £2.5 million of his fortune to invest in his beloved Partick Thistle Football Club, which led to one of the stands at the stadium being named after him. He later acquired a 55% shareholding in the club, which was to be passed into the hands of the local community upon his death. He died in December 2019, aged 71. The couple also set up the Weir Charitable Trust in 2013 and donated £1 million to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. They divorced in the same year as Colin’s death. – Adrian and Gillian Bayford, £148,656,000 Adrian and Gillian won 190 million euros in a EuroMillions draw in August 2012, which came to just over £148 million. The couple bought a Grade II listed estate in Cambridgeshire, complete with cinema and billiards room, but it was sold in 2021, some years after the pair divorced, as reported by The Mirror. – Anonymous, £123,458,008 The seventh biggest National Lottery winner won a Superdraw rollover jackpot in June 2019, and decided not to go public with their success. – Anonymous, £122,550,350 After nine rollovers, one lucky anonymous ticket-holder bagged more than £122 million in April 2021. – Anonymous, £121,328,187 Another of the UK’s top 10 lottery winners found their fortune through a Superdraw jackpot rollover, this time in April 2018. – Frances and Patrick Connolly, £114,969,775 Former social worker and teacher Frances set up two charitable foundations after she and her husband won almost £115 million on New Year’s Day 2019. She estimates that she has already given away £60 million to charitable causes, as well as friends and family. She considers helping others to be an addiction, saying: “It gives you a buzz and it’s addictive. I’m addicted to it now.”Brazil’s federal police last Thursday formally accused Mr Bolsonaro and 36 other people of attempting a coup. They sent their 884-page report to the Supreme Court, which lifted the seal. “The evidence collected throughout the investigation shows unequivocally that then-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro planned, acted and was directly and effectively aware of the actions of the criminal organisation aiming to launch a coup d’etat and eliminate the democratic rule of law, which did not take place due to reasons unrelated to his desire,” the document said. At another point, it says: “Bolsonaro had full awareness and active participation.” Mr Bolsonaro, who had repeatedly alleged without evidence that the country’s electronic voting system was prone to fraud, called a meeting in December 2022, during which he presented a draft decree to the commanders of the three divisions of the armed forces, according to the police report, signed by four investigators. The decree would have launched an investigation into suspicions of fraud and crimes related to the October 2022 vote, and suspended the powers of the nation’s electoral court. The navy’s commander stood ready to comply, but those from the army and air force objected to any plan that prevented Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s inauguration, the report said. Those refusals are why the plan did not go ahead, according to witnesses who spoke to investigators. Mr Bolsonaro never signed the decree to set the final stage of the alleged plan into action. Mr Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or awareness of any plot to keep him in power or oust his leftist rival and successor. “No one is going to do a coup with a reserve general and half a dozen other officers. What is being said is absurd. For my part, there has never been any discussion of a coup,” Mr Bolsonaro told journalists in the capital Brasilia on Monday. “If someone came to discuss a coup with me, I’d say, that’s fine, but the day after, how does the world view us?” he added. “The word ‘coup’ has never been in my dictionary.” The top court has passed the report on to prosecutor-general Paulo Gonet. He will decide whether to formally charge Mr Bolsonaro. Rodrigo Rios, a law professor at the PUC university in the city of Curitiba, said Mr Bolsonaro could face up to a minimum of 11 years in prison if convicted on all charges. “A woman involved in the January 8 attack on the Supreme Court received a 17-year prison sentence,” Mr Rios told the Associated Press, noting that the former president is more likely to receive 15 years or more if convicted. “Bolsonaro’s future looks dark.” Ahead of the 2022 election, Mr Bolsonaro repeatedly alleged that the election system, which does not use paper ballots, could be tampered with. The top electoral court later ruled that he had abused his power to cast unfounded doubt on the voting system, and ruled him ineligible for office until 2030. Still, he has maintained that he will stand as a candidate in the 2026 race. Since Mr Bolsonaro left office, he has been targeted by several investigations, all of which he has chalked up to political persecution. Federal police have accused him of smuggling diamond jewellery into Brazil without properly declaring them and directing a subordinate to falsify his and others’ Covid-19 vaccination statuses. Authorities are also investigating whether he incited the riot on January 8 2022 in which his followers ransacked the Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasilia, seeking to prompt intervention by the army that would oust Mr Lula from power. Mr Bolsonaro had left for the United States days before Mr Lula’s inauguration on January 1 2023 and stayed there for three months, keeping a low profile. The police report unsealed on Tuesday alleges he was seeking to avoid possible imprisonment related to the coup plot, and also await the uprising that took place a week later.

The Yomiuri Shimbun 2:00 JST, December 25, 2024 The government plans to submit a bill to revise the Whistleblower Protection Law to the next ordinary Diet session, to be convened in January, to impose criminal punishments on corporations and other entities that mistreat whistleblowers by dismissing them or through other means. Officials concluded it was necessary to enhance the law in light of the case of a prefectural senior official who was given a three-month suspension after accusing of the governor of wrongdoing. Criminal punishment is expected to be imposed on organizations and individuals that violate the law. The degree of that punishment will be finalized going forward. The Whistleblower Protection Law already prohibits mistreating people for whistleblowing, but there have been no penal provisions against violations. Dismissing and taking disciplinary measures against whistleblowers are expected to be subjected to criminal punishment as forms of mistreatment. But the government does not plan to cover personnel relocations and harassment under this law, because it is expected to be difficult to objectively determine their causal connection with whistleblowing. The Whistleblower Protection Law already obliges companies and other entities with more than 300 employees to set up an internal consultation center for whistleblowing and assign personnel to respond to reports from whistleblowers. The government also plans to introduce criminal penalties for failure to meet these obligations. The government also plans to introduce new clauses that ban trying to figure out a whistleblower’s identity and trying to obstruct whistleblowing, such as by making employees promise not to blow the whistle when they sign an employment contract. According to a 2023 questionnaire by the Consumer Affairs Agency, 17.2% of whistleblowers said they regretted having made their reports, citing such reasons as they were mistreated or their colleagues found out that they were a whistleblower. In the case of Hyogo Gov. Motohiko Saito, who was accused of using his power to harass prefectural government officials, the prefectural government identified the whistleblower, who was then a senior government official, and handed him a three-month disciplinary suspension. It was pointed out that the prefectural government’s acts violated the Whistleblower Protection Law, which prohibits any mistreatment of whistleblowers due to their whistleblowing. In the case of major used car dealer Bigmotor Co., whose operations were taken over by a new company after revelations of fraudulent insurance claims by the original management, it came to light that the company failed to have a whistleblowing system. A Consumer Affairs Agency panel tasked with discussing systems to protect whistleblowers plans to compile a report by the end of this year. The report by the panel, which is headed by University of Tokyo Prof. Ryuji Yamamoto, is expected to point to the need to incorporate criminal penalties into the law. The government will make preparations to revise the law in line with the report’s findings. The government hopes to adopt the revision bill at a Cabinet meeting in February and submit it to the ordinary Diet session.

EFCC, Sowore at loggerheads over unnamed owner of 753 forfeited duplexes

Man City stumble again while Arsenal and Bayern Munich earn dominant wins

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Looking for hard-to-find bottles of Kentucky bourbon to toast the holidays or add to a collection? Get your bids ready as the Bluegrass State launches its first online auction of confiscated alcohol. Whiskeys up for sale include two bottles of Old Rip Van Winkle, a Blanton’s Single Barrel Gold in box with Japanese markings and a bottle of Four Roses Small Batch Barrel Strength 2011. The sale is the result of a new Kentucky law, which allows alcohol confiscated from closed criminal investigations by the state's alcoholic beverage control agency to be auctioned. Online bidding opens Wednesday and closes at midnight on Dec. 11. Proceeds will support programs promoting responsible alcohol use by adults and awareness programs for youths. “This is a really good auction,” Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, said by phone Tuesday. “There are some hard-to-find and rare bottles on there.” No estimate has been given on how much the auction might raise. “We look forward to seeing the response to this auction and have started planning additional auctions for 2025,” said Allyson Taylor, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The auction features 32 bottles of alcohol and includes a “stock the bar” bundle with bottles of wine, vodka, rum and whiskey, the agency said. Story continues below video But the stars are the hard-to-find and rare bourbons up for sale. “It’s not every day you go to a liquor store and find a bottle of Blanton’s Gold," Gregory said. “You never go to a liquor store and find a bottle of Four Roses 2011.” The lineup includes bottles of E.H. Taylor bourbon, Blanton’s Single Barrel, Eagle Rare 10 yr., Weller Antique 107, Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Rye, Michter’s, an Old Forester gift set and more. A link to the online auction is available at ABC.ky.gov . Auction items cannot be shipped, so winning bidders must pick up items in Frankfort, the state said. The auctions will become a “can't miss opportunity” for bourbon connoisseurs, Gregory said. Until this year's change in the law, Kentucky regulators were required to destroy confiscated alcohol once a case was closed, the agency said. “We don't like to see good bourbon poured down the drain,” Gregory said. Kentucky distillers produce 95% of the global bourbon supply, the Kentucky distillers’ group says.

E Ink tablets are great for those who like to jot, scribble or doodle, and don't want to waste reams of paper. But even modern e-notes can be more sustainable. Supernote's 10-inch Manta model is modular, and can be upgraded or repaired as needed. The A5X2 Manta is the latest evolution of Supernote's E Ink devices, which appear to have started with the Linux-based A5 in 2018 – though the company is a good deal older than that, having began as a developer of point-of-sale card terminals and payment systems about 15 years ago. Like the 7.8-inch Nomad before it, the Manta embodies the company's commitment to reducing electronic waste by allowing users to upgrade components. The back can be popped off (using a fingernail or pry tool) to allow access to the internals. From there, the motherboard and battery can be replaced with fresh ones if needed, and storage expanded. Supernote also offers free (subscription-free) software updates. The Manta sports a 10.7-inch E Ink display at 1,920 x 2,560 pixels. However, this is not color E Ink like are sporting, but is reported to be with 16 levels of gray. It's topped by a contoured soft film for a more natural paper-like writing experience. And like the e-note, Supernote's new model doesn't feature a front light – so you'll need to limit your scribbling to natural daylight or well-lit rooms. Aiming to "to create a device that users love to hold and move with as their hearts desire," Supernote managed to slim down the edges to just 3.6 mm (0.14 in) while also making the e-note a relatively easy carry at 375 g (13.2 oz). There's a USB-C port on one of the upper edge's two bumps, which are inspired by the cephalic fins of a Manta Ray (the other is home to the power button). To the right is a nifty elastic pen loop that hosts a pen input, and this can also be replaced if damaged. Touch-enabled side bars make for easy page scrolling. Placing two fingers on the display allows a user to draw a line around an object, which is erased when the fingers are removed. There's also a gesture-based undo/redo function. The e-note runs a special flavor of Android 11 called Chauvet, which is designed for "those who write" and supports numerous file formats, including ePub, PDF and Word docs. The device also supports handwriting-to-text conversion. The stock motherboard features a quad-core Rockchip processor supported by 4 GB of RAM and a somewhat paltry 32 GB of internal storage – though there is support for up to 2 TB of microSD card expansion. Bluetooth 5.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi are included, and the device can sync to cloud services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Outlook Calendar and more. The Manta itself is priced at US$459, but you'll need to shell out an extra $59 for a standard pen input (with durable ceramic nib) if you don't already have one. A half folio will add another $59 to the pot. The device launched earlier this month, but stocks sold out quickly so it's currently shown as up for pre-order while the company catches up with orders. Product page:NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks tiptoed to more records amid a mixed Tuesday of trading, tacking a touch more onto what’s already been a stellar year so far. The S&P 500 edged up by 2 points, or less than 0.1%, to set an all-time high for the 55th time this year. It’s climbed in 10 of the last 11 days and is on track for one of its best years since the turn of the millennium. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.IREN Reports Q1 FY25 Results

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