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FITCHBURG — John Jeffrey, 71, of Fitchburg is proud supporter of anything Fitchburg High, particularly its football and basketball teams. Jeffrey is a proud FHS graduate, Class of 1971, who played on Hall of Fame coach Doug Grutchfield’s first basketball team in 1970-71, considers legendary FHS Hall of Fame running back Barry MacLean a close, personal friend, and boasts about how his maternal uncle, Dominic Ricci, scored the game-winning touchdown against Leominster in the 1941 Thanksgiving game at then-10-year-old Doyle Field. Knowing all that, one may do a double take upon reading the following: regardless of Saturday’s Chicken Bowl result — a 34-0 Leominster win over Fitchburg at Historic Crocker Field — Jeffrey would have a big smile on his face, since he had grandsons, a pair of first cousins, on both sidelines. The story is incredible, and requires a genealogy flow chart chart to figure it out. In 1978, Jeffrey and his wife had identical twin daughters, Sara and Jill. While they were brought up on the Fitchburg-Leominster rivalry, they attended Gardner High. Sara eventually met and married Craig Lashua of Fitchburg, while Jill married Scott Chester of Leominster. Eagle-eyed Blue Devil readers are quick to take note of that marriage, as Scott Chester is a legendary LHS standout athlete from the early 1980s who scored nine TDs in back-to-back Blue Devil Super Bowl wins, and his father, the late David Chester, was himself a four-sport Leominster luminary from the mid-1950s, who scored 54 points against Fitchburg in basketball, the most points ever scored by one player against the Red Raiders, in 1955. Both Scott and David are Leominster High Hall of Famers. And if you know your local sports history, you’ll know that Craig Lashua’s uncle, Ray, was himself a standout Red Raider grid player under Ed Sullivan; Ray Lashua had 10 point-afters in his senior year of 1954, and a safety against Gardner in their October 1953 meeting. Jill’s marriage to Scott gave birth to Masyn Chester, currently a junior at Leominster High. Masyn has played special teams on the Leominster first team and has been a leader on the Blue Devil JV squad. Much like his old man and paternal grandfather, Masyn is speed personified, and he has been key in the success Leominster has had at this level in 2024. In a game against Shrewsbury a month ago, Masyn Chester scored the go-ahead touchdown in what turned out a 16-8 Blue and White victory. A week prior, Masyn scored three times, rushed for 150 yards and had 50 receiving yards in a JV win over Wachusett. Sara’s marriage gave birth to Cole Lashua, currently an eighth grader at Longsjo Middle School; due to numbers, FHS sought a waiver from the MIAA to allow eighth graders from Academy Street and Memorial Middle School to play on the Red Raider second team. Cole is a big, strong kid who stepped into the quarterback role partway through the season, and has also shown — on video captured by his maternal grandfather — to be a defensive beast who flows like water to the football. While Fitchburg has not been successful in terms of win and losses at the JV level, no one expected them to be world beaters: with a good portion of the team as eighth graders, FHS officials were just expecting the boys to get used to the speed of the high school game, giving those young men vital experience against bigger, stronger — and older — kids. The JV kids FHS faced were as many as four years older than the middle schoolers. Saturday afternoon’s annual sub-varsity grid tilt between the archrivals was the first time the maternal first cousins met on the field in a meaningful manner—and may be the only time. Next year, Masyn and the Blue Devils will come to the corner of Circle and Broad again, this time on a Thursday morning, to do battle with the Red and Gray. And Cole will be there, too, on Fitchburg High’s sideline as a freshman. Freshmen aren’t guaranteed varsity action. That meant the combined Jeffrey, Lashua, and Chester clans savored Saturday — again, regardless of the outcome. The cousins did connect on one first-half play Saturday, as Masyn grabbed a 20-yard Jeddiel Melendez pass at the Fitchburg 1, with Cole grabbing him and preventing him from getting into the end zone. Suffice it to say, “Gunka” Jeffrey will always remember Saturday—the day he has patiently waited for for a long time.Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell maintained an upbeat and positive demeanor after guiding his team to a 27-25 victory over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday in a divisional clash that featured an intense fourth quarter. As thrilled as he was, however, O’Connell knows the focus now shifts to preparing his players for their next showdown against a team he called “one of the best teams in football all year long.” Next Sunday, the Detroit Lions will host the Vikings for their second matchup of the season, a regular-season finale at Ford Field that will decide not only the NFC North title but also the NFC’s No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. RELATED: Detroit Lions will host Vikings in winner-take-all season finale next week The Vikings improved to 8-1 at home this season with the win over the Packers. After the game, O’Connell reflected on what locking up home-field advantage would mean for the team and the city of Minnesota, while also acknowledging the challenge posed by the Lions. “It would be phenomenal, but it is going to be an absolute challenge going on the road to a very hostile place and a team that’s had a ton of success,” O’Connell told reporters. “We have nothing but confidence for the team we’re going to play this week, and we’ve got to go earn it with really great preparation. “Late in the year, December football was something I wanted to make sure we were good about, and I think we’ll finish that 5-0 as we click over into January. But honestly, we’ve really been in January for a few weeks now, in my mind.” During Sunday’s game at U.S. Bank Stadium, Vikings running back Aaron Jones suffered an injury and was unavailable to finish the game, concluding with 12 carries for 47 yards. O’Connell provided an update on Jones’ condition. “Aaron Jones did get a quad contusion at some point and was working his way through it. He had some really good runs, but we decided to pull him,” O’Connell said. “I thought Ty Chandler showed up, making some physical runs, getting downhill fresh. Pairing him with Cam [Akers] there in the second half was a winning formula to get some of those plays off, either in tempo or in the play-pass world.” Jones is currently the NFL’s 10th-leading rusher, with 1,046 yards and five touchdowns this season. Vikings outside linebacker Pat Jones sustained a significant injury, and O’Connell said the team remains uncertain about the early prognosis. “Hopefully, we avoided kind of a super long-term injury, but I won’t know much more than that until he gets fully evaluated,” O’Connell said. “But, expecting him probably to miss a little bit of time. Like I said, I don’t know what that looks like as of right now.” The fourth-year linebacker has 19 tackles and seven sacks this season, ranking third on the Vikings behind Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel, who each have 11.what is roulette game 。

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ATLANTA — On Jan. 20, 1981, after suffering a landslide defeat, former President Jimmy Carter returned home to rural Plains to what he called “an altogether new, unwanted, and potentially empty life.” By 1982, he had such a low profile that Time magazine called him “virtually a non-person, a president who never was.” But Carter would rewrite his legacy by turning to his implacable faith. It was, to him, an enduring source of comfort and inspiration, continuously helping guide him even through the most stunning setbacks — from losing elections to marital woes, an interminable hostage crisis in Iran and health crises in later life. His hometown of Plains wasn’t just Carter’s childhood home — it was his spiritual center. Upon his return after his presidential defeat, Carter, a third-generation Baptist, maintained his lifetime habit — teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church. He made a cross that stood for years above the altar in his wood shop. As an active member, he took his turn cutting the church’s grass. And he applied his love-your-neighbor ethic to his work at the Carter Center. “He is not some pie-in-the-sky Christian. He is a down-to-earth Christian who sees the everyday challenges and applies his faith to practical problems,” said civil rights hero the Rev. Joseph Lowery in an October 2010 interview. “There is no question his commitment to peace is based on faith. His commitment to help the poor, his commitment to housing, you can attribute that to his faith. It was Christ’s challenge to serve the poor and he’s done that. I admire him for that.” In his 1996 book “Living Faith,” Carter wrote openly about problems in his marriage. Getting involved in the church in Plains helped him and his wife work though communication woes. “We found we could communicate through discussions of our religious faith better than we could without it,” he said. When they had problems in their marriage, they would kneel together, pray to God and both would tell their sides of the story. It was as if they used God as the ultimate marriage counselor, according to E. Stanly Godbold, a Carter historian and author of the book, “Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924 to 1974.” Faith played a role in 1978 when Carter held peace meetings between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Carter believed the common thread of religion helped bring the two sides together. “At Camp David, for instance, this is one of the main themes of Anwar Sadat, we had so much in common worshipping the same God that we could form a common foundation for peace,” Carter told the AJC in a 1996 interview. Break with Southern Baptists When Carter was running for president, he was an appealing candidate to Southern Baptists and other evangelicals — a small-town guy in the Bible belt, still married to the same woman and the first U.S. presidential candidate who self-identified as a born-again Christian. That terminology was new for swaths of America and resulted in news articles across the nation examining and explaining, often poorly, conservative Christian beliefs. It was also an early sign of the development of the political-religious organizations such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority that followed. The evangelical Christian vote helped elect Carter. But in just four years, the most famous face of the Baptist religion was at odds with the increasingly conservative-leaning Southern Baptist Convention. The nation’s largest Protestant denomination also was undergoing its own cultural changes. Through the 1980s, theologically and politically conservative leaders rallied voting members of the convention to sweep out moderates from leadership roles in churches, seminaries and colleges over their theological “liberalism.” Carter’s views on hot-button issues such as supporting women as leaders in the church made him increasingly unpopular among many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. He later showed support for civil unions, and by 2018 for marriage of same sex couples. But in 1979, many of the conservatives who voted for him the first time deserted him for Ronald Reagan. In 2000, Carter severed ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, saying parts of its “increasingly rigid” doctrines violated the “basic premises of my Christian faith.” Carter went on to play a role in helping start an alternate association for progressive evangelical Black and white churches whose memberships and leaders were more moderate in their thinking and actions, such as installing women into pulpits and key church roles, and focusing on goals such as fighting poverty, and advocating for the environment and social causes. Carter used his weight to get the New Baptist Covenant and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship off the ground. In 2008, he helped bring together 20,000 Baptists representing more than 20 million church members for an Atlanta event designed to bury differences and work together. The tension was deep. The Southern Baptist Convention’s news service, Baptist Press, did not carry a news article about Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize. “Carter didn’t change,” said Nancy T. Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University and author of “Baptist Battles.” “The definition of what it meant to be Southern and Baptist changed.” “One of the characteristics of being Baptist is this that you have to make decisions about how your life is going to go,” said Ammerman. “No priest can do it for you. There’s this deep-seated notion of individual freedom and individual accountability, and (that) gave him this fierce ability to be independent that has shaped his personality and career and has given him a strong commitment to democracy, various human rights issues and religious liberty.” An abiding faith Carter’s faith can be traced back to his childhood, a time when Sunday was devoted to church and biblical teachings. In his hometown of Plains, no stores were open on Sunday. Going to a movie theater or even playing cards on Sunday was out of the question. That devotion never faded. Well into his 90s, he was behind the pulpit teaching multiple Sundays every year to classes filled with people from around the nation and world who would drop in to hear the former president. One Sunday, Carter counted 28 nations represented in the pews. He would talk about God and loving your enemies, and then sprinkle stories of traveling around the globe, building houses and eradicating disease. He and Rosalynn would pose for pictures with visitors at the little church, a quintessential Jimmy Carter experience. Even as he contemplated his demise, he looked to his faith for guidance. In “Living Faith,” he wrote: “We can face death with fear, anguish, self-torment and unnecessary distress among those around us. Or, through faith and the promises of God, we can confront the inevitable with courage, equanimity, good humor and peace. Our last few days or months can be spent in a challenging and exhilarating way, seeking to repair relationships and to leave a good or even noble legacy, in an atmosphere of harmony and love.” ©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Morgan Stanley stock rises Wednesday, still underperforms marketA Greens policy intended to boost electric car sales has been tipped to backfire. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles have been boosted by a Labor Government EV discount that makes efficient cars cheaper to lease than petrol or diesel equivalents. The discount has turbocharged sales of plug-in hybrid cars that blur the lines between “self-charging” hybrid cars such as the Toyota Corolla and dedicated battery electric vehicles such as the Tesla Model 3. Electric car sales have dropped this year. Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV is one of Australia’s most popular plug-in hybrids. But sales of PHEVs have more than doubled as Aussies warm to cars that can be plugged in and driven as an electric car on short trips, or run on petrol for longer journeys. The EV discount allows people to lease cars without paying fringe benefits tax. It puts PHEVs on par with cheaper cars. Mazda’s plain old petrol-powered CX-5 costs about $40,000 to buy, or $235 per week to lease through popular firm Maxxia. For the same weekly fee, customers can pick up a more efficient Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV worth $57,000, or a flash Cupra Formentor VZe plug-in hybrid that ordinarily costs $64,990 to buy. Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen and BYD chief executive David Smitherman with the BYD Shark. Photo: Supplied But the tax perk making PHEV cars more affordable ends on April 1. Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy said the Albanese Government cannot extend the PHEV deadline. “That was the arrangement we entered to in the Senate to get it through,” he said. “Unless the crossbench changes their mind about that, I won’t be revisiting it. “That’s what we had to do to get it through.” Leader of the Australian Greens Adam Bandt during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens party, said in 2022 that a “sunset” on support for hybrid cars was a win for the environment. “By limiting handouts to petrol cars and accelerating support for electric vehicles, the Greens in balance of power have pushed the government to go further and faster on climate,” he said. “This shows the power of the Greens in pushing Labor to go further and faster on fossil fuels.” Tony Weber, chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, said the car industry had been lobbying to have the deadline pushed back. “We’ve been talking to the government about the need to provide greater incentives to move motorists into low emission vehicles,” he said. “I think it’s unlikely that the FBT exemption for plug-in hybrids will be extended beyond its current close off date.” Automotive industry experts claim the end of tax breaks for PHEVs will push people to hold onto existing vehicles or choose a cheaper, less efficient car. Ross Booth, general manager of vehicle valuations service Redbook, said “there is a global trend towards PHEVs and not straight BEV due to the flexibility and packaging they afford”. “It is a shame that the change in the Federal Government incentive will see more inefficient vehicles being sold in the market, than they would be if the incentive was extended.” Geoff Gwilym, chief executive of the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce said PHEVs are “emerging as a crucial stepping stone for drivers transitioning from conventional petrol vehicles to fully electric cars, offering a practical compromise between traditional motoring and the electric future”. “The timing of this policy change seems particularly counter-productive given the growing consumer acceptance of plug-in technology,” he said. “The success of our transition to electric mobility may well hinge on maintaining support for these interim technologies, rather than prematurely forcing an all-or-nothing approach.” Originally published as Hybrid deadline looms for tax perk Motoring News Don't miss out on the headlines from Motoring News. Followed categories will be added to My News. More related stories Motoring News Launching Australia’s quickest car This staggeringly powerful electric car pushes performance into a new dimension. Read more Motoring News Would you pay $150k for a Hyundai? This massive electric family SUV is set to pose a difficult question for one of Australia’s favourite manufacturers. Read more

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All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen president and Hyderabad MP , Asaduddin Owaisi congratulated Mufti Mohammed Ismail Abdul Khalique, for his win from Malegaon Central in the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha polls 2024. In a message on ‘X’, (formerly twitter) Asaduddin Owaisi said “Congratulation to Mufti Ismail sahab on being elected as Malegaon MLA for a second time. I am thankful to the people of Maharasthra who voted for us in large numbers. To our candidates, party workers and supporters, I urge you all not to lose heart and work hard with renewed resolve (sic),” he wrote. Asaduddin said the election results show that the people are looking for a genuine political alternative and that AIMIM has established itself in Maharasthra (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); politics. Asaduddin also made a mention of Farooq Shabdi and Faruk Shah Anwar and Ateeque Ahmad, who gave a tight contest to their rivals but could not bag the seats. “Inshallah their perseverance will pay off in their future,” he stated. The AIMIM president described a election as a tough battle. He said that Imtiyaz Jaleel led the party in a tough battle and his own seat was not easy. Imtiyaz Jaleel, who spearheaded the Maharasthra assembly campaign lost the Aurangabad East seat to Bhartiya Janata Party candidiate. “Imitiyaz Jaleel is not a typical politician, and I am sure that this is just a hiccup in his political journey,” Asaduddin Owaisi said. The AIMIM party contested from 16 seats and could win only the Malegaon Central seat.

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Tradepoint evicts PPE manufacturer that promised 2,000 jobsR ugby union still produces some fascinating individuals and John Dobson, the head honcho at the DHL Stormers, is very much one of them. To say “Dobbo” is not your average coach is self-evident from his CV. In addition to degrees in law and business administration from the University of Cape Town there is surely no other top-level director of rugby with a creative writing degree. As he wryly puts it: “I was the only person on the course who didn’t wear a tweed skirt.” As a player he was also, for two seasons, the only white guy in an otherwise exclusively black working-class club side. “What did I learn? How privileged us white people were.” He was conscripted into the South African army during the apartheid era, has had two novels published and is the son of a noted South African rugby writer, referee and historian. He describes himself as “an accidental coach” having started out as coach of his local university fourth XV, but has subsequently guided the Stormers, then in administration, to the inaugural 2022 URC title, the franchise’s first piece of silverware. Stitch together all these disparate strands – he also loves The Cure and the poetry of Dylan Thomas – and you have someone well worth consulting on subjects such as the soul of rugby and the sport’s current health. And once he has retrieved Norman the family dog from the garden – “He’s a lazy, obese beagle” – some nagging concerns are soon evident on the eve of the Stormers’ Champions Cup tie against Harlequins at the Stoop on Saturday. For starters the Stormers are set to field a weakened team, partly because of injuries and logistics but also because of upcoming games against their local rivals the Lions and the Sharks either side of Christmas. While Dobson’s side will be competitive – “We’ll put up a fight in Harlequins , we’re not coming to get our tummies tickled” – he would love, one day, to send up his first-choice XV. “I think we’ve got to sort out the Champions Cup. Maybe because of our presence it’s a bit unwieldy at the moment. People are a bit confused by it and it’s certainly not what it was – to my mind as an outsider – a couple of years ago. That’s what I worry about: if it becomes really vanilla with teams just going through the motions.” He cites last weekend’s pool game against Toulon in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) as a cautionary case study. “We played a Champions Cup game in a beautiful city and I didn’t speak to one Frenchman. Dan Biggar came to our changing room afterwards but we didn’t do anything for them. How is it possible that guys can come from another continent and we don’t even say hello to them? It’s really odd but it’s across the board now. “It feels to me like we’re in a curious space with some of rugby’s values. I’m sounding very old fashioned now but lying down [feigning injury] to try and get the TMO involved? Not speaking to the opposition? I think we’ve all, South Africa included, trampled over rugby’s values a little bit over the last little while. It just feels like [the sport] is a little bit lost.” It is clearly a subject close to the thoughtful Dobson’s heart. “I’m old school. I like that side of the game. When I started with the Stormers some guys weren’t showering after matches. They were just getting into their tracksuits and going home. I said: ‘Jeepers, if we don’t like people here enough to have a cold drink with them afterwards we’re in trouble’. A lot of those old values ... I reckon that’s where the future of rugby could be.” In the meantime he wants his players to appreciate what they have, rather than grumbling about commuting north to play in the freezing British gloom. “I remember last year we were playing London Irish at Brentford and we were training at the Lensbury Club. The guys were complaining having just come down on a long bus ride from Glasgow. I said: ‘Listen, you fuckers. If I’d said a year ago that you could play Champions Cup rugby in London you’d have canoed up the west coast of Africa. Don’t take all this for granted.’” A return to more parochial fixtures, he warns, would be ruinous. “Are we going to go back to playing against the Griquas and Free State like in the 1980s? We’d better behave ourselves; it would be absolutely insane. We’re playing in competitions that are absolutely suited to our DNA. Every breakdown and scrum is a contest, every lineout maul is a fight. That’s actually what winning Test rugby and World Cups are all about.” Once upon a time Dobson played hooker for Western Province and has lived through all kinds of social upheaval in his homeland. Winning World Cups cannot solve every political problem – “The country isn’t united like that for the other three years and 10 months” – but he believes rugby has helped to ease some divisions. “Remember when we had the quota system with a certain number of black players in the team? Now rugby in South Africa has realised how much the so-called disadvantaged communities of the country could bring. Sign up to The Breakdown The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewed after newsletter promotion “Players are there on merit and that is where the real transformation is coming. Before there was this stigma surrounding the quota and some of the guys weren’t good enough. I’m not sure about a unified country but in rugby it’s really bedding in deep. And that does help the country, of course it does.” It is another reason why Dobson has chosen the mission statement “Make Cape Town Smile” as his team’s mantra. “What we’ve got in Cape Town is an amazing project. Rugby is so big among all races in the Western Cape so we’ve got this connection with the city. It’s almost a day-by-day version of the Springbok project. “One or two people overseas have approached me to go and coach them, especially after we won the URC. But when the Stormers fire me I’m done in coaching. Panasonic v Mitsubishi would mean nothing to me. If the Stormers win the police say that gender-based violence drops in our poorer suburbs. That makes it a bit more than a game. South African teams always draw on a little extra edge compared to some countries because you’re playing for so much. “Our players get that. If you look at our crowd these people are making amazing sacrifices. It’s not like rugby in the 1980s here when it was all smart people of my background. This team went into administration and was bankrupt. To reconnect it and give it back to the people of Cape Town is my project.” More power to Dobbo and the cause he holds so dear.