Latest news with #Amherst
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Portion of Ridge Lea Road, North Bailey Avenue to close starting Monday
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — A portion of Ridge Lea Road and North Bailey Avenue between the driveway of Lowe's and Romney Drive will be closed to all traffic starting Monday, Amherst police announced. The closure will go through Friday, June 6. Courtesy: Amherst Police Department WIVB News 4 reached out to Amherst police for information on the reason for the five-day closure and is waiting to hear back. Katie Skoog joined the News 4 team in April 2024. She is a graduate from the University at Buffalo. You can view more of her work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
A dozen Mass. cities are ‘on notice' over sanctuary laws, feds say
The Trump administration placed Boston, 11 other towns and cities in Massachusetts, and more than 500 communities across the country 'on notice' Thursday over their laws dealing with immigration enforcement, accusing them of violating federal law by providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. Federal authorities said the 'lawless' jurisdictions should expect to receive 'formal notification' of noncompliance with federal law, along with demands that local officials revise any policies out of step with federal immigration statutes. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement Thursday. The announcement followed up on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last month directing the Department of Homeland Security to publish a list of jurisdictions that decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Local officials in such jurisdictions, often known as sanctuary cities, argue that by avoiding cooperation with immigration agents on noncriminal matters, they allow undocumented residents to feel comfortable interacting with police without fear of deportation. Cities are safer when all members of the public are willing to call and help police, proponents of sanctuary policies say. Read more: Sanctuary or not, immigrant fears transcend borders in Chelsea, Revere In Boston, for example, police are barred from asking members of the public about their immigration status or assisting federal agents with civil immigration enforcement. Boston's law does not prevent police from assisting immigration authorities with criminal investigations into drugs, weapons, human trafficking, or other matters. Read more: Boston's Trust Act: What it is and how it works The list of sanctuary jurisdictions included communities in nearly three dozen states, including all six in New England. In Massachusetts, the communities identified by the Trump administration were: Amherst Boston Cambridge Chelsea Concord Holyoke Lawrence Newton Northampton Orleans Somerville Springfield The government said Massachusetts as a whole also qualified as a sanctuary jurisdiction, potentially referring to a ruling from the state's highest court barring any police department from detaining someone at the request of federal officials but absent a warrant. The government further listed every county in the state as a sanctuary jurisdiction, excluding Hampden County. The list was based on a number of factors, including whether the communities self-identified as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they comply with federal immigration law, whether they had restrictions on information sharing with the immigration enforcement authorities, and what protections they provide people in the country without documentation, federal officials said. The Trump administration has attempted to pull federal funding from some sanctuary communities. Cities have contested the moves in court, arguing they have no responsibility to enforce federal immigration law. Federal departments and agencies will be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with the jurisdictions and suspending or terminating the flow of money, according to Trump's executive order. ICE takes two into custody in Amherst in crackdown on 'sanctuary' communities Man helped kill 11 people, mostly teens, in Brazil. Now, he's in US prison for perjury Arrested by ICE? Witness an arrest? These are your rights Sen. Warren, Mass. pols demand answers from Trump on 'attacks on international students' Mass. Gov. Healey slams ICE over migrant arrests on Nantucket, Vineyard Read the original article on MassLive.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Beau Sejour Leisure Centre could become 'community hub'
A leisure centre which operated at a loss of around £870,000 last year should be safeguarded as a holistic community service hub, a States of Guernsey review has found.A four-stage review is looking into the sustainability of the Beau Sejour Leisure Centre in Amherst, St Peter Port, which lost money largely due to electricity and staffing first two stages have concluded, with recommendations including repurposing underused spaces such as the sports hall, squash and outdoor tennis review said there was "strong interest" in co-locating a number of government, private and charity services to maximise efficiency and create a holistic community service hub. The recommendations are part of an independent review into the island's largest municipal leisure have been endorsed by the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture and an independent steering group."Beau Sejour is a cornerstone of Guernsey's community life, with the potential to evolve into an even more inclusive and impactful facility," the report concluded. "By addressing current challenges and capitalising on identified opportunities, it can continue serving as a vibrant hub for health, wellness, and cultural engagement for generations to come."Beau Sejour was found to be providing essential leisure, cultural and social services and was a multifunctional hub for health, culture and community engagement. 'Key part of community' In a joint statement, the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture said: "Beau Sejour accommodates activities and provides facilities that are a key part of our community, and the committee greatly values the social and economic contributions made."The centre's purpose and value "have now been clearly defined through this consultation", they added. The report said the centre's long-term sustainability required "a proactive approach to balance economic viability with community benefit", with the various uses of the centre and its future management and finance options needed to be centre was found to generate £1.39m a year in social value for Guernsey, ranking in the top 25% of similar facilities for social value per was found to provide significant public health benefits through physical activity and sport, playing a strong role in rehabilitation and preventative fitness and swimming facilities were found to be well used, with operating costs "generally well-controlled, and secondary income sources are above average".Recommendations also included an increase in spending on marketing to attract new customers, while flagging up that ageing assets required increasing maintenance, which could become than industry average staffing costs as a percentage of income should be monitored and reviewed in light of industry and the local norms, the report also recommended reviewing energy use to shift from oil to greener final two stages of the review are due to conclude by the end of this year.
Entrepreneur
5 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Her Dorm Room Side Hustle Led to $60,000 in Sales Overnight — Then Over $1 Million.
When Ali Grace was in high school, she loved thrift shopping for vintage denim with her mom. She'd cut up old jeans and repurpose or tailor them to fit her. And when she went off to college at UMass Amherst, she studied math and computer science. But by her senior year, in 2018, she'd gotten a little bored with her STEM studies and started looking for a creative outlet. She and her roommate started prowling thrift shops for vintage Levis and customizing them to fit the girls who lived in their dorm. Word got around, with more girls requesting their own custom jeans, and soon it became a side hustle, with Grace selling five to ten pairs a month for about $150 each. Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here. " I had this thing on my website where you'd do a deposit and you'd fill out a form with all your measurements, inspo photos, what you want, and then I would individually text every single customer and talk to them about their order one-on-one before I Venmo requested them," she says. Around that time, Grace made her first wholesale connection. "I met this guy in front of a wall of Levi's at a thrift store, and he was like, 'Oh my mom has a barn of these.' It's crazy that the lady had the same birthday as me, drove the same car. She was essentially me but 55! Her name was Karen." During that period, Grace also took a class called Creative Entrepreneurship, which she credits for changing the trajectory of her life. The professor introduced her to a local business accelerator, which she decided to apply for, and got in. From the top 300 businesses, she made it through multiple rounds of elimination to the top 12, and won a few thousand dollars. "It wasn't about the money," she says. "It was about proving that this small business had the potential to be something big and that we were on the cusp of it. Once I saw the momentum, I moved forward with aligrace at full force." Image credit: Lauren Alexandra The first couple of years after graduating, her business, which she called aligrace, was a one-woman show. She opened a little boutique in Cape Cod, and then moved to California. "I will say I was extremely profitable then, and our jeans were probably 30% to 50% cheaper than they are now because I didn't have rent. All I had was the cost of inventory, the labor cost of me working on the jeans, and the seamstress cost." Related: She Quit Corporate Life to Pursue a Side Hustle With Her Sister. They Saw Over $100,000 During Launch Weekend — and Now Have an 8-Figure Brand. Profitable or not, those years were a grind because Grace wanted to maintain personal connections with her customers. She texted each buyer in a kind of one-on-one consultation. "I remember I would stay at my office until midnight because I had to text everybody," she says. "Like, there are 75 people that I have to get through before I can start their orders! But it was really impactful and because when they would get their jeans, they would personally text me like, 'Oh my God, I've never had a pair that fit like this before!' When the pandemic hit, Grace shut down for a couple of months to cope with the chaos. But when she was ready to take orders again, she opened her website around midnight and went to bed. " I woke up and we had like $60,000 in sales in like 12 hours," she says. "At this time, I'm operating out of a shed in my yard. I have hundreds of Levi's, but I don't have a setup to accommodate like 300 orders in a day. So I got a warehouse. I expanded, I bought more inventory. I hired my first employee. I started hiring more teams of seamstresses. Things just really snowballed from there." To the uninitiated, building an entire business on customizing vintage Levi's might sound like an impossible sourcing dilemma. But, as Grace explains, there's actually a vast Levi's wholesale market, with sellers all over the world. After all, Levi's has been making jeans since 1873, and their jeans last a long time. "All of the denim we have is 20 to 30 years old," Grace says. "We have some jeans that are even older than 30 years old and they really hold up." In many ways, it's the most sustainable possible model for a fashion brand: recycling used materials, paying for local labor. But, unsurprisingly, everything about the business — from sourcing to the actual alterations — is labor-intensive. "One of our main wholesalers is in San Jose and he ships us like a thousand jeans at a time," Grace says. "We'll go up there on buying trips, which can be upwards of a 10 to 12-hour day. We drive up there with a U-Haul, dig through pallets trying to find grade A or B vintage denim. Then we size it, grade it and organize it by waist, butt and length, so when orders come in, it's really easy to find the sizes we need. Then we alter it to the desired style, with all the little extras — tilted pockets, split seam, unfolded hem, whatever it may be. It goes to the seamstress, and then there's a whole stain treatment process to clean the denim, since it's vintage. It's very hands-on and it's definitely been a grind to figure out how to scale this." It was in 2020, after ramping up production, that Grace also started reaching out to influencers. "To this day, we haven't paid a dollar in influencer marketing," she says. "Everything is just pure gifting. I don't ask anything in return." Image credit: Lauren Alexandra And though it took a little while, those no-strings-attached influencer relationships paid off in a big way. Revolve, the online fashion retailer, had long been a dream partner for Grace. "I tried all my avenues of getting in touch with Revolve and everything was a dead end," she says. "Then one day, I think it was in October 2023, I had a DM from Casey, the denim buyer. She had found us on TikTok through Kelsey DiPrima, one of our OG influencers." Related: Why Big-Name Influencers Are Losing Power — and Micro-Influencers Are Taking Over Still, even if it was the dream, selling to a retailer like Revolve meant finally developing standard sizing — a departure from Grace's foundational concept of vintage denim customized to each woman's body. "That was kind of hard for me because I loved that we were fully custom for so long," Grace says. "But it's just not scalable, you know? So I developed our 23 through 35 standard sizing based on all of our customers' measurements over the previous seven years, and then we crafted these standard size guides. But you still have the option to buy custom on our website." Since starting their partnership with Revolve, aligrace has also started selling at FWRD, the showroom Place, and recently launched with Anthropology. Last year, the company hit $1 million in sales, and Grace says, "I believe we can do $2 million this year with our website and wholesale connections." For Grace, one of the most rewarding parts of her journey has been staying connected to the "ride or die" aligrace customers she was texting into the wee hours, six years ago. "Some have like 15 pairs of our jeans in their closets now," she says. "They're my friends. It's not possible for me to be that hands-on anymore, but if I didn't do it like that back then, I don't think we would be where we are today. It really developed a community of people who wanted to support us."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Local tribal nations share traditions at annual Odenong Powwow
AMHERST, Mass. (WWLP) – Nearly 20 tribal nations living in western Massachusetts are coming together this weekend, hoping to share their traditions. Hundreds of artists come to Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton The fifth annual Odenong Powwow is taking place in Amherst. Native Americans, First Nations, and Indigenous Americans will perform intertribal dances at the event. From food to art, the tribal nations look forward to sharing their culture with the community. 'If you're curious about Indigenous people, they are your neighbors most likely,' said Logistics Coordinator Kara Kahgeebear. 'We live so many more places than people think, and it's nice to create a visual in Amherst, Massachusetts. These are not people from long ago, who we study in books.' The powwow continues on Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Amherst-Pelham Regional High School. The event is free and anyone is welcome to attend. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
