Latest news with #Gregory
Spectator
3 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Why going nuclear is humanity's only hope
There are three parties when it comes to global warming. First, the hard right, which says it isn't happening, and even if it is that we can do nothing about it. Then there are the far leftish Luddites who would smash all power generation systems, allowing only wind turbines, wave power etc. Finally there are the suave centrists who know perfectly well that only nuclear can save us. This book will become their bible. Tim Gregory is a nuclear scientist who works at Sellafield. He has a serious problem defending his conviction that nuclear is the answer: radiophobia, the terror people feel about radioactivity. Superficially, this terror seems well-founded. There have been some major nuclear power plant disasters: Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union in 1986; and Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Together they destroyed faith in nuclear as a safe generation system. The industry was stalled and still largely is. This, argues Gregory, is madness. After Fukushima, only one death can be directly related to radiation – a man who died from lung cancer seven years later. The remaining 20,000 casualties were caused by the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. Even the direct death count from the Chernobyl disaster only amounted to the 'low to mid thirties'. 'That's about the same number of people who die at work in the United Kingdom every three months,' writes Gregory. In contrast, a city of one million people using coal power would suffer 22 deaths per week; using gas would result in two or three deaths per week. Globally, some 8.8 million deaths a year are caused by air pollution.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How local students are preserving memory of Idora Park
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – For decades, Idora Park was more than an amusement park — it was the heartbeat of Youngstown. And long before arenas and stadiums, its ballroom was the stage that mattered. 'This was the place you wanted to be. If you made it to that stage, you made it in this town,' said Ray Timlin. Timlin is the producer of 'When Idora Rocked,' a documentary featuring the beloved ballroom. The park caught fire on April 26, 1984, destroying many of the attractions, and the park closed after that. The documentary, produced by Thomas Gregory, a media instructor at Choffin Career Center, is already on YouTube, but to be picked up by PBS, they needed to expand the original from 44 minutes to 56 minutes. That's where students stepped in. 'Our first version had no interior shots of the ballroom. Up to that point, we didn't think anything even existed,' said Gregory. Using decades-old photos and rare footage found online, students recreated a 3D model of Idora's historic ballroom. 'When people see this and conjure up their memories from 40 or 50 years ago, this is what it looked like,' Timlin said. The now-lost park lives on through the voices and memories of those who knew it best, and for the students who helped recreate a piece of history, it's a project that connected generations. 'From the photographs that we had, which were horrible quality, for students to pull off something like this is amazing,' Gregory said. The updated version of 'When Idora Rocked' will be finalized over the summer, preserving the memories of Youngstown's treasured park for generations to come. Idora Park may be long gone, but thanks to technology, storytelling and some local passion, it is rocking once again. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Epoch Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
Hollywood Man Gets 5 Years for Filing Bogus Claims for COVID-Related Tax Credits
A federal judge Kevin J. Gregory, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, who also ordered him to pay nearly $2.8 million in restitution. Gregory pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to one count of making false claims to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He has remained in federal custody since May 2023, according to prosecutors. In March 2020, Congress authorized an The credit was designed to encourage businesses to keep paying their employees during the pandemic. Any business, regardless of size, could qualify for the tax credit if it had been operating in 2020 and was at least partially suspended because of a government order related to the pandemic, or had seen a decline in revenue of more than 50 percent. Related Stories 5/26/2023 1/10/2025 Qualifying businesses received 50 percent of up to $10,000 in wages paid by an employer between March 13 and Dec. 31, 2020, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Congress also authorized a 'paid sick and family leave credit' during the pandemic that authorized the IRS to give a credit to businesses for wages paid to workers who were on sick or family leave and couldn't work because of COVID-19. According to federal prosecutors, Gregory made false claims to the IRS for the payment of nearly $65.3 million in tax refunds from November 2020 to April 2022. The refunds were for a Beverly Hills-based farming-and-transportation company named Elijah USA Farm Holdings, which did not exist. Federal prosecutors say the IRS issued a portion of the refunds Gregory claimed, and he used more than $2.7 million for personal expenses. In January 2022, Gregory filed a false claim to the IRS for a tax refund in the amount of $23.8 million, which he submitted as part of Elijah Farm's quarterly federal tax return, according to prosecutors. He claimed in his filing that Elijah Farm employed 33 people, paid nearly $1.6 million in quarterly wages, and had deposited nearly $18 million in federal taxes. 'In fact, Gregory knew that Elijah Farm employed nobody and paid wages to no one and had not made federal tax deposits to the IRS in the amounts stated on his tax return,' the U.S. Attorney's Office stated in a press release Thursday. Gregory was The statutory maximum sentence for the charges was five years in federal prison. Gregory was sentenced to 57 months in prison—just under the maximum. The IRS's criminal investigation unit handled the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen Williams of the major frauds section prosecuted it. Gregory could not be reached for comment.
Epoch Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
Net Migration Halves in a Year, But Still Far Higher Than Pre-Pandemic: ONS
Net migration nearly halved in the course of one year, but still remains far higher than in the previous years before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In the year to December 2024, the difference between the number of people moving to the UK and leaving was an estimated 431,000, down 49.9 percent from 860,000 the year before, the largest numerical drop in any 12-month period. The ONS's director of population statistics, Mary Gregory, said on Thursday that the decline was largely driven by a falling number of immigrants coming to the UK to work and study, 'particularly student dependants.' This followed policy change from early 2024 by the previous Conservative government, which put in place Long-Term Immigration Falls The ONS said that the largest drop in immigration was from non-EU nationals coming here to work, falling 108,000, or 49 percent. Immigration for study purposes declined by 17 percent. Long-term immigration also fell to 948,000, down 28.5 percent from 1,326,000 in the previous year, the first time in three years the figure was below 1 million. Emigration also rose by around 11 percent to an estimated 517,000, up from 466,000 on the previous year. Gregory said that was especially owing to 'people leaving who originally came on study visas once pandemic travel restrictions to the UK were eased.' Related Stories 5/12/2025 5/14/2025 The impact of Conservative policy on dependant visas saw an 86 percent (105,000) reduction in study dependants, and a 35 percent (81,000) decrease in the number of work dependants. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the fall in net migration is 'welcome after the figures quadrupled to nearly a million in the last parliament.' 'Our Immigration White Paper sets out radical reforms to further reduce net migration,' she added. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp He added that the figures were 'still far too high and need to go down a lot further.' Higher Than Pre-Pandemic Levels While these figures are a dramatic decline on 2022 and 2023, they are still far higher than the pre-pandemic era, and well above the pre-Brexit peak of roughly 300,000. Net migration was broadly flat in the years leading up to the lockdown, standing at 208,000 in 2017, 276,000 in 2018, and 184,000 in 2019. They then fell sharply in 2020 to 93,000, when travel restrictions were put in place. Net migration then rose to 484,000 in 2021, 873,000 in 2022, and dropped slightly to 860,000 in 2023. Estimated net migration to the UK. PA Media The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford noted that this 'recording-breaking decline' was possible 'primarily because numbers had previously been so high.' 'The declines reflect a period of policy liberalisation post-Brexit which saw net migration reach a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, followed by restrictions in early 2024, both under the previous government,' the Migration Observatory said. For scale of how large a number current net migration figures still are, political commentator Matt Goodwin Migration Observatory researcher Ben Brindle said that net migration figures will continue to fall, as the previous government's restrictions 'are not yet fully visible in the data.' 'Last week's policy proposals should reduce migration further, though by a small amount. Because these declines will not necessarily take us to particularly low levels, by historical standards,' he added. 'Relatively Small' Economic Impact The Labour government has maintained the previous administration's visa rules, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announcing further measures to bring down legal immigration in the White Paper These include ending the recruitment of overseas care workers, raising the skills requirements for visas to degree level, and charging universities a levy on international students. Migration Observatory Director Madeleine Sumption said the economic impact of this fall in migrant workers is 'actually likely to be relatively small.' She added, 'That's because the groups that have driven the decline, such as study and work dependants, are neither the highest skilled, highest-paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenues, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support.' Similarly, Downing Street indicated that it was not concerned that a fall in migrant workers would lead to a workforce shortage. The prime minister's official spokesman said, 'We are, for the first time, setting out a strategy to properly bring together a domestic skills strategy together with an immigration strategy.' 'So we will be reducing our reliance on overseas labour by training up our domestic workforce and ensuring, as the public rightly expects, that our border system is secure,' he added. PA Media contributed to this report.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
High school softball: Freshman hitter clutch in D-I between Buchanan and Central
Buchanan High softball coach Dean Gregory paused and was trying to remember when his team played in the Central Section Division I championship. 'It's probably been 2017, I think,' Gregory said. Gregory was right about his assertion. Only this time, he hopes his Bears will come out on top. To get there, however, Buchanan had some work to do. Top-seeded Central had a 4-3 lead, but the fifth-seeded Bears rallied in the top of the seventh inning, scoring three runs with two outs, capped by freshman Addison Schafer's two-run single in a 6-4 victory in a semifinal game. 'This team never quits,' Gregory said. 'They are such a quality group of kids. They work hard and they have fun. They play the game the way it's supposed to be played and I'm really happy.' Buchanan will aim to win its first section title since 2016, facing No. 2 Clovis North, which won the title last season over Central. For now, Gregory will savior this win. Schafer, too. 'I had a lot of anxiety,' Schafer described, as she was batting. 'I try to just settle down, calm my nerves, take it one pitch at a time and just try to help my team as much as I could.' Clovis North, meanwhile, rallied with six runs in the sixth inning to pull away from Stockdale in a 10-3 victory. The Broncos took a 5-4 lead, scoring three runs in the bottom of the fifth inning. Sydney Kniss helped out when she had a two-run single in the sixth. Brynn Gentry and Riley Grealy each had two RBI apiece. Central Section semifinals Division I No. 5 Buchanan 6, No. 1 Central East 4 No. 2 Clovis North 10, No. 3 Stockdale 3 Division II No. 3 Monache 4, No. 2 Garces 3 Friday No. 9 Edison at No. 4 Bakersfield Christian Division III No. 7 Pioneer Valley 1, No. 3 Kerman 0 Friday No. 5 Liberty-Madera Ranchos at No. 1 Wasco Division IV No. 1 Woodlake 8, No. 5 Golden West 5 No. 3 Coalinga 5, No. 7 Sanger West 1 Division V No. 1 Orcutt Academy 1, No. 3 Hoover 0 No. 2 Dos Palos 5, No. 11 McLane 0 Division VI No. 5 Torres 11, No. 1 Kern Valley 1 No. 10 Roosevelt 8, No. 3 Strathmore 3 Championships At Margie Wright Diamond, Fresno State May 29 Division VI No. 5 Torres vs. No. 10 Roosevelt, 4:30 p.m. Division III No. 7 Pioneer Valley vs. No. 1 Wasco/No. 5 LIberty-Madera Ranchos winner, 7 p.m. May 30 Division V No. 1 Orcutt Academy vs. No. 2 Dos Palos, 4:30 p.m. Division II No. 3 Monache vs. No. 4 Bakersfield Christian/No 9 Edison winner, 7 p.m. May 31 Division IV No. 1 Woodlake vs. No. 3 Coalinga, 4:30 p.m. Division I No. 2 Clovis North vs. No. 5 Buchanan, 7 p.m.
