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When Jonathan Allen’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, William H. Riley, founded W.H. Riley & Son, he delivered the leading heating products of the day — coal and wood — on horse-drawn carts to customers in North Attleboro. It was 151 years ago, in 1873, the same year Levi Strauss began selling his unique blue jeans in San Francisco and Ulysses S. Grant began his second term as president. Riley’s horses were housed in a stable on East Street, around the corner from the company’s current headquarters on Chestnut Street. Now, W.H. Riley & Son delivers oil and propane to 30 communities in Southeastern Massachusetts. Through seven generations of ownership, the company has adapted to customers’ changing heating and cooling needs. But the biggest change may be about to come. Over the next quarter of a century, the heating industry in Massachusetts is expected to be revolutionized as the state attempts to attack climate change by converting homes and businesses from boilers and furnaces that use fossil fuels to heat pumps that run on electricity. “It’s going to completely change the business,” said Allen, who is vice president of the company he owns with his father, Mark Allen. What’s frustrating to the Allens is that fuel dealers don’t even know the rules yet. “It’s hard to judge” the impact, Jonathan Allen said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.” Noah Powers is the operations manager at Powers Energy in North Attleboro, a business founded by his father Patrick in 1992. Powers and his family are trying to keep up with the complicated regulations that are being drawn up. “It’s tough to get your finger on the pulse of what’s happening,” he said. The rules are being drawn up now by the state Department of Environmental Protection in what is being called the Clean Heat Standard — a level of electrification that heating fuel suppliers will need to achieve. The state agency is expected to release a draft of the Clean Heat Standard next year, which will be followed by a series of hearings. Implementation is expected in 2026; no approval from the governor or Legislature is needed. The need for change Buildings account for approximately one-third of Massachusetts’ greenhouse gas emissions, said Fabienne Alexis, deputy press secretary for the DEP. In order to reduce emissions and achieve the state’s climate change goals, homeowners and building owners need to a new way to heat. The state hopes to have the conversion largely completed by 2050. “Transitioning from fossil fuel heating to heat pumps, in combination with energy efficiency measures like weatherization, are key elements of our building decarbonization strategy,” she said. But Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association, which represents fuel suppliers like W.H. Riley and Powers, said the plan seems overly ambitious and potentially expensive to consumers. What it will mean is removing the boilers and furnaces from the basements of every home and every business in the state and replacing them with heat pumps. “Massachusetts is attempting to electrify every building in the state,” he said. “It’s an enormous task.” The burden falls to businessesThere are about 6.5 million buildings in Massachusetts. About 80% of the buildings that will exist in 2050 have already been built, making retrofits essential, Alexis said. By 2050, here are the state’s goals for home heating: • 72% of residences will be fully heated with an electric heat pump. • 17% of residences will be hybrid with electric heat pump and fossil fuel. • 6% will remain on electric resistance heat. • Only about 5% of residences remain heated by gas, liquid fuels and wood. But, Alexis emphasized, building owners are not responsible for making a switch from heating systems that use fossil fuels to heat pumps. “The (Clean Heat Standard) does not require homeowners or building owners to take any specific actions or make any changes to the fuels that they use,” she said. “The obligation is on energy suppliers to incentivize homeowners and building owners to transition to clean heat.” One way to “incentivize” is to offer rebates through the existing Mass Save program, which is funded by the power and gas utilities and run by the state. As of June, 81,048 homeowners had installed heat pumps as their primary heating source since 2020 through Mass Save. Mass Save expects more than 125,000 heat pumps to be installed in homes by the end of 2025, exceeding the state’s target of 100,000. In addition, the state has received $146 million from the federal government for more electrification and weatherization efforts. A part of those funds will be used in towns like North Attleboro and Mansfield, which have municipal power utilities and do not participate in Mass Save. And the state is looking at big rebates to homeowners, in the vicinity of $20,000. However, Mass Save requires homeowners installing heat pumps to dismantle or remove heating systems using fossil fuels in order to receive a rebate. That means homeowners will need to install a whole home heat pump system, not a unit that just heats a room, Ferrante said. If weatherization and an upgrade to the electrical system are needed, that could cost homeowners $40,000 to $45,000, far more than $10,000 to $15,000 to replace a boiler or furnace, he said. “They’re very, very expensive in our view,” he said. How heat pumps work There’s nothing new about the fundamental technology of heat pumps. It’s been around since the mid-1800s. Your refrigerator is a heat pump. It sucks out heat from inside and pushes it out — that’s why the compressor at the back of it feels hot. The same is true of your air conditioner. Even at cold temperatures, there is heat in the air, and the vapor compression cycle that refrigerators and air conditioners use essentially concentrates that heat and moves it away. It warms up one space to cool another. Heat pumps are basically a reversible air conditioner. When it’s cold indoors, they can suck heat from an outside source — the air or the ground, in the case of geothermal units — and use it to warm up air or water for hot water pumps inside. When it’s too hot inside, they can move that heat outside. Heat pump is probably an inaccurate term since they can also serve as air conditioners. Scientists say heat pumps are a more efficient way to heat buildings since there is no need to use oil or gas to heat air or water and move it around the structure, as is the case today with furnaces and boilers. And the technology today has improved greatly, countering the argument fuel suppliers give that heat pumps aren’t sufficient to maintain a warm home in places like New England. “Heat pump technology has improved significantly in recent years, such that homeowners can be confident in the ability of heat pumps to meet their heating and cooling needs even on the coldest and hottest days,” the DEP’s Alexis said. What the customers say Charles and Reidun Caron care deeply about preserving the planet, to the point that they had solar panels installed on their Attleboro home. Last winter, they added a heat pump, hoping to replace their oil-burning system with one using electricity. They contacted their oil company to stop regular deliveries. They quickly had to resume oil deliveries after getting their first winter electricity bills, running around $500. “They work very nicely for air conditioning but I would never recommend them for heat,” Reidun Caron said. “It’s too expensive.” The Carons, who admit to preferring to heat their home to 72 degrees, are probably more of the exception. Heat pumps are growing in popularity. Last year, they outsold traditional gas-fired heating systems in the United States for the first time. And a recent study by Consumer Reports said the number of customers left with a chilly home or sky-high utility bills are growing fewer. “Chances are, if you pick the right equipment for your home and your climate, make any recommended weather-sealing upgrades, and hire a reputable contractor with experience installing heat pumps, you should have a good outcome,” the study said. But Noah Powers of Powers Energy said they have had heat pump customers whose pipes froze during frigid weather. And he recently had his home insurance policy canceled because the house is heated entirely by heat pumps. “They said it was a freeze risk,” he said. What the companies say Meanwhile, energy companies are anxious about the upcoming Clean Heat Standard, the rules they will need to live by since they are being held responsible by the state for installing heat pumps, Ferrante said. They do know they will be receiving financial incentives from the state for installing heat pumps, he said. And they won a concession from the government, which has agreed to provide credits to oil companies that use biofuels, a blend of ultra-low sulfur heating oil with renewable biodiesel made from organic and recycled products, making it far more environmentally friendly. Those credits are used to reduce the cost of future purchases. The problem is that companies like W.H. Riley often have to wait months for those credits, making it difficult to do business, Allen said. All he knows that it’s frustrating planning for the future of the 151-year-old company without knowing the rules it will have to play by. “It’s like the state is saying, “Oil’s bad, get rid of it,’” he said. “It’s not that simple.”President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that he would act on his first day in office to pardon rioters involved in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, further building expectations for a broad granting of clemency. "I'm going to be acting very quickly, first day," Trump said on NBC News' "Meet the Press with Kristen Welker" when asked when he planned to pardon his supporters who were charged in the attack aimed at overturning his 2020 election defeat. Trump told Welker that there could be "some exceptions" to his pardons if the individuals had acted "radical" or "crazy" during the assault, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths. READ | Trump declares Russia and Iran in ‘weakened state’, says Putin ‘not interested in protecting’ Syria's Assad But Trump described the prosecutions of his supporters as inherently corrupt and did not rule out pardoning the more than 900 defendants who had already pleaded guilty, including those accused of acting violently in the attack. "I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases," Trump said. The comments - Trump's most detailed on the issue of pardons since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election - will likely add to already high expectations for broad action once Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20. "He continues to put out the public message closer and closer to what the J6 community is asking for, which is clemency for all of the January 6ers," Suzzanne Monk, a longtime advocate for defendants charged in the riot, told Reuters. Hopes among Jan. 6 defendants and their supporters for broad-based clemency have been growing over the past week after President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, marking a reversal from his pledge not to interfere with his son's criminal cases. Biden said Hunter deserved a pardon because he was the victim of political persecution, an argument Trump will likely use to justify mass pardons. Some Biden critics said his decision would lessen the political cost for Trump. Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said she was worried broad amnesty for Jan. 6 defendants would serve to wrongly incentivize the fomenting of unrest or even violence on behalf of a president. "The idea that he's going to reward people for violating the law on his behalf in connection with an attempt to overthrow legitimate election results... that's not precedented," said Wehle, author of a recent book on presidential pardon power. 'NASTY SYSTEM' In what has been billed as America's largest-ever criminal investigation, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged in the Jan. 6 attack, with crimes ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy and violent assault. Of that total, more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty and 645 have been sentenced to prison, with punishments ranging from a few days to 22 years, according to the latest data from the Justice Department. John Pierce, a lawyer who has represented dozens of Jan. 6 defendants, urged Trump to issue a blanket pardon for all who were charged with participating in the riot. "I just don't know how you do it otherwise," he said, noting that it would be difficult to parse which conduct out of the scores of cases that have already worked their way through the legal system would merit a pardon. "I think you would see a lot of unhappy people in the January 6 community" if pardons were granted on a case-by-case basis, he said. In the NBC interview, Trump lamented those held for long periods of detention, saying they were being kept in "a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn't even be allowed to be open." He described them as being victims of a "very nasty system." READ | Donald Trump says 'can't guarantee tariffs won't impact US prices', keeps door open for revenge prosecutions Attorney Norm Pattis believes pardons should cover his clients, Zachary Rehl and Joseph Biggs, two former leaders of the Proud Boys militant group sentenced to 15 and 17 years in prison after a jury convicted them of seditious conspiracy. Pattis said Trump, in promoting the idea that the 2020 election had been stolen from him through widespread fraud - an assertion for which there is no evidence - prompted his clients to believe that they had to take drastic action. "He needs to own the fact that he created a tremendous sense of expectations with his claims about a stolen election, and people responded to him as President of the United States," Pattis said. "I would hope that he would pardon broadly." Pattis said it was unclear how Trump might draw a line excluding some defendants from clemency due to acts of violence. Jake Lang, a New York man who was charged with assaulting police officers and has been held in jail before trial, said he was hopeful he would be swept up in a blanket pardon. "I think on January 20, 2025, we are going to see a similar situation to Hunter Biden," Lang said in a phone interview. “Everybody's pardoned, full exoneration. Get them all out of prison and get this thing over with, so that we can start the national healing process.”ph365 。

Donald Trump is reiterating his threat to impose steep tariffs on Canadian goods if the federal government doesn't take action on border security — and a former official from his first administration says the U.S. president-elect isn't bluffing. "I'm a big believer in tariffs. I think tariffs are the most beautiful word.... It's going to make us rich," Trump said on NBC's that aired on Sunday. The president-elect continued to extol the power of tariffs and said they're "a powerful tool not only economically, but also for getting other things outside of economics." As an example, Trump referred to his threat to on products from Canada and Mexico unless they curb the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders. Four days after the threat was issued, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for a surprise dinner. The president-elect joked about the saga in his NBC interview. "In fact, [Trudeau] flew to Mar-a-Lago within about 15 seconds after the call," Trump said. The president-elect also said he told Trudeau that Canada has to "close up" its border and that "drugs are pouring in at levels never seen before." "And I said to the president of Mexico and to Justin Trudeau, if it doesn't stop, I'm going to put tariffs on your country at about 25 per cent," Trump said. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dined with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump in late November. Trump described the meeting as 'very productive' on his social media platform Truth Social. (@JustinTrudeau/X) Ken Cuccinelli, a former official in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first administration, said the president-elect's tariff threat is "very serious" given the issues at hand. "And I think one of the things that people around the world know about Donald Trump is that he will follow through with things like this," Cuccinelli said in an interview on that aired Sunday. When asked what he thinks can be done to protect the Canada-U.S. border, Cuccinelli said that he "wouldn't expect the president to give the prime minister a checklist." The goal isn't "zero illegal crossings," he added. Instead, it's about driving them down to "the point where it's not worth people trying to, for example, come to Canada as a way to get into the United States." What Trump specifically in exchange for removing his tariff threat still isn't clear, according to Canadian officials familiar with the details of the surprise dinner in Florida. The federal government in the wake of the Trudeau-Trump meeting, including adding more helicopters and drones to tighten up monitoring of the Canada-U.S. border. David Cohen, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada, said the Biden administration has not proposed a 25 per cent across-the-board tariff because of concerns it would contribute to inflation and lead to job losses in both countries. "I think in the end, the value of that from a trade perspective is not going to be very compelling," he told Rosemary Barton. Cohen also said there's a "pretty clear window" for Canada and the United States to work through the issues underlying Trump's tariff threat.Jennings rushes for tiebreaking touchdown and Presbyterian defeats Butler 30-27

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Tech Triumph! Here’s Why HPE is Surging

Hookipa Pharma ( NASDAQ:HOOK – Get Free Report ) had its target price dropped by stock analysts at JMP Securities from $24.00 to $7.00 in a report issued on Thursday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a “market outperform” rating on the stock. JMP Securities’ price target points to a potential upside of 225.58% from the stock’s previous close. Separately, Royal Bank of Canada reduced their price target on Hookipa Pharma from $50.00 to $48.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, November 15th. Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on HOOK Hookipa Pharma Stock Down 6.5 % Institutional Trading of Hookipa Pharma Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Acadian Asset Management LLC increased its position in shares of Hookipa Pharma by 85.8% in the 1st quarter. Acadian Asset Management LLC now owns 882,262 shares of the company’s stock valued at $627,000 after acquiring an additional 407,532 shares during the period. Renaissance Technologies LLC grew its stake in Hookipa Pharma by 38.4% during the 2nd quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 302,246 shares of the company’s stock valued at $179,000 after purchasing an additional 83,800 shares during the last quarter. Ikarian Capital LLC acquired a new position in shares of Hookipa Pharma in the third quarter valued at about $228,000. Finally, Virtu Financial LLC purchased a new position in shares of Hookipa Pharma in the first quarter worth about $31,000. 63.88% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Hookipa Pharma Company Profile ( Get Free Report ) HOOKIPA Pharma Inc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, develops immunotherapeutics targeting infectious diseases and cancers based on its proprietary arenavirus platform. The company's lead infectious disease product candidate is HB-101, which is in a randomized double-blinded Phase 2 clinical trial in cytomegalovirus-negative patients awaiting kidney transplantation from cytomegalovirus-positive donors. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Hookipa Pharma Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Hookipa Pharma and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .Romanians are casting ballots on Sunday in the first round of a presidential election that could pit a far-right nationalist against the incumbent leftist prime minister in the runoff. Thirteen candidates are vying for the presidency in the European Union and NATO member country, and the vote is expected to go to a second round on Dec. 8. Polls opened at 7.00 a.m. local time (0500GMT) and will close at 9.00 p.m. (1900GMT). Romanians abroad have been able to vote since Friday. By 8 p.m. local time (1800GMT), 9.2 million people — about 51% of eligible voters — had cast ballots, according to the Central Election Bureau. The final vote could see George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, or AUR, face off against incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, backed by Romania’s largest party, the Social Democratic Party or PSD. The presidential role carries a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security, foreign policy, and judicial appointments. Romania will also hold parliamentary elections on Dec. 1 that will determine the country’s next government and prime minister. Simion, 38, is a vocal supporter of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and has long been a controversial figure. He campaigned for reunification with Moldova, which this year renewed a five-year ban on him from entering the country over security concerns, and he is banned for the same reason from entering neighbouring Ukraine. “I would like that in the next five to ten years, for Romanians to be really proud to be Romanians, to promote Romanian culture, Romanian products,” he told reporters on Wednesday in the capital, Bucharest. “As a Romanian president, I will promote Romanian interests. In most cases, Romanian interests coincide with partner interests.” Ecaterina Nawadia, a 20-year-old architecture student, said she voted for the first time in a national election on Sunday and hopes young people turn out in high numbers. “Since the (1989) revolution, we didn’t have a really good president,” she said. “I hope most of the people my age went to vote ... because the leading candidate is not the best option.” Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, says Sunday’s vote will be “a tight race” in which the diaspora will likely play a key role in which candidates make it to the runoff. “We are at a point where Romania can easily divert or slip toward a populist regime because (voter) dissatisfaction is pretty large among a lot of people from all social strata,” he told The Associated Press. “And the temptation for any regime, any leader — will be to go on a populist road.” He added that Romania’s large budget deficit, high inflation, and an economic slowdown could push more mainstream candidates to shift toward populist stances amid widespread dissatisfaction. Ciolacu told the AP that if he is elected, one of his biggest goals is “to convince Romanians that it is worth staying at home or returning” to Romania, which has a massive diaspora spread throughout EU countries. “Romania has a huge chance to become a developed economy in the next 10 years, where honest work is fairly rewarded and people have the security of a better life,” he said. “But for this, we need balance and responsibility ... I am running for the Presidency of Romania because we need a change.” Other key candidates include Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party, or USR former NATO deputy general secretary Mircea Geoana, who is running independently and Nicolae Ciuca, a former army general and head of the center-right National Liberal Party, which is currently in a tense coalition with the PSD. Geoana, a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, told the AP that he believes his international experience qualifies him above the other candidates. “I think I bring a lot of competence and experience and connections in this complicated world,” he said. Lasconi, a former journalist and the leader of the USR said she sees corruption as one of the biggest problems Romania faces and that she supports increased defence spending and continued aid to Ukraine. Romania has been a staunch ally of war-torn Ukraine since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. But Simion of the AUR party said he opposes Romania — which has sent a Patriot missile system to Ukraine — contributing further military aid and that he hopes Trump can “stop the war.” In 2020, the AUR party went from relative obscurity to gaining 9% in a parliamentary vote, allowing it to enter parliament. Opponents have long accused Simion and AUR of being extremists, charges he denies. “We are sort of a Trumpist party in this new wave of patriotic political parties in Europe,” Simion said.None