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Manzo: Julie Su unfit for Secretary of Labor post

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

Pressure is mounting in the Senate for President Biden to withdraw his nomination of Julie Su for secretary of labor — and for good reason. Su has a long history of supporting policies that would harm businesses.During her tenure as California’s labor secretary, Su oversaw the largest unemployment fraud in the state’s history. Under her watch, the Employment Development Department (EDD) wasted nearly $40 billion in fraudulent claims, leaving many struggling to make ends meet. To make matters worse, more than $1 billion of those claims were sent to criminals, including death row inmates.Thanks to Su’s negligence, the EDD owes the federal government $17 billion for money borrowed during the pandemic.Su’s record of incompetence expands far beyond her failures with EDD. Su was a vocal advocate for the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). This unique law allows employees to sue their employers on behalf of the state for labor violations, costing California billions of dollars.PAGA resul...

‘Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning:’ Same old, same old

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

“Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” which is 2 hours and 43 minutes long (just typing the title is exhausting), is the sequel to “Mission Impossible – Fallout” (2018) and the 7th film in the MI series. “Dead Reckoning, Part Two” was filmed alongside “Part One.” The series began in 1996 (Cruise was 34). Are your arteries hardening as you read this? It’s based on the 1960s CBS television show with an ensemble cast and a thrilling, instrumental theme song composed by Lalo Schifrin.The new film’s cast is still led by 61-year-old Tom Cruise, still doing his own stunts, Rebecca Ferguson returns as the outlandishly-named Ilsa Faust, also Ving Rhames as tech wizard Luther Stickell, scene-stealing Simon Pegg as another tech wizard and a master of disguise Benji Dunn, and Henry Czerny is back as IMF head Eugene Kittridge. Vanessa Kirby, looking out of her mind most of the time, returns as the ”White Widow,” Alanna Mitsopolis, an arms dealer who cares not ab...

Dig begins for the remains of children at a long-closed Native American boarding school

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

By TRISHA AHMED and CHARLIE NEIBERGALL (Associated Press)GENOA, Neb. (AP) — In a remote patch of a long-closed Native American boarding school, near a canal and some railroad tracks, Nebraska’s state archeologist and two teammates filled buckets with dirt and sifted through it as if they were searching for gold.They’re trying to find the bodies of children who died at the school and have been lost for decades, a mystery that archeologists aim to unravel as they dig in a central Nebraska field that was part of the sprawling campus a century ago.People toting shovels, trowels and even smaller tools are searching the unmarked site where ground-penetrating radar suggested a possible location for the cemetery of the Genoa Indian Industrial School. Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families and cutting them off from their...

Girls golf All-Scholastics and league All-Stars

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

GOLF ALL-SCHOLASTICSEmma Abramson (Sandwich)Isabel Brozena (North Reading)Harper Capilli (Duxbury)Nora Charnley (Bishop Feehan)Hanley Correia (Bishop Feehan)Lillian Guleserian (Westwood)Julia Imai (Brookline)Jillian Johnson (Notre Dame Hingham)Piper Jordan (Hingham)Keira Joshi (Ashland)Mya Murphy (Sturgis West)Katie Ng (Wellesley)Carol Pignato (Bishop Feehan)Erika Redmond (Concord-Carlisle)Maddie Smith (Westford Academy)Molly Smith (Westford Academy)Victoria Veator (Ursuline)Champa Visetsin (Lincoln-Sudbury)EMMA ABRAMSONSANDWICHAbramson concluded a standout career by placing third in the South Sectionals and tied for 12th at the MIAA State Championships. In the fall, she was a mainstay on the boys team that won the Cape and Islands League title and finished third at the Div. 3 States. She won the Massachusetts Girls Junior Amateur Championship as well as the Massachusetts Women’s Stroke Play Championship for the Baker Cup in 2022. The valedictorian, Class President and member of the...

Dear Abby: Hubby’s sneezes heard ’round the world

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

Dear Abby: My husband sneezes really loud and it’s kind of embarrassing. What should I do about this? I told him he should see a doctor because it happens a lot. — Married to a NoisemakerDear Married: People sneeze for various reasons, not all of them allergy-related. Your husband should discuss it with his doctor because the solution could be something simple. If he’s unwilling, then earplugs might be the simplest solution — for you — if you can grab them when he starts going “Aaaaa …” before the “choo” escapes.Dear Abby: I’m having a tough time with people who video chat and play videos on their cellphones. It’s always at a volume you can hear from 30 feet away, and it happens when I’m dining at a bar or sitting in a restaurant, etc. It’s distracting, intrusive and really annoying. It’s as if this behavior is now acceptable, when it’s not — at least to me.Any suggestions on confro...

UN warns its development goals for 2030 are in trouble and 575 million people will remain very poor

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In a grim report, the U.N. warned Monday that at the current rate of global progress 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty and 84 million children won’t be going to school in 2030 – and it will take 286 years to reach equality between men and women.The report on progress in achieving 17 wide-ranging U.N. goals adopted by world leaders in 2015 to improve life for the world’s more than 7 billion people said that only 15% of some 140 specific targets that experts evaluated are on track to be reached by the end of the decade.Close to half the targets are moderately or severely off track, it said, and of those 30% have either seen no movement at all or regressed including key targets on poverty, hunger and climate.The ambitious goals for 2030 include ensuring that hunger is eradicated and nobody lives on less than $2.15 a day which is the extreme poverty line, providing every child with a quality primary and secondary school education, ach...

Search for children’s remains continues at former Native American boarding school in Nebraska

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

GENOA, Neb. (AP) — Amid a renewed push for answers, archeologists planned to resume digging Tuesday at the remote site of a former Native American boarding school in central Nebraska, searching for the remains of children who died there decades ago. The search for a hidden cemetery near the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska gained renewed interest after the discovery of hundreds of children’s remains at Native American boarding school sites in the U.S. and Canada since 2021, said Dave Williams, the state’s archeologist who’s digging at the site with teammates this week.The team hadn’t found any remains by Monday afternoon, but the dig had only just begun.“Where is the cemetery and how many people are buried there? It’s the big question that’s hanging in the air,” said Alyce Tejral, a board member of the nearby Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation Museum.Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools ...

At least 1 killed as elevated road collapses in Bangkok

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — At least one person was killed after an elevated road being built in Thailand’s capital collapsed, and two others were listed as missing, with rescue crews unable to access the site Tuesday for fear of a further collapse, authorities said.Another 12 people were injured in the accident on Monday, according to the department of disaster prevention and mitigation.It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse of the road on the west side of Bangkok, but Governor Chadchart Sittipan said it had been severely damaged and remained inaccessible. The body of the one confirmed fatality has still not been recovered, he said, and rescue crews fear there might be more people trapped in the rubble of the elevated road, which has been under construction since 2020. Video footage of the moment of the collapse showed a blue metal structure that appeared to be used for holding the concrete slabs suddenly falling and bringing the whole structure down. People were seen screaming a...

Stock market today: Asian shares rise ahead of a US inflation update on hopes for easing rate hikes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets followed Wall Street higher Tuesday ahead of an update on U.S. consumer prices that traders hope will show inflation is easing, reducing the need for more interest rate hikes.Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney advanced. Oil prices rose.Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index gained 0.2% on Monday following its second weekly decline in two months.Traders looked ahead to Wednesday’s update on U.S. consumer prices for signs of whether the Federal Reserve might decide inflation has cooled enough following a year of interest rate hikes. They hope the U.S. central bank will decide no more are needed, though Fed officials suggest as many as two more increases are possible this year.Forecasters expect inflation in June to fall to 3.1% from the previous month’s 4%. That still would be higher than the Fed’s 2% target but down sharply from last year’s peak above 9%.“They will have a hard time justifying further rate increase...

Iowa Legislature will take up 6-week abortion ban during special session Tuesday

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:34 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s Legislature convenes Tuesday in a special session focused exclusively on abortion restrictions, where Republican lawmakers will work to push through a new ban on abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.The day will be a marathon of committee hearings and floor debates in both chambers, with votes likely to extend late into the night. Demonstrators for and against the bill are expected to rally at the capitol building throughout the day.Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds ordered the rare session after the state Supreme Court declined to reinstate a law she signed in 2018 that is practically identical to the one being proposed Tuesday. Abortion is currently legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.“Iowans know we will defend life and have grown our majority,” Speaker of the Iowa House Pat Grassley said in a statement.The current draft, like the 2018 law, would prohibit abortion once cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually around six weeks of ...