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The New Year offers a clean slate for long-elusive resolutions. Will 2024 be the year to keep them?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s an annual end-of-year exercise in futility for many. But a clean slate awaits at the stroke of midnight for the next round of resolutions.From the first spray of fireworks to the closing chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” 366 days into the future — 2024 is a leap year — it could be the year for finally achieving long-elusive goals, fulfilling aspirations and being resolute on all those New Year resolutions.“As humans, we are creatures that aspire,” said Omid Fotuhi, a social psychologist who is a motivation and performance researcher.“The fact that we have goals, the fact that we want to set goals is just a manifestation of that internal and almost universal desire to want to stretch, to want to reach, to want to expand and grow,” said Fotuhi, the director of learning innovation at Western Governors University Labs and a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh.“New Year’s resolutions are one of those ways in which we do that,” he said. “There’s somethin...

Arrestan al pelotero de los Rays Wander Franco en República Dominicana, según fuente AP

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

El campocorto de los Rays de Tampa Bay, Wander Franco, fue arrestado el lunes en República Dominicana tras una entrevista con la fiscalía que lo estaba investigando por supuestamente tener una relación con una menor, según informó un oficial de la oficina de la fiscalía de la provincia de Puerto Plata.Franco compareció en la fiscalía acompañado de dos abogados días después de que no se presentó a una reunión con la fiscal Olga Diná Llaverías, de acuerdo con el oficial que habló con The Associated Press en condición de anonimato debido a que la persona no tiene autorización para hablar del caso. La oficina indicó que la entrevista duró alrededor de tres horas.Llaverías originalmente pidió la presencia de Franco el 28 de diciembre, dos días después de que la fiscalía y la policía acudieron a dos de las propiedades del pelotero en Baní, su ciudad natal y que está a 60 kilómetros al suroeste de la capital, para solicitar que se presentara a comparecer. No encontraron al pelotero de 22 a...

Klopp briefly loses wedding ring in post-match Liverpool celebrations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Jurgen Klopp’s joy at seeing Liverpool secure a big win in the English Premier League turned into dismay when he briefly lost his wedding ring in the post-match celebrations on Monday.It needed the sharp eye of a TV cameraperson to locate the ring in the middle of the pitch at Anfield. A relieved Klopp responded by kissing the ring in front of the cameras.“I had a massive shock,” Klopp said, “but it’s back.”The incident happened in the moments after Liverpool’s 4-2 win over Newcastle that lifted Klopp’s team three points clear in the standings.Klopp had congratulated his players and was heading toward the fans while applauding, before he realized he no longer had his wedding ring on. He scoured the grass near where he was standing, even asking a steward if he wouldn’t mind helping in the search.Klopp was then told where the ring was by the person operating the camera for British broadcaster Sky Sports.“Oh my God, that would have been really awful,” Kl...

Fire displaces family, dogs from SWMD home on New Year’s

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

Fierce flames ripped through a family’s home in Southwest Miami-Dade on the first day of the year.The relatives of the family managed to make a fire escape before the fire department showed up, thanks to a quick-thinking good samaritan.It happened just before 2:30 a.m. on Monday when Stacey Ellis heard a lifesaving knock at the door of his mother-in-law’s home.“I was watching television, someone came and knocked on the door and I knew it wasn’t a normal knock so I ran to the door,” said Ellis. “So I ran to the door, opened the door and they showed us where the house was on fire.”Jacek Bogdanienko and his wife, the neighbors who live down the street, saw the blaze while coming home from a New Year’s Eve party.“We stopped the car and we see the flames, every moment higher and higher,” said Bogdanienko. “That the fire was too big to be secure. First what I did was take the phone, call 911.”Realizing just how big th...

Robbins: Hamas lobby flips the facts on genocide

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

Nearly 80 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda remains the go-to source for how-to advice on large scale con-artistry. “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly,” Joseph Goebbels reportedly instructed. “It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”In other words, keep it simple, stupid.This rule was meant to work in tandem with another cynical Goebbels dictum: people are naturally susceptible to confident-sounding demagoguery. “You can’t change the masses,” Goebbels once said. “They will always be the same: dumb, gluttonous and forgetful.”This, at least, is what those who have always wanted Israel to disappear have always hoped, and since Oct. 7 they have channeled Goebbels not only with vigor but with a vengeance. On that day, Hamas, an enterprise whose very raison d’etre is the elimination of Jews, sent thous...

18-year-old charged with firearm offences in Brampton

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

Peel police located a loaded firearm and charged a Brampton man with numerous firearm offences after investigating a vehicle in Brampton.On Nov. 20, 2023, just before 11:00 p.m., police were conducting a patrol in the area of Steeles Avenue and Tomken Road.During the investigation, a loaded firearm was seized along with a magazine. The frame of the firearm was 3D printed.Justin McLeish, 18, from Brampton, was arrested and charged with unauthorized possession of a firearm, knowledge of unauthorized possession of firearm, and failure to comply with an undertaking among other charges.He was held for a bail hearing and attended the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton.Anyone with any information is asked to contact police.

Train derails and catches fire near San Francisco, causing minor injuries and service disruptions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

ORINDA, Calif. (AP) — Several people suffered minor injuries and service was disrupted when a commuter train derailed and caught fire on New Year’s Day in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials said. The Bay Area Rapid Transit train had just left Orinda on its way to Lafayette around 9 a.m. Monday when the front two cars went off the track, agency spokesperson Jim Allison said. All passengers were evacuated and fire crews quickly extinguished flames in two cars, he said. Several passengers were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, Allison said. The total number of people injured wasn’t immediately known. The remaining passengers walked back to Orinda Station. Passenger Enrique Gonzalez said the train was delayed and when it started moving again he heard a “few loud pops” and “saw smoke billowing out in between cars.”“I was sitting right there at the window and saw the flames shoot up,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. Early indications were that the derailmen...

Klee Benally, Navajo advocate for Indigenous people and environmental causes, dies in Phoenix

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — Klee Benally, a Navajo man who advocated on behalf of Indigenous people and environmental causes, has died, his sister said. He was 48 years old.Benally died Saturday at a Phoenix hospital, Jeneda Benally said. His cause of death was not disclosed.Klee Benally was among the most vocal opponents of snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl ski resort in Flagstaff. At least 13 tribes consider the mountain on public land to be sacred.He protested police violence and racial profiling and was among activists who gathered outside metro Phoenix’s NFL stadium in 2014 to denounce the offensive team name previously used by the franchise from Washington, D.C.Benally advocated for the cleanup of abandoned mines, where uranium ore was extracted from the Navajo Nation over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities during the Cold War.He also spoke out against an ordinance that, in a bid to address the problem of homelessness, had banned camping on public property in Flagstaff. “There is no c...

Skilling: Cold weather remains but some much-needed sun ahead

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

First, the NEW YEAR'S DAY (MONDAY) WEATHER HEADLINES-----Welcome to 2024! Another depressingly cloudy day with a trace of snow at both airports and NO SUNSHINE!---8 of the past 12 days---67% of them---have produced NO sun.---January has historically been Chicago's coldest month (with February #2 at 28.8 degrees and December at #2 at 30.5 degrees). January has also historically been the city's SNOWIEST month, averaging 11.3" behind February with 10.7" and December at 7.6".  And it joins December and February as among the city's cloudiest months. ---The coming week is to average almost 11 degrees colder than last week—yet IS STILL TO POST A TEMP SURPLUS—averaging just over 4 degrees above normal. ---Even so, a week of highs in the 30s will have a colder feel to it than last week's 40s — and, on Christmas day and last Thursday 50s.---So, while last week averaged 41.5 degrees, this week is likely to come in at 30.8 degrees. \---Breaks in the clouds are to develop tonight and are likely ...

Gen Z seeks to grow ranks in Congress

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:57:32 GMT

More Generation Z candidates are lining up to run for office this year amid frustration over the country’s aging political class.Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) became Congress’s first member belonging to Gen Z — the age bracket considered to begin with people born in 1997 or later — after 2022's midterms.Now, at least two fellow Gen Z Democrats are vying to join Frost this year as they look to broaden their generation’s presence in the House, where the median age of voting members is around 58 years.“Young people, as we’ve gotten more and more involved, are frankly devastated that this is the state of government that we are inheriting — and that we have to really pick up this work and try to put the pieces back together,” said Cheyenne Hunt, a 26-year-old Democrat and attorney running in California’s 45th District. Hunt cited concerns about the climate crisis, democracy and women’s rights as “existential threats” that older generations in power aren’t addressing wit...