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Kramer: Lewiston shooting highlights need for gun control

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

In 1966, Truman Capote wrote “In Cold Blood” about the murder of a family in a small Kansas town. An award-winning film was made  based upon the tragedy.Today, some 57 years later, the murder of a  family in a rural area would barely make the front page. Mass murders such as the recent horrific event  in Lewiston, Maine are now commonplace in schools, recreational facilities and retail establishments.Within the past week, just prior to the Lewiston tragedy,  a judge was gunned down by a father whose custody rights the judge had limited.  The circumstances surrounding these events  and scores of other mass murders illustrate our collective vulnerability due to the  superior status many still insist is provided by the Second Amendment.As these murders continue, time after time the public offers “thoughts and prayers” to families of the victims and mourns the senseless killings of children and adults who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In the meantime, a feckless Congress s...

Dear Abby: Family’s black sheep is cut off again

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been having a hard time dealing with my family. We have never been close. My mother played favorites and never showed me any affection. My siblings followed suit, and I always felt like an outsider. My father was wonderful and loved me very much, for which I am forever grateful.Both my parents died last year. I was walking on eggshells the entire time. My brothers and sisters seemed to think that I was now a member of the family. They included me in events and told me they loved me. I was so hopeful.After my mother’s death, I was cut out of the family again. I’m no longer invited to family celebrations or holidays. I am heartbroken and lonely. I have no one left. Family is so important to me. I am embarrassed to admit I am now estranged from everyone. Can you help? — Black Sheep in KentuckyDear Black Sheep: Unfortunately, your experience is not unique. I hear it more and more, in one variation or another. It is now time for you to build a family o...

Matthew Perry’s ‘Friends’ cast mates mourn their friend, say they are ‘all so utterly devastated’

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The stars of “Friends” say they are mourning the “unfathomable” death of Matthew Perry. “We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew,” Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer said in a joint statement to People on Monday. “We were more than just cast mates. We are a family.”From 1994 to 2004, each of the five actors appeared in every episode of all 10 seasons of the NBC sitcom along with Perry, who was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Saturday at age 54. “There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss,” the statement said. “In time we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.”It was the first public statement on Perry’s death from Anis...

New funding to advance airport transit link project approved by SANDAG

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- As work to the new Terminal 1 continues, the long-talked about direct transit connection to the San Diego International Airport is inching closer to becoming a reality.On Friday, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Board of Directors voted to approve an amendment to its $1.2 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year to add $643 million in federal, state and local revenue to advance more than 30 projects over the next five years.This includes projects like the proposed airport transit connection discussed by local officials for nearly four decades as a possible solution to longstanding complaints of traffic congestion and an overall lack of public transportation options to the air travel center.“These investments will improve the lives of everyone across our County, by increasing accessibility and enhancing all our region has to offer,” SANDAG and San Diego County Board of Supervisor Chairwoman Nora Vargas said in a release on Friday. “Today’s action is ...

A UN envoy says the Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, which already has growing instability

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, fueled by growing instability, violence and a lack of progress toward a political solution to its 12-year conflict, the United Nations special envoy for the country said Monday.Geir Pedersen told the Security Council that, on top of violence from the Syrian conflict, the Syrian people now face “a terrifying prospect of a potential wider escalation” following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ongoing retaliatory military action.“Spillover into Syria is not just a risk; it has already begun,” the U.N. envoy for Syria said.Pedersen pointed to airstrikes attributed to Israel hitting Syria’s airports in Aleppo and Damascus several times, and retaliation by the United States against what it said were multiple attacks on its forces “by groups that it claims are backed by Iran, including on Syrian territory.”With the region “at its most dangerous and tense,” he said, “fuel is being added to a tinderbox that was a...

Battle for control of Virginia Legislature may hinge on a state senate race with independent streak

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (AP) — A race that could determine control of Virginia’s Legislature will not be a standard battle between a Democrat and a Republican, but also features a wild-card independent candidate with a history of electoral success who happens to be a former stripper. Oh, and then there’s the write-in campaign of a right-wing restaurateur who specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches. The free-wheeling Senate District 27 race in the Fredericksburg area features Republican Del. Tara Durant, who won her first bid for public office two years ago after she garnered national attention from a 911 call she placed when she said her car was surrounded by Black Lives Matter activists during a protest. The Democrat, Joel Griffin, is a former Marine and former chair of Stafford County’s Economic Development Authority, making his first run for office.But it’s the credible independent bid of Stafford County Supervisor Monica Gary that remains an unknown. Gary has already won offi...

Group seeks to clear names of all accused, convicted or executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.Nearly four centuries later, the state and region are still working to come to grips with the scope of its witch trial legacy.The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group’s leader.Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those ca...

Last operating US prison ship, a grim vestige of mass incarceration, set to close in NYC

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Kenneth Williams spent his whole life in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t until a night in 2018 when he crossed a narrow footbridge in shackles, that he learned about New York City’s last floating jail. He remembers the murky East River water below him, the stench of mold, and a sinking feeling that soon turned literal.“Every once in a while you could feel the boat dropping into the muck,” Williams, 62, said. “It was a stark reminder that this place wasn’t meant for human confinement.”Docked in the shallows off an industrial edge of the South Bronx, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center is a five-story jail barge that stretches the length of two football fields, resembling a container ship stacked with cargo. It arrived in 1992 as a temporary measure to ease overcrowding on Rikers Island, the city’s main jail complex for detainees awaiting trial. Three decades later, the 800-bed lockup – the last operating prison ship in the United States — is finally closing down.The ...

Does Jan. 6 constitutionally block Trump from 2024 ballot? Lawyers to make case on day 2 of hearing

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

DENVER (AP) — The videos playing in a Colorado courtroom were both chilling and, by now, familiar — a violent mob, with some wearing tactical gear, smashing through the U.S. Capitol, attacking police officers and chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”Now, lawyers on day two of the weeklong hearing are arguing whether the infamous events of Jan. 6, 2021 constituted an insurrection under a rarely used clause of the U.S. Constitution that they are trying to use to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. The hearing in Colorado is one of two this week — with the second before the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday — that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never before ruled on the Civil War-era provision in the 14th Amendment.Tuesday’s witnesses are expected to include an expert in right-wing violence and an expert on Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which has only been used a handful of times since it was adopted in 1868. The testimony will get to th...

Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will push a divided Congress to send aid to Israel and Ukraine

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:29:59 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make the case Tuesday that the United States should immediately send aid to Israel and Ukraine, testifying at a Senate hearing as the administration’s massive $105 billion emergency aid request for conflicts in those countries and others has already hit roadblocks in the divided Congress.President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will be advocating for the foreign aid to a mostly friendly audience in the Senate, where majority Democrats and many Republicans support tying aid for the two countries together. But it faces much deeper problems in the Republican-led House, where new Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed cutting out the Ukraine aid and focusing on Israel alone, and cutting money for the Internal Revenue Service to pay for it. The drastically narrowed House proposal, which would cost more than $14 billion, faced immediate resistance among Senate Democrats — and put pressure on Sena...