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Bridge: Oct. 1, 2023

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

My friend the English professor picks his words carefully — as if he were wielding a pair of tweezers.“People are so careless with word usage,” he complained to me in the club lounge. “Today, one of my students insisted that it didn’t matter whether someone `played bad’ or `played badly.'”“How did you respond to that?”“I asked him, when a pretty girl walked by, whether it mattered if he looked at her stern or sternly.”I don’t suppose today’s declarer played bad or badly, but he didn’t make his contract. After South boldly accepted North’s invitational raise to 2NT, West led the five of spades, and South put up dummy’s jack as his only chance to win the first trick. When East’s queen covered, South played low, ducked the spade return and won the third spade.South then needed to set up four club tricks without letting West get in to cash his two good spades; South needed to find East ...

Ask Amy: I want to date a woman who understands ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

Dear Amy: I am a 73-year-old man who was widowed four years ago. I’ve been dating “Maria” for over a year. She is 71 and was raised in Spain.Maria is a genuinely good person, and she is madly in love with me, to the point of smothering. (Her late husband was not very kind to her.)Maria has been professing her love for me since we began texting before our first date. (She is a neighbor of some friends of mine and apparently had her eye on me for a while.)She says I am the man of her dreams and that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. And she says this with total earnestness and wide-eyed schoolgirl innocence.I do feel love for her, though not as intensely as she does for me. I’ve just never felt that special “click” with her.My dilemma is this: I want to date other women. I want to find one that I really click with and without having to always explain basic Americana (like baseball, “The Wizard of Oz”, the Emmy Awards, etc.). Maria never really im...

New Group Attacking iPhone Encryption Backed by U.S. Political Dark-Money Network

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

The Heat Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, was formed earlier this year to campaign against some of the strong privacy protections Apple provides customers. The group says these protections help enable child exploitation, objecting to the fact that pedophiles can encrypt their personal data just like everyone else.When Apple launched its new iPhone this September, the Heat Initiative seized on the occasion, taking out a full-page New York Times ad, using digital billboard trucks, and even hiring a plane to fly over Apple headquarters with a banner message. The message on the banner appeared simple: “Dear Apple, Detect Child Sexual Abuse in iCloud” — Apple’s cloud storage system, which today employs a range of powerful encryption technologies aimed at preventing hackers, spies, and Tim Cook from knowing anything about your private files.Something the Heat Initiative has not placed on giant airborne banners is who’s behind it: a controversial billionaire philanthrop...

Europe takes climate fight global as carbon border tax goes live

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

The EU’s effort to become climate neutral is kicking into high gear — as of Sunday the bloc’s carbon border tax enters a trial period, which is likely to raise tensions with key trading partners. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — or CBAM — was adopted last year with the aim of ensuring that goods manufactured in Europe, and subject to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, which sets a price on carbon emitted, will be able to withstand competition from products made in countries where polluting doesn’t come with the same price attached.Starting October 1, the EU’s trading partners will have to report the greenhouse gas emissions tied to their exports of iron, steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizer, hydrogen and electricity.Initially, the requirement is just to report the emissions — although companies failing to do so face fines — the actual payments go into effect in 2026.The point of the exercise is to both shield EU companies from unfair completion and to ...

With US shutdown averted, White House prepares to fight for Ukraine aid

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

With minutes to spare, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a stopgap funding bill Saturday to avert a shutdown and keep the government open for 45 days.In doing so, he capped a chaotic 24 hours that riveted much of Washington but left one of the White House’s top priorities, aid for Ukraine, in serious jeopardy.Like others in the nation’s capital, the Biden White House had been caught off guard Saturday morning when Speaker Kevin McCarthy abruptly reversed course and announced that he would bring a clean, stop gap bill to fund the government through November 17, 2023.But aides weren’t terribly surprised. They had assumed the government shutdown showdown would end this way at some point — with the main question being whether McCarthy would take his lumps before or after the funding deadline.They weren’t displeased with the outcome either. The bill didn’t just fund the government, it also included $16 billion in disaster relief and, as one White House official noted, avoids “any version o...

‘Yeah, this guy is different’: When the Orioles knew Gunnar Henderson was special

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

This season has shown the baseball world how special Gunnar Henderson is. The Orioles have known it a lot longer.Saturday, Henderson was named the Most Valuable Oriole, only the fourth rookie to win the award in the club’s 70 years in Baltimore. In November, the 22-year-old is expected to be deemed the American League Rookie of the Year, Baltimore’s first such honoree since 1989. Between, he’ll get the chance to shine on the national stage of the MLB playoffs, having played a key role for the AL East champions.What makes Henderson stand out goes beyond his .257 batting average, .817 OPS, 28 homers or 82 RBIs. The Baltimore Sun asked Henderson’s teammates, coaches and even his signing scout when they knew he was a special player. Here’s what they said.2018 high school showcaseScout Dave Jennings:“Yeah, the first time was at an East Coast Pro high school showcase type deal we have down south. I was one of the coaches on that club and just bein...

Serbia’s president denies troop buildup near Kosovo, alleges ‘campaign of lies’ in wake of clashes

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s president on Sunday denied U.S. and other reports of a military buildup along the border with Kosovo, complaining of a “campaign of lies” against his country in the wake of a shootout a week earlier that killed four people and fueled tensions in the volatile Balkan region. Both the United States and the European Union xpressed concern earlier this week about what they said was an increased military deployment by Serbia’s border with its former province, and they urged Belgrade to scale down its troop presence there. Kosovo’s government said Saturday it was monitoring the movements of the Serbian military from “three different directions.” It urged Serbia to immediately pull back its troops and demilitarize the border area. “A campaign of lies … has been launched against our Serbia,” President Aleksandar Vucic responded in a video post on Instagram. “They have lied a lot about the presence of our military forces …. In fac...

Texas sends personnel to Maui for fire recovery

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Texas Division of Emergency Management, or TDEM, announced that the agency has sent personnel to Hawaii to help Maui wildfire recovery.Those being sent will help with finding residents eligibility for financial assistance and helping with things like bookkeeping. RELATED: TXST emotional support dog helps fire victims, first responders in Maui “Just as responders from other states answer our call when disaster strikes here at home, the State of Texas is assisting with recovery efforts in Hawaii to support our fellow Americans as they rebuild," Texas Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said. TDEM deployed the initiative under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which lets states provide assistance and share resources with another state in response to a disaster or emergency.

Michael E. Mann: There was global warming in prehistoric times. But nothing in millions of years compares with what we see today.

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

“The climate is always changing!” So goes a popular refrain from climate deniers who continue to claim that there’s nothing special about this particular moment. There is no climate crisis, they say, because the Earth has survived dramatic warming before.Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy recently exemplified misconceptions about our planet’s climate past. When he asserted that “carbon dioxide as a percentage of the atmosphere is still at a relative low through human history,” he didn’t just make a false statement (carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest they’ve been in at least 4 million years). He also showed fundamentally wrong thinking around the climate crisis.What threatens us today isn’t the particular concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the precise temperature of the planet, alarming as those two metrics are. Instead, it’s the unprecedented rate at which we are increasing carbon p...

Skywatch: October skies are loaded this year

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:08 GMT

There’s much going on this month for stargazers, including a solar eclipse. October is also a month of transition, with summer, autumn, and even winter constellations available through the night, along with three bright planets. On top of that, nights are getting longer, a stargazer’s dream.(Mike Lynch)Summer constellations are still putting on a show in the early evening western sky. Look for the bright stars Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp, Altair in Aquilla in the Eagle, and Deneb in Cygnus. The stars, Vega, Altair, and Deneb, make the Summer Triangle, an asterism that serves as a great tool to help you find your way around that part of the heavens.Another summer constellation holdout is Sagittarius the Archer, in the low southwest sky. According to Greek and Roman mythology, Sagittarius is supposed to be a centaur — half man, half horse — shooting an arrow. Good luck seeing that! Sagittarius much more resembles a teapot that’s very easy to see. If you’re star...