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Jessica Ward mines Mass. childhood for ‘The St. Ambrose School for Girls’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

While “The St. Ambrose School for Girls” is hardly autobiographical, Boson-born author Jessica Ward has it rooted in a reality she knows intimately.It’s 1991 and “St. Ambrose” follows 15-year-old Sarah M. Taylor, a scholarship student at the titular upper-class, all girls’ boarding school.  Here micro-aggressions by popular mean girl Greta are among Sarah’s troubles.  Before too long there is a corpse, forbidden affairs, a murder investigation and Sarah’s continuing struggle to deal with her bipolarity and lithium medication.Ward’s boarding school, Northfield Mount Hermon in Gill, bears a slight resemblance to her fictional setting which vividly came to her, she said in a phone interview, in a dream.“I literally woke up from a dream after having seen this teenage girl standing in the midst of a prep school setting and I thought, ‘Oh. My. Gosh.  It was so vivid, almost disturbingly vivid.“These pictures came,” Ward, 54, explained, “and I saw her doing things. I realized I was back wh...

Graham: IRS caught red-handed (again) as public trust plummets

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

“In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin said. But for the IRS, you can add a third item to the list. Scandal.Since the agency was caught red-handed targeting tea party activists over their politics — for which the IRS has repeatedly apologized — there have been a series of stories revealing questionable behavior by the branch of government most feared by the average taxpayers.The news isn’t good.During the 2016 presidential campaign, the private tax documents of one candidate — Donald Trump — were leaked to The New York Times.Last year, five current or former IRS employees were caught defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program, improperly collecting nearly half a million dollars.“The IRS employees charged in these cases allegedly abused the trust placed in them by the public,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr.But how much trust do the American people have in the IRS? And why should Americans trust it with whistleblowers...

Editorial: U.S. hostages may get rude awakening upon return

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

The Biden administration is working behind the scenes to secure the release of Americans held in Iran, NBC News reported last month. The White House also insists it is “working every day” to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia on trumped-up charges in March.Let’s hope that American citizens who have become prisoners of authoritarian regimes acting outside the norms of international diplomacy will eventually be released to the United States, where they will again enjoy the sweet taste of freedom. And it’s well past time that Congress took steps to ensure that those who are wrongly imprisoned abroad aren’t subjected to a host of additional wrongs when they return to American soil.There are few things that Republicans and Democrats can agree on these days, but the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act should be one of them. The bipartisan legislation, introduced in May by Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Sen. Mike Rounds, a Sou...

Lowry: The timeless joy of minor league baseball

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

The Portland Sea Dogs won, but that’s not why, fundamentally, the fans went home happy.The Double-A minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, the Sea Dogs play in a cozy ballpark in Portland, Maine, and are having a pretty good year — their 2-1 victory over the Binghamton Rumble Ponies was their fourth in a row and they’re in first place in the Northeast Division of the Eastern League.I attended the Sunday afternoon ballgame during a summer stay in Maine, and I, too, went home satisfied, even though I have no rooting interest in the Sea Dogs, the Rumble Ponies, or any other Eastern League team, not even the Akron RubberDucks.No, I was content to bask in the glow of minor league baseball, one of the glories of an American summer. The mascots loom large, the between-innings entertainment is amusingly inventive, the scores don’t matter (much), and everything is geared to creating warm memories around the game that still occupies an outsized place in the nati...

Dear Abby: Ex-wife wants to be friends with benefits

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

Dear Abby: My wife and I have been together more than 20 years. Our relationship grew stale over time, and a couple of years ago, she decided to leave me. However, over the few years, even though she has had several lovers, we have started to get close again.The problem is, I really love her and want her back as my GIRLFRIEND, but she sees this as a casual relationship, which leaves me feeling hurt. For example, she doesn’t see a problem with having a long conversation with another lover while she’s at my house. When she realizes that I’m hurt, she gets exasperated and says she feels like she has to “walk on eggshells” around me. Is it me? Is there a path forward? — Strange Situation in FloridaDear Strange Situation: Your problem is you have allowed yourself to be put in the “friends with benefits” category when what you really want is an exclusive relationship with your ex. IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN. If she’s talking with o...

Man hit, killed by Coaster train in Old Town

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- A pedestrian died Tuesday when he was struck by a southbound Coaster train in the Old Town neighborhood, authorities said.The incident occurred around 2:48 p.m. at the Old Town Transit Station, Sgt. Jason King with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said in a news release.When deputies arrived on scene, they found the body of a 30 to 40-year-old man, according to law enforcement. Woman scalped with sword at park The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office will determine the victim's manner of death. Anyone with information about the case can call the Sheriff's Department's non-emergency line at (858) 565-5200.

Iowa Republicans pass bill banning most abortions after about 6 weeks, governor to sign Friday

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature passed a bill banning most abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy during a marathon special session Tuesday that continued late into the night. Gov. Kim Reynolds immediately said in a statement she would sign the bill on Friday.The bill passed with exclusively Republican support in a rare, one-day legislative burst lasting more than 14 hours over the vocal – and sometimes tense – objections from Democratic lawmakers and abortion advocates protesting at the Capitol. Just after 11 p.m., lingering protesters in the gallery booed and yelled “shame” to state senators in the minutes after the bill was approved.Reynolds ordered the rare session after the state Supreme Court declined in June to reinstate a practically identical law that she signed in 2018.“The Iowa Supreme Court questioned whether this legislature would pass the same law they did in 2018, and today they have a clear answer,” Reynolds said in a statemen...

North Korea conducts its 1st ICBM launch in 3 months after making threat over alleged US spy flights

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea conducted its first intercontinental ballistic missile test in three months on Wednesday, two days after it threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what it called provocative U.S. reconnaissance activity near its territory.Some experts say North Korea likely tested its developmental, road-mobile Hwasong-18 ICBM, a type of solid-fuel weapon that is harder to detect and intercept than the North’s other liquid-fuel ICBMs. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un previously called the Hwasong-18 his most powerful nuclear weapon.A long-range North Korean missile fired from its capital region around 10 a.m. flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) at a maximum altitude of 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, according to South Korean and Japanese assessments. They said the missile was launched on a high angle, in an apparent attempt to avoid neighboring countries.South Korea’s military...

New NATO-Ukraine Council set to meet for the first time at leaders’ summit

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to sit down with Volodomyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit this morning, a day after the Ukrainian president blasted the alliance for failing to extend a clear invite to his country. While Trudeau praised the allies for coming together to bring Ukraine closer to membership on Tuesday, Zelenskyy called it absurd that the leaders did not set out a timeline for that to happen. The leaders say in a statement that Ukraine has some conditions to meet, including democratic reform and stamping out corruption. But above all, NATO says, the war with Russia must end first. Today also marks the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council, which will aim to deepen ties as Ukraine works toward meeting the alliance’s requirements. Trudeau and Zelenskyy last met in person in June when the prime minister made a visit to Kyiv.This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 12, 2023.The Canadian Press

Giant panda gives birth to squirming, squealing healthy twin girls at South Korean theme park

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:08 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A giant panda has given birth to squirming, squealing healthy twin girls at a South Korean theme park.Ai Bao gave birth to her cubs last Friday at the Everland theme park near Seoul, the park’s operator said Tuesday.It released video of the birth and the mother caring for her newborns, as well as veterinarians examining the tiny cubs.They are the first panda twins born in South Korea, Samsung C&T Resort Group said.Both Ai Bao and her newborns are in good health, the resort group said in the statement.Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and study in captivity saved the panda species native to China from extinction, increasing its population from fewer than 1,000 at one time to more than 1,800 in the wild and captivity. The life expectancy of a giant panda in the wild is about 15 years, but in captivity they have lived to be as old as 38. The South Korean resort group said it will observe the cubs’ health and growth to determine when to unveil the...