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Howie Carr: Taxachusetts – it’s back

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

Why are we still here in Massachusetts?Because we’re not all there.Someone told me that joke recently, and it seemed appropriate for what’s going on. I mean, everything has been spiraling out of control here for quite some time. But it seems to be getting worse, crazier, not making any sense whatsoever.Just to take one example – nip bottles of alcohol. There’s a movement to outlaw the little mini-containers, and I get it.Winos chug them – the smaller the bottle, the larger the problem. They increase litter. And perhaps worst of all, they’re easy to hide and drink while you’re driving.Remember what they found in Rep. David “Sleepy” LeBouef’s wrecked car when he was lugged for driving legless last year — multiple containers of Dr. McGillicuddy’s non-prescription Wild Grape elixirs.So you can understand why it might be good public policy to get rid of nips. Yet at the same moment, some legislators on Beacon Hill are pushing to allow barrooms to sell mixed drinks to go.How does th...

Six things we learned from the Orioles’ first 60 games

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

In the major leagues, 60 games is still a relatively unreliable sample size.Great players have had unspectacular 60-game stretches, and bad ones have put up stellar stats across that sample. Just a few years ago, however, 60 games was all there was.Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Major League Baseball held a 60-game season, in which the rebuilding Orioles went 25-35 before losing 110 games in 2021. For the Orioles in 2020, José Iglesias hit .373, Renato Núñez was on a full-season pace to hit 32 home runs and Chance Sisco had a better OPS than Austin Hays.Given those examples, it’s safe to assume the numbers the Orioles have put up thus far — whether good or bad — are far from set in stone. Through 60 games this year, Baltimore is 37-23 — 12 games better than its start in 2022 and its first time above .500 at this point since 2017.That doesn’t mean, of course, that nothing can be gleaned from the first two-plus months of the season. Here...

Diamond jubilee: How to have a ball in London during the Cubs vs. Cardinals series

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

Baseball might be America’s favorite pastime, but the rest of the world wants in on the fun, too. Since 1996, when Major League Baseball took the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets to Mexico for a three-game series, the brand has been expanding its global reach with games in Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico and soon (it’s rumored) South Korea and the Dominican Republic.In 2019, the MLB brought the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees across the pond for the league’s first European game. And now, after a three-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the London Series is back June 24-25, and this time our own Chicago Cubs will square off against the St. Louis Cardinals, the start of a three-year contract through 2026 (with the 2025 game set in Paris).The games are hosted at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s London Stadium, home to West Ham Football Club (hands up if you’re a “Ted Lasso” fan), in East London. It’s an area that, prior to...

Rishi Sunak goes to Washington with Ukraine, economy and AI on agenda for Biden meeting

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The war in Ukraine was top of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s agenda Wednesday as he started a two-day trip to Washington carrying the message that post-Brexit Britain remains an essential American ally in a world of emboldened authoritarian states. The U.S. and U.K. are the two biggest military donors to Ukraine, and the war will be the focus of Sunak’s meeting Thursday at the White House with President Joe Biden. The breaching of a major dam in southern Ukraine, which sent floodwaters gushing through towns and over farmland, has given the subject added urgency. Neither Washington nor London has officially accused Russia of blowing up the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, but Sunak told reporters during his flight to Washington that it would “demonstrate the new lows that we would have seen from Russian aggression.”Britain and the U.S. are lead players in an international effort to give Ukraine F-16 fighter jets, and talks are also likely to include extra air defense measu...

Former ByteDance executive says Chinese Communist Party tracked Hong Kong protesters via data

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company which owns the popular short-video app TikTok, says in a legal filing that some members of the ruling Communist Party used data held by the company to identify and locate protesters in Hong Kong.Yintao Yu, formerly head of engineering for ByteDance in the U.S., says those same people had access to U.S. user data, an accusation that the company denies.Yu, who worked for the company in 2018, made the allegations in a recent filing for a wrongful dismissal case filed in May in the San Francisco Superior Court. In the documents submitted to the court he said ByteDance had a “superuser” credential — also known as a god credential — that enabled a special committee of Chinese Communist Party members stationed at the company to view all data collected by ByteDance including those of U.S. users.The credential acted as a “backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the C.C.P’s surveillan...

Edmunds compares the 2023 Honda HR-V and Toyota Corolla Cross

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

The Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 are two of the most popular SUVs on sale today. With their spacious cabins, large cargo holds, and the elevated ride height SUV shoppers love, each makes a strong case for itself as a family-friendly people mover with room for five on board. But if their prices seem out of reach, know that Honda and Toyota offer smaller, less expensive alternatives: the Honda HR-V and the Toyota Corolla Cross.These two subcompact SUVs are affordable, feature standard smartphone connectivity, and have available all-wheel drive. Their smaller size means they’re easy to maneuver, while their fuel-sipping engines make them gentle on a fuel budget. The 2023 HR-V is completely redesigned and boasts more cabin space, cargo volume, and added horsepower than before. Toyota’s Corolla Cross is entering its second year of production for 2023 and boasts a long roster of standard safety features, along with a newly standard 8-inch touchscreen. Which one is the better buy? Edmunds’ c...

Residents briefly allowed back into rockslide-threatened Swiss village

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Residents of a Swiss village under threat from a massive rockslide were allowed back Wednesday for the first time since they were evacuated last month, but only for 90-minute visits.Local authorities allowed a maximum of 30 people into the village of Brienz at a time to let people retrieve essential items from their houses. About 100 people live in the village. Residents were required to register in advance, and only two people per household could visit. Centuries-old Brienz is located in the southeastern Graubunden region of Switzerland, at an altitude of about 1,150 meters (3,800 feet). The village was evacuated on May 12 after geology experts warned that a mass of 2 million cubic meters (70.6 cubic feet) of Alpine rock looming over the village could break loose. Officials said at the time that experts saw a 60% chance of the rock falling in smaller chunks that might not reach the village or valley but also a 10% chance that the entire mass could tumble down, threate...

Pence says ‘Different times call for different leadership’ in video launching 2024 presidential bid

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence promised “the best days of the greatest nation on earth are yet to come” in a video released Wednesday formally launching his campaign for the Republican nomination for president.“Different times call for different leadership,” Pence, who served four years alongside President Donald Trump, says in the video, released via Fox News and Twitter hours ahead of a kickoff event in Des Moines. “Today our party and our country need a leader that’ll appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”While it would be “easy to stay on the sidelines,” he adds, ”that’s not how I was raised. That’s why today, before God and my family, I’m announcing I’m running for president of the United States.”Pence is staking his presidential hopes on Iowa as he launches a campaign that will make him the first vice president in modern history to take on his former running mate.Pence’s campaign will also test the party&...

Stock market today: World stocks mixed as Wall St inches toward bull market

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — World shares were mixed on Wednesday after China reported trade data pointing to a further slowing of its recovery from the disruptions of the pandemic. Germany’s DAX shed 0.3% to 15,937.77 and the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.4% to 7,183.35. London’s FTSE 100 was barely changed at 7,626.60. The future for the S&P 500 was down 0.1% while that for the Dow industrials lost 0.2%. Oil prices advanced. China reported its exports fell 7.5% from a year earlier in May and imports were down 4.5%, adding to signs of a slowing of its economic recovery following the lifting in December of anti-virus controls that disrupted travel and commerce.The decline in exports was the first year-on-year drop in in three months, with export volumes falling below their levels at the start of the year. “And with the worst yet to come for many developed economies, we think exports will decline further before bottoming out later this year,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics...

Israeli Cabinet minister chides US Vice President Harris for judicial overhaul criticism

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 16:25:18 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s foreign minister chided U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday for speaking out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of the country’s judiciary. The exchange underscored tensions between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s new government — the most right-wing and religious in Israel’s history — over the planned judicial overhaul. Speaking at an Israeli embassy event in Washington on Tuesday, Harris had said that shared values are “the bedrock of the U.S.-Israel relationship” and that democracies are “built on strong institutions, checks and balances, and, I’ll add, an independent judiciary.”Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, told Kan public radio “I can tell you that if you ask her what bothers her about the reform, she won’t be able to tell you”. He said he believes Harris has not read the bills in question. Biden has publicly expressed concern over the Netanyahu government’s...