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Richard E. Grant leads master class in family dynamics in ‘The Lesson’

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

Richard E. Grant is a deliciously diabolical famous author at the center of Friday’s  English thriller “The Lesson,” a knowing portrait of a fractured upper-class English family.“It’s a chamber piece, just four characters in this hermetically sealed world in which my character just sucks as a very successful novelist.” Grant, 66, explained from London in a Zoom interview last week.Grant’s J.M. Sinclair has many issues, including his fear that he can’t satisfactorily finish his new novel. He hires a tutor for Bertie, his emotionally awkward teenage son, to prep him for his Oxford entrance exam.  The tutor (Ireland’s breakout star Daryl McCormack via “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” opposite Emma Thompson) is actually a wannabe writer.“He’s invited into the nest and just causes mayhem,” Grant said. While Sinclair is “seen falling from great entitlement and pride, crushed by his own shenanigans and subterfuges.“As he’s in the twilight zone of his life, he’s surrounded by everybody who is...

Editorial: Social media must step up in fight against opioids

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

The opioid crisis raging in America is an all-hands-on-deck emergency, calling for local and national actions to stem the tide of lethal drugs making their way to our streets. Unfortunately, some major players are dropping the ball.Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram told “Meet the Press”  Sunday that social media has played a vital part in the sale of fentanyl. She noted how drug cartels use the various platforms to market their material to people.“Social media is also a vital part of the conversation. It is what I call the last mile. Because what the cartels need — they’re selling the deadliest poison we’ve ever seen,” Milgram said before moderator Chuck Todd interrupted..“They need a platform to advertise?” he injected.“Exactly,” Milgram replied. “To be able to expand and sell more, they need to be able to reach people at massive rates. And that’s what social media’s doing.”But, as The Hill reported, social media companies are not stepping up to...

Ambrose: Is owning Cuba part of China’s big picture?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

China is negotiating with Cuba about a joint military training and enhanced intelligence center 100 miles from Florida. The center would no doubt host vast numbers of China’s 2 million-plus active troops as combat readiness grows and U.S. military secrets become a reading pleasure.But there’s another worry, namely that Cuba will at some point sacrifice its sovereignty as it becomes a part and not just a partner of the People’s Republic of China, this nation of a billion-plus population wanting to rule the world. China desires more than just a squatting place next door to America; while Cuba does seem to have some doubts about the military center, that may be washed away as China pours billions of dollars into its economy.This is scary in a variety of ways, considering how it could be a means of China going beyond trade tricks to security tricks and control Latin America. Well, all the best to decent free-world leaders who must resolve this conflict and take note of the news to becom...

Dear Abby: Smother-mother won’t let 22-year-old leave nest

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

Dear Abby: I’m 22, and when I was in my teens, I was sheltered. I was often in trouble for something little. My phone was taken away from me for months, and I wasn’t allowed to do anything besides go to school. It caused me to develop social anxiety.I still live with my controlling mother and go only to work. I have no social life. I want to leave her, get a social life and experience new things, but every time I bring it up to her, she plays the victim and insists she needs me or belittles me and says I need her.She does things for me as an “act of kindness,” but it feels like she does it so I’ll need her or it will never get done without her. I don’t know how to get out of this situation. What is the best way to handle it? — Sheltered in TexasDear Sheltered: The longer your mother can prevent you from making friends and living a normal life for a person your age, the deeper her emotional dependence on you will become.Start saving your mone...

Three arrested after police standoff in North County

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- Three suspects were arrested Sunday after a police standoff in the Oceanside area, authorities said.Officers first responded to Harbor Drive and North Pacific Street around 4:06 p.m. in search of a suspect who police say brandished a firearm at another motorist on Interstate 5 just north of Oceanside, Jennifer Atenza with the Oceanside Police Department said in a news release Monday.Law enforcement were able to locate the suspect's vehicle in the 1300 block of North Harbor Drive, which was occupied by three people and several dogs, according to police.The three suspects, believed to be armed, became uncooperative when they exited the vehicle, forcing police to call for additional officers to assist to keep beachgoers around the scene safe, Atenza said. Stabbing victim dies at senior living community Nearly fifty minutes later, officers were able to take the three suspects into custody while the dogs were placed in the care of the Humane Society, police said. O...

San Diego lifeguards ready for July 4 crowds

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- With the much-anticipated Fourth of July celebrations starting in hours, San Diego's dedicated team of lifeguards is gearing up to ensure the safety of beachgoers. A contingent of 250 highly trained lifeguards is preparing to patrol shores ready to handle any situation. “Every day you are coming to the beach, we want you to swim near a lifeguard, ask a lifeguard where a good place to swim is,” said Sgt. Westley Fransway, a San Diego lifeguard.The lifeguards have been diligently training and equipping themselves for the bustling holiday weekend. Their new Triton rescue ship will also patrol the waters of Mission Bay searching for speeding and reckless boaters, but their primary objective is to prevent accidents and respond to incidents that may occur along the city's coastlines. “There’s going to be a good chance of a lot of different calls at one time so we have to make sure we have a lot of personnel able to respond, able to handle both phone calls at once,” Fransway s...

Parts of Imperial Beach back open

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- A Fourth of July holiday bonus for beachgoers in Imperial Beach as the beach north of the IB Pier is back open.The entire beach has been closed pretty much all year because of sewage spills and contamination from the Tijuana River.Warning signs to stay out of the water are still posted south of the pier, but locals will take whatever beach they can get.The constant closures are frustrating for IB residents like Ed Vogel who went a few miles north for a beach walk in Coronado.Contamination and closures have also affected Coronado beaches, which have been open since around Memorial Day. Big Bay Boom: How to watch the fireworks show John Duncan is a Coronado City councilmember who is on a city subcommittee dealing with the sewage water issues and is a new citizen board member with the International Boundary and Water Commission -- the agency which runs an international wastewater treatment plant at the border.Duncan says problems with the contamination spills aren’t goin...

Viola Ford Fletcher, oldest living Tulsa Race Massacre victim, publishes memoir

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Being a centenarian hasn’t slowed down Viola Ford Fletcher’s pursuit of justice.In the last couple of years, Fletcher has traveled internationally, testified before Congress and supported a lawsuit for reparations — all part of a campaign for accountability over the massacre that destroyed Tulsa, Oklahoma’s original “Black Wall Street” in 1921, when she was a child.Now, at age 109, Fletcher is releasing a memoir about the life she lived in the shadow of the massacre, after a white mob laid waste to the once-thriving Black enclave known as Greenwood. The book will be published by Mocha Media Inc. on Tuesday and becomes widely available for purchase on Aug. 15.In a recent interview with The Associated Press, she said fear of reprisal for speaking out had influenced years of near-silence about the massacre.“Now that I’m an old lady, there’s nothing else to talk about,” Fletcher said. “We decided to do a book about it and maybe that would help.”Her memoir, “Don’t Let The...

The 8 wanted overseas-based Hong Kong activists will be pursued for life, city leader says

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday said the eight overseas-based activists who were wanted for alleged national security offenses would be pursued for life, dismissing criticism from Western governments over the police’s high-profile crackdown on the pro-democracy figures. Chief Executive John Lee expressed his support for the police’s efforts in arresting the activists who are now based in the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia. At his weekly press briefing, Lee said anyone, including their friends and relatives, who offered information leading to their arrests would be eligible for the bounties offered by the police.“The only way to end their destiny of being an abscondee who will be pursued for life is to surrender,” he said. Lee’s comments were targeting former pro-democracy lawmakers Nathan Law, Ted Hui and Dennis Kwok, lawyer Kevin Yam, unionist Mung Siu-tat and activists Finn Lau, Anna Kwok and Elmer Yuen. They were accused of breaching t...

The American flag wasn’t always revered as it is today. At the beginning, it was an afterthought

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:18:57 GMT

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In the bedroom of the Betsy Ross House, a reconstruction of where the upholsterer worked on her most famous commission, a long flag with a circle of 13 stars hangs over a Chippendale side chair and extends across the floor. Over the weeks in 1776 needed to complete the project, Ross would have likely knelt on the flag, stood on it and treated it more like an everyday banner — not with the kind of reverence we’d expect today. “She would not have worried about it touching the floor or violating any codes,” says Lisa Moulder, director of the Ross House. “The flag did not have any kind of special symbolism.”Flags proliferate every July 4. But unlike the right to assemble or trial by jury, their role was not prescribed by the founders. They would have been rare during early Independence Day celebrations. Only in the mid-19th century does the U.S. flag become a permanent fixture at the White House, scholars believe; only in the mid-20th century was a federal code...