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There’s room for a pet in your heart, but is there room in your budget?

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

Brooks Johnson | (TNS) Star TribuneAmericans will spend more than $140 billion on their pets this year.Much of that will go to normal expenses like food, toys and routine checkups, according to the American Pet Products Association. But sometimes Scooby finds his way into mysteries that can lead to eye-popping price tags.“As anyone with a pet knows, things are going to come up you don’t expect,” said Vicki Stevens, a spokeswoman with the Humane Society of the United States. “Financial planners advise us to have an emergency fund in case something goes wrong — we lose a job or something comes up with the house — and that is also true for pets.”That’s the consensus experts have for managing the costs of pet ownership: Set money aside specifically for pet emergencies. That should happen before bringing home a new furry family member, but for current pet parents, starting to save now is better than putting it off any longer.“One of the most comm...

Dan Rodricks: Yeah, Baltimore, we can have nice things, like these 2023 Orioles | STAFF COMMENTARY

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

This is Baltimore, Queen City of the Patapsco Drainage Basin. It doesn’t take much to keep us happy around here.We want good neighbors and friendly dogs. We want to see tall ships in the Inner Harbor once in a while. Give us an excellent crab cake now and then, a cold beer, a juicy corned beef-on-rye, decent pizza, clean tap water and a snowball in July. We want strong schools and safe streets. We want an adequate supply of toilet paper for when it snows. We want that certain spontaneous wackiness that almost always happens when you open yourself to Baltimore and start conversations with amiable, quirky strangers.Some of these things we already have. Some are aspirational. Some are — stand by for a new word — exasperational. But you get what I mean. It doesn’t take much.We want the comfort of community that comes from going to places like Lexington Market or Fells Point or to events that bring us together — city and county parades, farmer’s market...

Patriots CB Christian Gonzalez has Cowboys’ attention with early standout play

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

Christian Gonzalez is off to a terrific start to his career, and opposing coaches are already taking notice.“If there’s a better young corner in the league than Gonzalez, you’d be hard-pressed to find (him),” Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said this week. “He’s playing at a really high level.”Through his first three games, Gonzalez has been tasked with defending some of the league’s best wide receivers, and the rookie has excelled. He helped limit the Eagles’ explosive passing game against A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, breaking up a late fourth-down pass that gave the Patriots a chance to win. Gonzalez helped limit Tyreek Hill to five catches for 40 yards, and made a key interception in the fourth quarter intended for the Dolphins star. He followed that up by holding Jets receiver Garrett Wilson to just two catches while in coverage. Against Hill and Wilson, the rookie shadowed the two stars for stretches of the second half in both games.Gonzale...

Vegas’ newest resort is a $3.7 billion palace, 23 years in the making

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

By Christopher Palmeri, Bloomberg NewsReal estate mogul Jeffrey Soffer has waited 23 years for this moment.On Dec. 13, the Florida-based developer will open Las Vegas’ newest resort, a $3.7 billion palace with seven pools, 36 restaurants and bars, as well as a private club on the top floor with spectacular views of the skyline.What really stands out about the Fontainebleau Las Vegas isn’t the height — at 67 stories it’s the tallest hotel in Nevada — or the 46-foot sculpture by Swiss artist Urs Fischer in the south lobby. It’s how long it took to get built. Soffer acquired the land in 2000, but lost control of the mostly done project during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Two more owners came and went, including billionaire Carl Icahn, before Soffer reacquired the still unfinished building in 2021 for a fraction of its original construction cost.“It’s one of the great, crazy stories in real estate,” the 55-year old said as he walked the property on a recent afternoon. “There’s always...

Big salad recipes for easy weeknight dinners

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

Ben Mims | (TNS) Los Angeles TimesAfter sitting down to dinner at a friend’s house a couple of days ago, I was confronted with something I hadn’t seen in a month: a big leafy green salad. Because of traveling on the East Coast, and eating out so much, I had forgotten the homey joys of a giant bowl packed with salad greens, various chopped vegetables and fruit, some cheese, nuts and seeds, etc. I promptly stuffed large forkfuls in my mouth, relishing the crunch of the lettuce spines while the bracing vinaigrette stung the corners of my lips. It was as good a welcome back to California as I can imagine.To keep riding that salad high, I’ll be making riffs on substantial dinner salads all week, starting with this Chopped Pear Salad With Buttermilk Dressing that’s packed with fat cubes of pear and Gruyère cheese and topped with walnuts and sprouts. It’s based on a salad I had in Big Sur many years ago and think about often for how it felt cozy and refreshing at the same time. It’s perfec...

Healey blasts Republicans for being ‘hell bent’ on making political statements as shutdown looms

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

Gov. Maura Healey blasted congressional Republicans Tuesday for being “hell bent” on making political statements instead of working to avoid a government shutdown.With a government shutdown five days away, Congress is moving into crisis mode as Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces an insurgency from hard-right Republicans eager to slash spending even if it means curtailing federal services for millions of Americans.Healey said it is “it’s really frustrating to see who’s pulling on Speaker McCarthy and getting him to do this stuff.”“That said, here’s my job — we’re gonna make sure people here are covered in Massachusetts, make sure that we have services, make sure that people are getting the funding for what they need,” the Democratic governor said. “That includes payroll. We have a lot of federal employees, we’re concerned about that.”Healey said the state cannot pick up federal workers’ pay but state officials can “make sure that the federal money that’s comin...

This lab’s gene test can find more rare diseases. This is what it can do for the ‘diagnostic odyssey’ of families.

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

There are more than 7,000 rare disorders, and many cannot be diagnosed in a doctor’s office.That’s why genetic sequencing is so important.Now The Jackson Laboratory in Farmington is able to sequence the entire genome, an advance that will roughly double the number of rare diseases that can be positively diagnosed. It’s the only whole-genome sequencing test offered in Connecticut.Until next-generation genome sequencing became available about 10 years ago, there was no way for many rare disorders to be accurately diagnosed, according to Melissa Kelly, clinical laboratory director at the Jackson lab.Previously, Sanger sequencing, developed in 1977, was too slow to be useful.“There’s been studies on this actually, how many missed diagnoses patients will have prior to getting their actual diagnosis from a genome, and it’s something like seven,” Kelly said.“It’s crazy how many times these patients get told the wrong thing, or get told nothing,” she said. “No one can tell them an answer at...

Cassidy Hutchinson’s new book says Mark Meadows’ suits smelled ‘like a bonfire’ from burning papers

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A former aide in Donald Trump’s White House says chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers so often after the 2020 election that it left his office smoky and even prompted his wife to complain that his suits smelled “like a bonfire.”Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a prominent congressional witness against former President Trump before the House Jan. 6 committee, described the burning papers in a new book set to be released Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, “Enough.”Hutchinson was a White House staffer in her 20s who worked for Meadows and testified for two hours on national television about the White House’s inner workings leading up to and including the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump and Meadows tried to challenge the former president’s election loss in several states. Both are under indictment in Georgia for what prosecutors have called an illegal conspiracy to overturn the results. In her book, Hutchinson wri...

A new battery recycling facility will deepen Kentucky’s ties to the electric vehicle sector

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

A recycling facility will be built in Kentucky to shred electric vehicle batteries in a $65 million venture between American and South Korean companies that will supply material for a separate battery-related operation in the same town, the companies announced Tuesday.The 100,000-square-foot (9,000-square meter) EV battery recycling facility to be built in Hopkinsville will create about 60 jobs, according to U.S.-based Ascend Elements, which is partnering with South Korea-based SK ecoplant and its electronic-waste recycling subsidiary, TES, on the project. Construction is set to begin in November and be completed in January 2025. Hopkinsville is 170 miles (274 kilometers) southwest of Louisville, Kentucky.“This is just the beginning of an entirely new industry in the United States,” Mike O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements, said in a news release. “For every new EV battery gigafactory that is built, we will need to build a new battery recycling facility to process manufacturing ...

Moscow court upholds 19-year prison sentence for Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:46:53 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — A court in Moscow upheld a 19-year prison sentence Tuesday for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was convicted on charges of extremism in August. Navalny was found guilty on charges related to the activities of his anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term — all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.Navalny’s 19-year sentence will be backdated to Jan. 17, 2021, the day he was arrested. He was already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated before Tuesday’s ruling.One of Navalny’s associates, Daniel Kholodny, who stood trial alongside him, also had his eight-year sentenced upheld Tuesday, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Navalny’s team said after the ruling Tuesday that the sentence was “disgraceful” and vowed to cont...