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Arcuri: The IRS shouldn’t prepare our taxes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

As a former member of Congress who always made protecting Main Street’s interests a priority, I couldn’t be more concerned with the Internal Revenue Service’s recent launch of Direct File. This pilot program will have the agency preparing the taxes of select Americans making under $125,000.Over the years, the legislative branch has subjected the IRS to significant budget cuts. Despite modest increases in the last few years, the agency’s congressional credit line has remained nearly 20% below where it was in 2010 when adjusted for inflation.The IRS  promised Congress it would begin going after wealthy tax evaders if it upped this funding allotment. Congress obliged, providing the agency with $80 billion in funding in the Inflation Reduction Act.But now, with the launch of Direct File, the IRS again finds itself focusing on low- and middle-income Americans. This is disappointing but not surprising. For decades, the IRS has favored targeting Main Street.A Syracuse University study of 2...

Rickey Hill’s MLB dream hits the big screen

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

Rickey Hill traveled a rocky road before he could see his childhood dream become a big-screen reality.As his story is told in Friday’s “The Hill,” being dirt poor in Texas was the least of the obstacles this athletic prodigy had to overcome before he could play Major League Baseball.“The Hill” stars Dennis Quaid as Rickey’s devout preacher dad, Scott Glenn as the influential baseball scout who decides Rickey’s fate and Colin Ford is teenage Rickey.Hill’s first hurdle was being born with a degenerative spinal disease; he could only walk with heavy leg braces. Then his dad, spectacularly unsupportive of his son’s most cherished dream, never attending any of his baseball games, decreed that Rickey would become a minister just like him.Rickey’s uncanny gift as a hitter derailed that plan. “At nine years old I’d never owned a ball,” Hill, 67, said in a phone interview. His brother would pitch a rock and Rickey hit it with a stick.“I just took my braces off.  I was done with those t...

Dear Abby: Mom tired of hosting the neighborhood bully

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

Dear Abby: My daughter is the youngest kid in the neighborhood, and a girl up the street treats her horribly. She calls her a baby, tells her she’s not a person and sends her home when everybody plays at her house.The other kids are friendly with my daughter, and when they come to play at our house, the mean girl comes too. She’s never mean to my daughter when I’m around, but I don’t think it’s right to let her enjoy our pool and games when she won’t let my daughter play at her house.How do I ask her to leave without seeming like a bully while allowing the other kids to stay and play? The other mother is of no help. — Wants the Bully to LeaveDear Wants the Bully to Leave: I assume the other mother is aware that her daughter refuses to allow your daughter to play at her house with the other kids. Because she hasn’t intervened, the ball is in your court. Teach your daughter a lesson in assertiveness. The next time the bully shows up, you...

Maui confronts challenge of finding those unaccounted for after deadly fire

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Two weeks after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century swept through the Maui community of Lahaina, authorities say more than 800 people remain unaccounted for — a staggering number that presents huge challenges for officials who are trying to determine how many of those perished and how many may have made it to safety but haven’t checked in.Something similar happened after a wildfire in 2018 that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, California. Authorities in Butte County, home to Paradise, ultimately published a list of the missing in the local newspaper, a decision that helped identify scores of people who had made it out alive but were listed as missing. Within a month, the list dropped from 1,300 names to only a dozen.“I probably had, at any given time, 10 to 15 detectives who were assigned to nothing but trying to account for people who were unaccounted for,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said in a phone interview. “At...

A jailed Hong Kong student loses bid to reduce sentence over inciting secession in landmark ruling

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — A jailed university student in Hong Kong lost his bid to reduce his five-year sentence for inciting secession in a landmark ruling by the city’s top court Tuesday that will have a far-reaching impact on other cases brought under a Beijing-imposed national security law. Lui Sai-yu pleaded guilty to breaching the sweeping security law in April 2022 and admitted that content on a Telegram channel he administered incited others to separate Hong Kong from China or alter the legal status of the city unlawfully. But his timely guilty plea did not get him a one-third reduction in the length of his imprisonment — like in many other cases under the city’s common law system — because the security law imposed minimum jail terms for serious offences. Lui is one of the some 260 people who were arrested under the security law as Beijing tried to crush dissidents following the massive protests in 2019. The ruling on his appeal is expected to set the bar for sentencings ...

Want to tune in for the first GOP presidential debate? Here’s how to watch

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

It’s almost time for the first debate among Republicans competing for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination.Here’s all of the information on how to watch:TUNING INThe two-hour debate will start at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday. It’s being moderated by Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.Unlike some previous presidential debates, which have been simulcast across a number of major networks and cable channels, the first forum is airing exclusively on Fox News and the Fox Business Network as well as on Fox’s website and other streaming and digital platforms.In lieu of the network’s YouTube channel, the Republican National Committee has partnered with Rumble — a video sharing platform popular with some conservatives — to livestream the debate. Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said earlier this year this was a decision aimed toward “getting away from Big Tech.”Another debate partner is the Young America’s Foundation, a Wisconsin-based outfit hea...

Mass shootings spur divergent laws as states split between gun rights and control

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

Tennessee’s Republican-led Legislature is meeting in special session this week to consider a package of public safety proposals, including some stemming from a deadly shooting at a Nashville elementary school earlier this year. Though the session is not expected to result in any new firearms restrictions, it nonetheless highlights the widely divergent response among states to a spate of mass shootings across the U.S.More than half the states have enacted substantive new laws this year regarding gun policies or school safety measures — most often tightening firearm restrictions in Democratic-led states and loosening them in Republican-led ones. Some states also have pumped money into efforts to secure schools or to train teachers and staff how to respond in shootings.WHAT IS TENNESSEE DOING?Republican Gov. Bill Lee has outlined an 18-prong agenda for Tennessee lawmakers to consider during their special session. The proposal that has gotten the most public attention also appears...

Trump’s decision to back out of debate tests Fox News’ ability to pivot again

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — If 2023 has taught anything to the people running Fox News, it’s the importance of being able to pivot.The decision by former President Donald Trump to skip Wednesday’s first debate of the 2024 presidential primary season likely deprives Fox of a huge late-summer audience. Even worse for the network, Trump has talked of appearing in an online interview with former Fox star Tucker Carlson at the same time.Trump’s announcement on Sunday wasn’t necessarily a surprise. Fox debate moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum had been preparing for two events — one if he were there and one if he wasn’t.Several Fox personalities this summer publicly urged Trump to attend the event, and Fox executives privately made the same argument to the former president. His former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, called Trump’s decision a “huge political miscalculation” Monday on Fox.Despite Trump’s lead over other Republicans in polls, MacCallu...

How Trump’s attacks on prosecutors build on history of using racist language and stereotypes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists.The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs as some of his supporters post racist screeds about the same targets. The rhetoric is a reminder of Trump’s tendency to use coded racial messaging as a signal to supporters, an approach he has deployed over several decades as he evolved from a New York City real estate tycoon to a reality television star and, eventually, the president. Even if he does...

Inside KCON LA 2023, an extravagant microcosm of K-pop’s macro influence

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:44 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hours before doors would open, thousands of K-pop fans lined up in downtown Los Angeles, stretching long city blocks in the warm August sun. In pleated skirts and platform shoes, toting the clear bags that have become arena staples, they danced and traded homemade stickers, banners, bracelets and photocards. Inside was their paradise: an IRL space to commune over their URL passions. If anything, the 2023 LA KCON was a microcosm of K-pop’s macro influence on the music industry as a whole.Held from Friday to Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center and adjacent Crypto.com Arena, an estimated 140,000 fans from all over the world celebrated their favorite K-pop idols across three days of panels, premium meet-and-greets, interviews, dance breaks, concerts, and more. Inside the convention center, fans carried lightsticks of their favorite groups, showed off DIY shirts with simple, direct slogans like “I HEART MINGI”, collected sticker books and K-beauty products, and...