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Brem & Clauss: Accessory units will help solve housing crisis

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

Like much of the nation, Massachusetts has a housing crisis. Many other states are addressing theirs by taking bold action, and we should do the same.For instance, California is leading the way with a new state law called Build Housing Faster; efforts are also underway in Oregon and Maine. It is time for Massachusetts to stop discussing our housing problem and start implementing laws, regulations, standards and incentive programs to make a solution reality.We believe Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) – sometimes called “in-law apartments” – to be the low-hanging fruit in solving the housing crisis. This is allows for a second living unit to be created on an existing single-family residential lot, whether the ADU is attached to the existing home or detached. It is important to note that all of the typical rules and regulations for health, wetlands, setbacks and zoning would still apply.If allowed statewide by statute, these units would be automatically spread out across cities and town...

Lucas: Biden tries to play border wall both ways

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

Joe Biden’s double-crossed open border supporters should not be so upset with the president’s flipflop in resuming construction of Donald Trump’s border wall.It has nothing to do with him.It is true that candidate Biden did promise that there would not be “another foot” of the wall built if he became president.“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” he said in August 2020.And on his first day in office, he halted all construction of the wall being built under Trump, which was to stretch along much of the country’s 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico.Subsequently, the country has been deluged with millions of  illegal immigrants, along with the fentanyl that some smuggle.Under Biden’s grudging administration, though, some 20 miles of new wall will go up in the “high illegal entry” area in Rio Grande Valley sector of Southeast Texas where thousands of illegal immigrants have been crossing weekly.If you look at it Joe Biden’s way, though, he is right. ...

Dear Abby: Hubby volunteers wife to care for sick in-laws

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been married to my husband for 38 years. It has been a happy marriage for the most part; we rarely disagree or argue. The problem is, his parents are both very sick. His mom has Alzheimer’s, and his father was just diagnosed with stage-4 cancer — he’ll probably die within six months.My husband wants us to sell our home and move in with his parents. He says that way we can take care of them both with the caregivers who are there most of the day. He works full time and says the burden will mostly fall on me. Should I agree to this?We are empty nesters, so this will affect no one but my husband and me. I’m leaning toward yes. But my husband has two sisters and a brother, and I’ll be doing something these others won’t do for their parents. I have already taken care of my parents as well as a sick brother and buried them all. I have no family left. Please, give me some advice. — Done This Before in TexasDear Done This:  A LOT mo...

D-backs slug 4 homers in record-setting barrage, sweep Dodgers with 4-2 win in Game 3 of NLDS

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — The hard-hitting Arizona Diamondbacks rode a record-setting barrage of solo homers in the third inning to a 4-2 win in Game 3 of the NL Division Series on Wednesday night, sweeping the 100-win Los Angeles Dodgers out of the playoffs.The D-backs return to the NL Championship Series for the first time since 2007, where they’ll face either the Phillies or Braves.Arizona — the No. 6 seed after squeezing into the NL playoff bracket with an 84-78 record — has won all five of its games during the postseason, sweeping aside both the Brewers in a best-of-three series and the Dodgers in a best-of-five.“It was a team effort,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s about people caring about people in this organization, and that’s what stood out to me today.”The wild-card Diamondbacks won with brawn in this one, slugging a postseason-record four homers in the third off veteran righty Lance Lynn, all solo shots from Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marte, Christian ...

$1.73 billion Powerball jackpot goes to lucky lottery player in California

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A player in California won a $1.73 billion Powerball jackpot Wednesday night, ending a long stretch without a winner of the top prize.The winning numbers were: 22, 24, 40, 52, 64 and the Powerball 10.Before someone won the giant prize, there had been 35 consecutive drawings without a big winner, stretching back to July 19 when a player in California matched all six numbers and won $1.08 billion.The jackpot is the world’s second-largest lottery prize after rolling over for 36 consecutive drawings, since the last time someone won the top prize on July 19. That streak trails the record of 41 draws set in 2021 and 2022.The only top prize that was ever bigger was the $2.04 billion Powerball won by a player in California last November. Powerball’s terrible odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes becoming ever larger as they repeatedly roll over when no one wins. And wins in recent months have been few and far between.That didn’t bothe...

Nominated to be House speaker, Steve Scalise is left searching for Republican votes to win the gavel

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Having won the nomination to be the next House speaker, Rep. Steve Scalise is heading straight into a familiar Republican problem — skeptical GOP colleagues are reluctant to give their support, denying him the majority vote needed to win the gavel.On Thursday, the House will open at midday in anticipation of floor action to elect the speaker. But it’s requiring Scalise to peel off more than 100 votes mostly from his chief rival, Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman favored by hardliners as they dig in for a fight to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job. “We have a lot of work to do,” Scalise said after Wednesday’s internal party election.A steady stream of some of the Republicans filed into Scalise’s office late into the evening, bringing their complaints, criticisms and demands as he worked to shore up support. The scene is not fully different to the start of the year when McCarthy faced a similar backla...

25 years after Matthew Shepard’s death, LGBTQ+ activists say equal-rights progress is at risk

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

It’s been 25 years since Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, died six days after he was savagely beaten by two young men and tied to a remote fence to meet his fate. His death has been memorialized as an egregious hate crime that helped fuel the LGBTQ+ rights movement over the ensuing years.From the perspective of the movement’s activists — some of them on the front lines since the 1960s — progress was often agonizingly slow, but it was steady.Vermont allowed same-sex civil unions in 2000. A Texas law criminalizing consensual gay sex was struck down in 2003. In 2011, the military scrapped the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that kept gay, lesbian and bisexual service members in the closet. And in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages were legal nationwide.But any perception back then that the long struggle for equality had been won has been belied by events over the past two years.Five people were killed last year in a mass sho...

Live updates | Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

The Israeli government is under intense public pressure Thursday to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and killed hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.Hamas said it launched its attack Saturday because Palestinians’ suffering had become intolerable under unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank and a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza.Militants in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel and have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past five days. In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel and shut down Wednesday. The U.S. announced it is working with Egypt and Israel to open up safe corridors to get civilians out of Gaza.The war, which has claimed more than 2,300 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate. Here’s what’s...

CIA publicly acknowledges 1953 coup it backed in Iran was undemocratic as it revisits ‘Argo’ rescue

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — While revealing new details about one of the most famed CIA operations of all times — the spiriting out of six American diplomats who escaped the 1979 U.S. Embassy seizure in Iran — the intelligence agency for the first time has acknowledged something else as well.The CIA now officially describes the 1953 coup it backed in Iran that overthrew its prime minister and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as undemocratic.Other American officials have made similar remarks in the past, but the CIA’s acknowledgment in a podcast about the agency’s history comes as much of its official history of the coup remains classified 70 years after the putsch. That complicates the public’s understanding of an event that still resonates, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington over the Islamic Republic’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, its aiding of militia groups across the Mideast and as it cracks down on dissent. ...

An Oklahoma man used pandemic relief funds to have his name cleared of murder

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:52:47 GMT

GREENWOOD, Ark. (AP) — Ricky Dority spends most of his days playing with his grandchildren, feeding chickens and working in the yard where he lives with his son’s family.It’s a jarring change from where he was just several months ago, locked in a cell serving a life prison sentence at Oklahoma’s Joseph Harp Correctional Center in a killing he said he didn’t commit. After more than two decades behind bars, Dority had no chance at being released — until he used his pandemic relief funds to hire a dogged private investigator. The investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University, which is dedicated to exonerating wrongful convictions in the state, found inconsistencies in the state’s account of a 1997 cold-case killing, and Dority’s conviction was vacated in June by a Sequoyah County judge.Now, the 65-year-old says he’s enjoying the 5-acre property in a quiet neighborhood of well-to-do homes in the rolling, fores...