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Ticker: Social Security payments to go up 3.2%;  Mortgage rates up again

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

Millions of Social Security recipients will get a 3.2% increase in their benefits in 2024, far less than this year’s historic boost and reflecting moderating consumer prices.The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, means the average recipient will receive more than $50 more every month beginning in January, the Social Security Administration said Thursday. The AARP estimated that increase at $59 per month.“This will help millions of people keep up with expenses,” said Kilolo Kijakazi, Social Security’s acting commissioner.Thursday’s announcement follows this year’s 8.7% benefit increase, brought on by record 40-year-high inflation, which pushed up the price of consumer goods. With inflation easing, the next annual increase is markedly smaller.Mortgage rates up againHome loan borrowing costs rose for the fifth straight week, keeping the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate at its highest level in more than two decades and taking another bite out of prospective homebuyers&#...

Howie Carr: Harvard’s depraved cheerleading

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a graduate of Harvard Law School.So when I had him on my radio show Wednesday, I asked him for his reaction to the depraved cheerleading by some at his old school to the horrific slaughter by Muslim terrorists last weekend.“I knew Harvard was very left-wing,” he said, “but at this point with the Ivy League, how nuts they’ve gotten, if I see a Harvard resume cross my desk I’m running the other way.”DeSantis continued, “Yes, they’ve always been anti-Israel, but to go up and cheer a terrorist group that’s cutting off he heads of infants is absolutely despicable.”Yes it is, but it is also absolutely predictable. This is Harvard, after all. This is Cambridge. These genocidal Nazi fiends on Mass Ave are just the latest iteration of the Tsarnaevs. Remember them?A family of Third World Muslim grifters who lied about the “oppression” they were suffering – namely, having to work for a living like the stupid infidels.The Tsarnaevs were granted asylum – which means ...

Taylor Swift surprised by ‘guiding light’ Beyoncé at ‘Eras Tour’ film premiere

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

Jami Ganz | New York Daily NewsDon’t blame Taylor Swift if she was totally enchanted when Beyoncé surprised her at the “Eras Tour” film premiere, as both pop stars prepare for their concert flicks to overtake box offices.The “Enchanted” singer, 33, took to Instagram early Thursday to share a boomerang of the pair posing at the front of an empty auditorium, as Beyoncé, 42, tosses popcorn.“I’m so glad I’ll never know what my life would’ve been like without Beyonce’s influence,” wrote Swift, whose Eras tour has thus far grossed over $2 billion. “The way she’s taught me and every artist out here to break rules and defy industry norms. Her generosity of spirit. Her resilience and versatility. She’s been a guiding light throughout my career and the fact that she showed up tonight was like an actual fairytale.”PHOTOS: ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ concert movie premiere in L.A.(FILES) US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift performs during her Eras Tour at Sofi stadium in Inglewood, California, ...

The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital is overflowing

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

By ISABEL DEBRE, SAMYA KULLAB and MOHAMMED JAHJOUH (Associated Press)GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflowed Thursday as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them on the sixth day of Israel’s heavy aerial bombardment on the territory of 2.3 million people.With scores of Palestinians killed each day in the Israeli onslaught after an unprecedented Hamas attack, medics in the besieged enclave said they have run out of places to put remains pulled from the latest strikes or recovered from the ruins of demolished buildings.The morgue at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital can only handle some 30 bodies at a time, and workers had to stack corpses three high outside the walk-in cooler and put dozens more, side by side, in the parking lot. Some were placed in a tent, and others were sprawled on the cement, under the sun.“The body bags started and just kept coming and coming and now it’s a graveyard,” Abu Elias Shobaki, a nurse at Shifa, said of the p...

An annular solar ‘ring of fire’ eclipse is this weekend: What will it look like from Massachusetts?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

As an annular solar “ring of fire” eclipse crosses the sky in the western half of the U.S. over the weekend, how visible will the astronomical event be from Massachusetts?Unfortunately for local science and space lovers, New England is not in a great spot for this weekend’s alignment of the sun and moon. Also, it could be pretty cloudy with a chance for rain, so that won’t help the view either.If you’re in the Boston-area on midday Saturday, only about 17% of the sun will be covered by the moon at the max of the eclipse. About 83% of the sun will be uncovered, meaning it will still be very bright if it’s not cloudy at the time.“What we’re going to have in Boston is not much,” Talia Sepersky, of the Museum of Science’s Charles Hayden Planetarium, told the Herald ahead of Saturday’s event.“On a perfectly clear day, only 17% of the sun would be covered, so you probably wouldn’t notice,” Sepersky added. ...

UMass faces a tough test at No. 6 Penn State

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

The UMass Minutemen can no longer ignore the elephant on the schedule.After falling short in three consecutive home games, UMass (1-6) hits the road to engage the most daunting opponent it will have faced since moving up to FBS in 2012.The Minutemen will reach the two-thirds point on the season when they travel to University Park, Pa., to confront the No. 6 Penn State Nittany Lions (5-0, 3-0) at historic Beaver Stadium, capacity 106,572. Penn State was unranked when it beat UMass 48-8 on Sept., 20, 2014.UMass is coming off an 41-24 home loss to Toledo at McGuirk Stadium while Penn State easily dispatched Northwestern 41-13 at Ryan Field. The UMass game will be the Lions’ tuneup for their Big 10 showdown at No. 3 Ohio State on Oct. 21.UMass played in a big house in its 59-14 loss at Auburn on Sept. 2. But hard experience has taught UMass coach Don Brown that Happy Valley is the loudest and most vitriolic venue in the Northeast. Brown visited Beaver Stadium a few times when he w...

Donald Trump returning to civil trial next week with fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen set to testify

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump will back in court next week for his New York civil fraud trial, a person familiar with the former president’s plans told The Associated Press on Thursday, setting up a potential face-to-face showdown with fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen, who is expected to testify.The 2024 Republican frontrunner voluntarily attended the first three days of the trial last week, turning the Manhattan courthouse into a campaign stop as he watched testimony and complained to TV cameras about the case, which cuts to the heart of his image as a successful businessman and threatens to cost him control of marquee properties such as Trump Tower.Trump is expected to attend the non-jury trial Tuesday through Thursday next week, according to the person who confirmed the plans, which were first reported by news website The Messenger. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity before an official announcement.“It’s been 5 years since we have seen one another,” Cohen sai...

Douglas Clark, convicted murderer and half of the Sunset Strip Killers, dies of natural causes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (AP) — Serial killer Douglas Daniel Clark, who was sentenced to death for six grisly murders in California during the early 1980s, has died of natural causes, officials said Thursday. He was 75. Clark, who’d been housed at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, died Wednesday at an outside medical facility, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Clark and his accomplice Carol Bundy were dubbed the Sunset Strip Killers following a series of murders around Los Angeles starting in 1980. The victims included teenage girls and female sex workers. Clark was convicted of multiple charges including murder, attempted murder and sexual contact with human remains. The Marin County Coroner’s office will determine Clark’s official cause of death. Bundy died at Central California Women’s Facility in 2003.The Associated Press

NATO member Romania finds more drone fragments on its soil after Russia again hits southern Ukraine

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian authorities said Thursday they found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine onto a NATO member country.The pre-dawn discovery of the crater three kilometers (1.8 miles) west of the village of Plauru, which sits across the Danube River from the Ukrainian port of Izmail, was made after the Romanian Defense Ministry said it detected a series of drones heading toward Ukrainian river ports.The ministry said the drone possibly exploded on impact but it was not immediately clear when or from where the drone was launched. An investigation was under way.“Heinous Russian attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure had again serious consequences on Romania’s territory,” Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu wrote on X, the social medial platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that “new evidence of impact was ...

After tour of fire devastation in N.W.T., Trudeau promises new homes for Yellowknife

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:31:54 GMT

YELLOWKNIFE — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there will be 50 new affordable homes in Yellowknife under the federal government’s rapid housing project. Trudeau says it’s a jointly funded project between the federal government and the Northwest Territories, with the City of Yellowknife providing the land.“Work on a construction site is already underway,” Trudeau told reporters in Yellowknife on Thursday. He said the rapid housing project is in the third round of funding, with more than 15,000 homes to be built nationally. He acknowledged remote communities face unique challenges with supplies and workers.“The people who are, of course, hardest hit by this lack of supply are vulnerable people including seniors, Indigenous peoples and those experiencing homelessness,” he said.“Housing is a complex issue and we have to tackle it from different angles.”Trudeau was in N.W.T. touring communities ravaged by recent wildfires.The territory saw nearly 70 per cent of its population ...