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Youngkin issues executive order after unprecedented series of fentanyl-related overdoses at Northern Va. school

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order Wednesday aimed at bolstering the response to school-related drug overdoses, after at least eight opioid-related overdoses were reported last month at a high school in Loudoun County.The order directs the Virginia Department of Education to issue guidance to school divisions to notify all parents of school-connected overdoses within 24 hours, according to a news release from the governor’s office.Youngkin said Loudoun County Public Schools reportedly waited more than 20 days to notify parents of the overdoses.“Parents have a right to know what’s going on in their child’s lives, especially in schools. Overdoses that occur on school grounds or are connected to the school must lead to an immediate parental notification,” Youngkin said. “School administrators’ first instinct when there is a problem cannot be to delay relevant information on critical children’s health and safety matters.”The ...

Drivers warned: Watch for wildlife as time changes

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — Sunday morning is the day to "fall back" and change those clocks, and Coloradans are warned to pay even closer attention to their driving.Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Department of Transportation are coming out with their annual message: Watch for wildlife crossing the road. National parks and forests in Colorado will be free on this day "Be mindful of young wildlife, who are still kind of navigating how to go through their migration period," CPW's Bridget O'Rourke said.Both agencies have teamed up to construct underpasses and high fences to protect wildlife near roadways. For a list of the finished and ongoing wildlife crossing projects, please see the Colorado Wildlife and Transportation Alliance’s Website at coloradowta.com.One such project is on Interstate 70, heading up to the high country between Lookout Mountain and Genesee.

Woman who survived Oct. 7 massacre at Nova music fest shares personal account with hundreds in Aventura

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

Hundreds of people gathered in Aventura to hear the horror of Oct. 7 first hand, from a survivor of the massacre at the Tribe of Nova music festival.Speaking at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center on Wednesday, Maya Parizar said the journey hasn’t been pretty, but she knows now the power of sharing her story.“For some miracle, I know I got to be here and tell their story, honoring their lives,” she said as she wiped away a tear.Music and massacre, two things that don’t have anything in common with each other, are Parizar’s reality now. She was one of 3,000 people who attended the open-air music festival in southern Israel.“It’s been 24 days, and it feels like just a nightmare,” she said.That nightmare, Parizar said, began around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7.“I just remember looking up there in the sky and see what it felt like thousands of rockets and missiles,” she said.That was her first sign to pack up and leave.Parizar said she...

Poland’s incoming government won’t cancel pricey defense contracts

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

WARSAW — Poland is set to change governments following the October 15 election, but the incoming administration isn’t planning any major revolution in procurement, defense spending or military posture. “We’re not going to cancel any contracts. We don’t want our allies to view Poland as unpredictable,” Tomasz Siemoniak, who served as defense minister from 2011 to 2015 and is seen as a potential candidate to return to the post, told POLITICO.He is a senior member of the Civic Coalition grouping led by Donald Tusk, the candidate to be prime minister of three opposition parties that together have a majority in the new parliament. Tusk, for now, has been silent on defense issues.However, Siemoniak’s views are shared by other parts of the future ruling coalition.“We voted to increase spending on armaments and we said during the campaign that we would maintain all the armaments contracts we had started,” Stefan Krajewski, an MP with the Third Way grouping, told Poli...

Stellar cast makes ‘The Holdovers” a winner

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

Like a lost novel by J.D. Salinger, “The Holdovers” arrives out of the mists of time. Directed by two-time Academy Award-winner Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”) and written by David Hemingson (TV’s “Black-ish”), the film is set at Barton, a fictional Catholic prep boarding school outside of Boston in 1970, where the students torment one another and the teachers, well, the teachers also torment the students. Chief among these is bearded, goggle-eyed ancient history professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti of Payne’s 2004 hit “Sideways”), who wears a sweater vest and corduroy pants and jacket and hands out exam papers sporting a plethora of Ds and Fs with great relish.When one of the many privileged and entitled students objects, pointing out that he won’t get into Cornell with this grade, Hunham offers to let them retake the test after the Christmas/New Year break when most, but not all of the students will be reunited with their families. Angus Tully (the tall, Adam...

Lucas: White males maligned in Biden’s America

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

I was shocked when I first read the headline.It said, “Report: Humans Still Putting ‘Untenable Burden’ on White Males.”The headline was over a news story by the usually reliable and respected State House News, so it had to be accurate.But what was the story? A sympathetic understanding of the burdens of being a white man in today’s America?Or simply a headline and story ridiculing white males, something that is common in the woke world we live in?I put my reading glasses on and re-read the headline.To my chagrin, the headline actually read: “Report: Humans Still Putting ‘Untenable Burden’ on Right Whales.”The story told how the Right Whales, once so abundant, were in general decline off the North Atlantic because of human activity, activity that was creating an “untenable burden” on the whale species.The New England Aquarium said the whales were being caught up in fishing gear entanglements and hit in vessel strikes.This does not take into consideration the potential damage to the w...

‘All the Light We Cannot See’ timely tale of fighting darkness

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

Among Hollywood’s A list directors, Shawn Levy has triumphed with “Stranger Things” and a lengthy collaboration with Ryan Reynolds which will continue with “Deadpool 3.”This week’s “All the Light We Cannot See” is something different.  Adapted from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2014 bestseller, “Light,” set in Occupied WWII France, represents the filmmaker’s first dramatic period piece.“This was definitely new ground for me,” Levy, 55, said in a Zoom interview. “I’ve done different kinds of storytelling in film and TV but I always wanted to tell a story that was more straight-ahead drama and, even more juicy, if it could be historically set.“Why this particular story was irresistible to me? It was epic in scale but also had this very emotional intimacy. It’s rare you find a story with both. But that’s what Anthony Doerr’s novel achieved: It felt both huge and also human scale.“As a director, that’s the dream story to tell. Where you can flex so...

Moore: Green energy transition running out of gas

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

One of the textbook marketing flops of all time was the Ford Edsel sedan, which was heralded as the hot new car in the late 1950s. All the automotive experts and Ford executives said it was a can’t-miss. Henry Ford (the car was named after his son) guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales.But one big thing went wrong: Nobody ever bothered to ask car buyers what they thought of the new car. As it turned out, they hated it. So instead of sales of 400,000, Americans bought 10,000, and the model was embarrassingly discontinued.The obvious lesson for the industry: You can’t bribe Americans to buy cars they don’t want. Given the all-in approach to electric vehicles at Ford and General Motors, it’s clear that Detroit never got the message.Last week, Honda and GM announced an end to their two-year collaboration in building a platform for lower-cost EVs. Honda execs said it was too hard.Amazingly, less than 10% of all new car sales over the last two years were EVs. T...

Breakout performances make ‘Radical’ soar

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

A “To Sir with Love” for a new generation, Mexican drama “Radical” from writer-director Christopher Zalla (“Blood of My Blood”) features an award-worthy turn by superb lead actor Eugenio Derbez as an idealistic teacher of disadvantaged children and break-out turns by several members of its youthful cast. The film, based on a Wired article, tells the tale of Sergio Juarez Correa (Derbez), a sixth-grade teacher at Jose Urbina Lopez Primary School in Matamoros, Mexico in 2011, where gangs employ and recruit school-age boys. Heavily-armed soldiers maintain checkpoints, and schools are in decline.On his first day at a new post, Sergio runs afoul of the principal whose first name is Chucho (a fine Daniel Haddad), as well as a jaded fellow teacher. Some of Sergio’s students are experiencing “pubertad.” Others look more like children. In spite of her diminutive size, Lupe (a fiery Mia Fernanda Solis) is cook and caregiver at her home, where her mother has just had another baby. Sergio...

Editorial: New House Speaker on to something with debt commission

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 12:06:19 GMT

Getting the nation’s soaring debt under control should be a national priority. But many special-interest groups don’t agree.Last week, newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson told his colleagues that he would soon hold a vote on forming a bipartisan commission to study the nation’s fiscal trajectory.“The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt,” he said. “We know this is not going to be an easy task, and tough decisions will have to be made. But the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable. We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well. And we’re going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately.”The speaker’s comments exude common sense. The deficit this past fiscal year hit $2 trillion. The debt has soared past $33.7 trillion. The interest payments on the debt now exceed defense spending and will continue to crowd out other priorities. Simply borrowing more money to f...