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Folan: Sacrifice, integrity worthy aspirations for ’24

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

Everyone needs role models and to be inspired and aspire towards something greater. Before the Army-Navy game at a leadership symposium hosted by the National Medal of Honor Leadership and Education Center, a group of Catholic Memorial seniors and I found all three.The event showcased esteemed New England Medal of Honor recipients Thomas Kelley and Ryan Pitts, as well as Rear Admiral Tom Lynch. The distinguished panelists shared the values and virtues they relied upon in the most challenging of moments. They highlighted the importance of being authentic, having integrity, embracing hard work, and the importance of devoting oneself to others. Their humility, courage, patriotism, and selflessness inspired all in attendance.Meeting a Medal of Honor recipient is an honor of a lifetime. In 2021, our school hosted Lt. Brian Thacker, one of the 67 living Medal of Honor recipients, to share his courageous story.  In 2023, Adam Makos’s “Devotion” was our all-school summer read. T...

Editorial: NYTimes AI lawsuit aims to protect journalism

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

The New York Times is not content to let OpenAI and Microsoft get rich using the newspaper’s web content for artificial intelligence like ChatGPT without paying and sued last week in Manhattan federal court.Having people, not machines, tell the human stories of the city and the world for other humans to read should stay that way.We could have asked ChatGPT to write an editorial about how it is bad that ChatGPT lifted wholesale without paying from a newspaper to teach itself how to replace newspapers. However, while AI doesn’t get tired of gimmicks, real people do.The Times alleges in its lawsuit that ChatGPT was fed huge numbers of articles produced by the paper’s website to allow the program to learn using the “large language model.” As the complaint states, “an LLM works by predicting words that are likely to follow a given string of text based on the potentially billions of examples used to train it.”For teaching material, “the training set was comprised of 45 terabytes of data —...

Dear Abby: A new year full of new opportunities

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

DEAR READERS: Welcome to 2024. A new year has arrived; the last one is safely behind us. As always, this new year brings with it our hopes for a new beginning.Today presents an opportunity to discard destructive old habits for healthy new ones and, with that in mind, I will share Dear Abby’s often-requested list of New Year’s Resolutions — which were adapted by my late mother, Pauline Phillips, from the original credo of Al-Anon:JUST FOR TODAY: I will live through THIS DAY ONLY. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all of my problems at once. I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.JUST FOR TODAY: I will decide to be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me. If my mind fills with clouds, I will chase them away and fill it with sunshine.JUST FOR TODAY: I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those ...

With jobs on the line, the Chicago Bears and Justin Fields celebrate New Year with a convincing win over the Atlanta Falcons

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

When Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields arrived in the locker room after a snowy 37-17 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday at Soldier Field, he was surprised to find it clouded with cigar smoke.Someone had left the cigars on a table for the team to partake in, either to celebrate New Year’s Eve or the Bears’ fifth straight home win or just the general resurgence of a team that has won four of its last five games.“I’m not going to be at home lighting a cigar,” Fields said. “But of course I did it in the locker room to celebrate with the guys.”If it feels a bit much for a 7-9 team, the good vibes are understandable given that the Bears started 0-4 and have built momentum late in the year despite much speculation about the future of the coaching staff and Fields over the last two months.One piece of that future crystallized before the Bears had finished easily disposing of the 7-9 Falcons behind a good day from Fields and four inter...

Pedestrian hit, killed on SR-125 in Spring Valley; driver flees the scene

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

SPRING VALLEY, Calif. -- First responders are on the scene of a reported fatal pedestrian accident on a highway in Spring Valley. Crews responded to SR-125 and Jamacha Road in Spring Valley at 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve. According to a California Highway Patrol sig alert, a vehicle hit a pedestrian and the driver fled the scene Sunday night. CHP is reporting the incident as fatal. No other information was immediately available. According to Caltrans, one lane on southbound SR-125 north of Jamacha Road is currently closed due to the accident. This story is breaking. Stay with FOX 5 for the latest as this develops.

The Empire State rings in the new year with a pay bump for minimum-wage workers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s minimum-wage workers had more than just the new year to celebrate Monday, with a pay bump kicking in as the clock ticked over to 2024.In the first of a series of annual increases slated for the Empire State, the minimum wage increased to $16 in New York City and some of its suburbs, up from $15. In the rest of the state, the new minimum wage is $15, up from $14.20.The state’s minimum wage is expected to increase every year until it reaches $17 in New York City and its suburbs, and $16 in the rest of the state by 2026. Future hikes will be tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, a measurement of inflation. New York is one of 22 states getting minimum wage rises in the new year, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. In California, the minimum wage increased to $16, up from $15.50, while in Connecticut it increased to $15.69 from the previous rate of $15. This most recent pay bump ...

China’s manufacturing activity slows in December in latest sign the economy is still struggling

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — A survey of factory managers in China shows that manufacturing contracted in December in the latest sign the world’s No. 2 economy remains sluggish. The official purchasing managers index, or PMI, fell to 49 last month in what officials said was evidence of weak demand, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Sunday. It was the third straight month of contraction. The PMI is on a scale up to 100 where 50 marks the cutoff between expansion and contraction. The index has fallen in eight of the past nine months, with an increase only in September. In November, the index was at 49.4, down from 49.5 the month before. Despite unexpectedly prolonged weakness after the pandemic, China’s economy grew at a 5.2% pace in the first three quarters of the year and showed signs of improvement in November, with factory output and retail sales rising.In recent months, the government has raised spending on construction of ports and other infrastructure, cut interest rates and ease...

AP PHOTOS: Dancing with the bears lives on as a unique custom in Romania

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

COMANESTI, Romania (AP) — A small industrial town in northeast Romania may seem like an unlikely tourist destination, but Comanesti is where huge numbers of visitors from as far away as Japan choose to spend part of the winter holiday season. They converge here to see an annual event that grew out of a millennia-old tradition in the Moldavia region: Bearskin-clad people of all ages, organized in packs, marching and dancing to the deafening sound of drums in several rows of gaping jaws and claws. The Dancing Bears Festival, as the custom has become known, starts in the days before Christmas and ends with a spectacular finale in Comanesti on Dec. 30. Some of the “bears” jokingly growl or mock an attack on spectators.The bearskins the dancers wear, which can weigh as much as 50 kilograms (110 pounds), are passed on from generation to generation. The packs carefully guard the methods they use to keep the furs in good condition and ready to wear the next year. One of the more established...

Goodbye to a cloudy, mild December; January 2024 opens with above-normal temperatures

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

December didn't feel like the first month of meteorological winter, with temperatures that were more than eight degrees warmer than average and meager snowfall.  Sunday's 0.9" of snowfall was the biggest of December and just the second measurable snowfall of the month.  The 1.2" of snow measured at O'Hare in December is still less than what fell at Chicago's official reporting station in November and for the season the city is well below average.   WGN Weekly Climate Report: Today we're saying goodbye to what's been a really cloudy, mild and nearly snow-free December. As of this morning, we were tied for 3rd place for least snowy December on record. It wouldn't take all that much today to knock us out of the top 5 least snowy. It was our second warmest Christmas on records that go back to the 1870s and it was our warmest ever Christmas morning of 50 degrees. December was quite cloudy—only about 30% of possible sun for the month. December is typically our cloudiest month of...

63-year-old woman shot, killed by police in L.A. County

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:04:05 GMT

WARNING: Graphic language and imagesPolice shot and killed a 63-year-old woman who allegedly broke into her sister’s home armed with a handgun and set the residence on fire earlier this month, authorities announced.  Officers with the Los Angeles Police Department responded to the Dec. 1 incident in the 9600 block of Laramie Avenue in Chatsworth just before 2 p.m., according to a LAPD news release.  When the suspect, later identified as Newbury Park resident Lisa Davis, broke into the home, her sister locked herself in the bathroom and called 911.  When police arrived at the location, body-worn camera footage clearly shows flames and smoke coming from the home.  Officers were able to rescue the victim after she escaped the home and got into a neighbor’s backyard. She informed police that Davis was armed and that she had last seen her in the backyard of her home.  “The sergeant and officers entered the backyard of the residence as the fire was actively burning and announced thei...