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NYC outdoor dining sheds were a celebrated pandemic-era innovation. Now, there’s a new set of rules

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Outdoor dining was a part of the pandemic that many people actually liked — made possible by streetside dining sheds that popped up around New York City and allowed many restaurants to stay in business when they couldn’t have diners inside.Some sheds were simple — wooden structures with basic cutouts for light, a few tables, the occasional plastic sheeting to keep out rain and snow. Other restaurants got more into it — choosing decor to match the restaurant’s interiors and adding heaters, plants and plush seating.As New York City has moved out from under its pandemic-era regulations, how to handle the new landscape of outdoor dining structures has been a growing question. While many still like the sheds and restaurants want to keep them, others say there is no longer a need for them. Some have raised concerns like increased noise and congestion, loss of street space, and argued that some are dilapidated, abandoned structures that are eyesores.City officia...

How a law associated with mobsters is central to charges against Trump

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened her investigation into Donald Trump after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Trump suggested during the call that Raffensperger, a Republican and the state’s top elections official, could help “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.More than two years later, the indictment brought Monday by a grand jury went far beyond that phone call, alleging a web of crimes committed by Trump and others. Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law to charge Trump and 18 associates for allegedly participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. She told reporters late Monday that she intended to try all 19 defendants together and noted her prosecutors’ experience with racketeering cases, saying this was the 11th RIC...

Political leader in Ecuador is killed less than a week after presidential candidate’s assassination

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — The unprecedented violence shaking Ecuador claimed the life of another political leader Monday, bringing the number of politics-related slayings within the last four weeks to three, including that of a presidential candidate.The fatal shooting of Pedro Briones, a local leader of Revolución Ciudadana, the party of former President Rafael Correa, was confirmed by Luisa González, the frontrunner in Sunday’s special presidential election and member of the same party. The shooting happened in the northern province of Esmeraldas. Details were not immediately available.“Ecuador is experiencing its bloodiest era,” González tweeted. “A heartfelt hug to the family of colleague Pedro Briones, fallen by the hands of violence.”The killing of Briones, who was a political leader in a rural area of San Mateo de Esmeraldas, came less than a week after the South American country was rocked by the assassination in broad daylight of presidential candida...

California aims to introduce more anglers to native warm-water tolerant sunfish as planet heats up

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

SAN DIEGO (AP) — California’s only native sunfish, the Sacramento perch, survived catastrophic floods in the 1860s and was so abundant that it was a regular staple in San Francisco’s markets before invasive species decimated its population.Today it is relegated to mostly isolated lakes, reservoirs and ponds with few predators. But as the planet heats up and threatens many cold-water game fish species like trout, the Sacramento perch may be on the cusp of a comeback, thanks in part to its ability to tolerate warm water and extreme conditions. State officials recently introduced Sacramento perch to Southern California in an attempt to widen its range, strengthen its gene pool, create a breeding stock and generate interest among more anglers. Biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released the first batch of 37 mostly juvenile Sacramento perch on Thursday evening in San Diego County’s only natural lake, Lindo Lake in Lakeside, a suburb east of the city of San Di...

Arraignment set for Mar-a-Lago property manager in Trump’s classified documents case

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is set for an arraignment Tuesday in Florida in a case accusing the former president of illegally hoarding classified documents. The hearing was postponed last week because the property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, had not secured a Florida-based attorney.Trump waived his right to appear alongside De Oliveira, and valet Walt Nauta, last Thursday, and the judge accepted a not guilty plea the former president made in court papers. Nauta also pleaded not guilty.De Oliveira’s failure to finalize local counsel marked the latest delay in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in May. Trump’s lawyers have made clear they want to push the trial date back. A Florida-based attorney appeared with De Oliveira in court on Thursday but had not been retained on the case.Attorneys for Trump, De Oliveira and Nauta left the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce last Thursday without commenting to reporters ...

Biden heads to battleground Wisconsin to talk about the economy a week before GOP debate

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a show of preemptive counterprogramming, President Joe Biden on Tuesday travels to Wisconsin to highlight his economic policies in a state critical to his reelection fortunes, just a week before Republicans descend on Milwaukee for the party’s first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign.His trip comes on the eve of the anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, major economic legislation that he signed into law with great ceremony — although polls show most people know little about it or what it does. Wisconsin is among the handful of critical states where Biden needs to convince voters that his policies are having a positive impact on their lives, and he is expected to visit frequently to make his case.Biden plans to tour a clean energy manufacturing firm in Milwaukee to talk up provisions of the law that spends hundreds of millions of dollars to boost domestic manufacturing and clean energy, lower health care costs and crack down on wealthy tax cheats. Adm...

South Korea’s Yoon calls for strong security cooperation with US, Japan ahead of Camp David summit

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president called for deeper security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan to address North Korean nuclear threats, saying Tuesday that his upcoming summit with the U.S. and Japanese leaders at Camp David will “set a new milestone in trilateral cooperation.”It will be the first time for the leaders of the three countries to gather entirely for a trilateral summit, rather than on the sidelines of international meetings. This suggests they are serious about boosting their ties in the face of North Korea’s advancing nuclear arsenal and China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy.In their summit Friday at the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland, President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are expected to announce plans for expanded military cooperation on ballistic missile defenses and technology development, according to two senior Biden administration officials.“The ROK (Republic of Korea...

Monday downpours give way to gusty, Lake Michigan churning “NNE” winds Tuesday blowing the length of Lake Michigan. Temps rebound to the 80s Wednesday and evidence of late season heat and humidity beginning this weekend grows

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

WARM SEASON RAINS ARE NOTORIOUSLY UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTEDMonday’s rains followed that pattern. While downpours produced flooding and rain totals topping 3” in portions of the Chicago area, as little as 0.08” fell in Herscher and 0.09” at Lowell, IN.There were new and training downpours flaring late Monday night up and down the western Lake Michigan shoreline including a swath of Lake and Cook County.Monday afternoon satellite imagery was quite dramatic in its presentation of the late summer storm. The huge comma-shaped curl in the clouds are more commonly seen with well developing storms at cooler times of the year. The copious supply of moisture which was available to Monday’s system was behind the local downpours which drenched parts of the area.“Full fetch” NNE winds—the term full fetch refers to winds which blow the length of Lake Michigan on their way into the Chicago area. These are uniquely able to transfer wind energy to the lake surface building waves in the process. Lake Mich...

SoCal woman sues after she was struck by garbage truck

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

A San Diego woman is suing a national trash and recycling waste management company after she was hit by one of the company truck’s metal tines. Surveillance video from the incident that took place in February 2021 shows the woman, Deanna Beck, walking through the parking garage of an apartment complex, when the driver of a Waste Management Services truck backed up and hit Beck with the truck’s metal tines, resulting in her falling to the ground. Beck was rushed to a nearby hospital to be treated for major neck injuries and trauma to the brain. She was later diagnosed with dysautonomia, which causes issues with the autonomic nervous system, as a result of the incident.According to Beck’s attorneys, John Gomez and Corey Garrard, the driver of the truck was on his phone when he reversed and hit Beck and had been penalized several times before for being on his phone while operating a vehicle. “The defendant of the waste management vehicle being driven in this case was on ...

The Last Voyage of the Demeter Sinks Dracula into Silliness

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:59 GMT

The most seductive thing, or the only seductive thing, about the new Dracula riff The Last Voyage of the Demeter is its rather inspired B-movie concept — one that’s apparently been in development hell, with scores of personnel changes, for over 20 years. We all know the plot beats of Dracula well enough, including the elliptical passage of the title schooner from Bulgaria to the south of England, where it shows up with a crew of corpses and crates of Carpathian sand. It’s only a five-page chunk of Chapter 7, in which the local Whitby newspaper quotes the captain’s log, and what happened on the voyage is something filmmakers have usually skipped over as well — only Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) paused to make a stark memorable meal of the situation.In fact, focusing on the unnamed marginal characters in the famous larger story has a postmodern pedigree — the Demeter’s tribulations could be a monster-culture Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. ...