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Messi is a doubtful starter for Argentina’s World Cup qualifying game in Bolivia

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

SAO PAULO (AP) — Excited Bolivian fans gathered at the La Paz international airport to welcome Lionel Messi ahead of Argentina’s World Cup qualifying game against the home team on Tuesday. The 36-year-old Messi traveled with the defending World Cup champions but is not a certain starter at the game because of fatigue.Meanwhile Brazil, coached for the first time by Fernando Diniz in a 5-1 win over Bolivia last Friday, is preparing to face Peru with the same squad.Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia won their opening games in continental qualifying last week. All 10 South American teams will play their second games on Tuesday.The 2026 edition of the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada is expanding to a 48-team format. The top six teams in South America will secure a direct spot. The seventh-place team will contest an intercontinental playoff for a berth.BOLIVIA vs. ARGENTINAArgentina coach Lionel Scaloni told a news conference he will have against Bolivia a ver...

The populist right wants you to make more babies. The question is how.

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

Can a baby-making conference in Budapest help Europe avoid demographic collapse? The populist right certainly hope so. For decades, Europe’s birth rates have been below the replacement level of 2.1 — the average number of births per woman needed to keep the population stable without immigration. But recently the threat of global demographic collapse has also become a cause célèbre in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, who has 9 children, has called demographic decline “a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”In Europe, the political push to drive up birth rates has been led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. And this week his populist government is hosting a grab bag of rightwing crowd-pleasers at the 5th Budapest Demographic Summit. Starting Thursday, political leaders, religious evangelists and high-profile academics — including conservative Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić...

Cardona: 9/11 inspired military service, time to give back

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

I was nine years old when we were attacked. Watching the Twin Towers fall, a plane hit the Pentagon, and hearing the harrowing stories of Flight 93 had a profound impact on me. But what impacted me more was how our country rose together in unity. We were proud of our nation, we reveled in our freedoms, and we took care of each other. This profound sense of patriotism was at an all-time high. In a single year following the 9/11 attacks, 181,510 Americans enlisted in the active duty ranks and 72,908 joined the enlisted reserves. That’s more in a 12-month period than any of the 22 years since.As an impressionable kid, Sept. 11 and the months that followed inspired me to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy. Today, after graduating and now serving in the Naval Reserves, what inspires me most are the people. The United States Armed Forces are second to none because of the people who choose to serve. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer force, an incredible milestone for o...

Antoni: Why jobless rate is higher than it seems

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

The labor market is nowhere near as strong as it appears. If that sounds surprising, it’s because the Biden administration is playing a shell game with unemployment numbers.With millions of Americans missing from the workforce, the unemployment rate is being artificially depressed. Accounting for this sleight of hand reveals an unemployment rate of over 6%, not the official 3.8%.President Joe Biden inherited an economy that was growing at a $1.5 trillion annualized rate and was adding an average of 1.4 million jobs per month after the government-imposed shutdowns. At the same time, inflation was only 1.4%, which is even below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. But Biden’s anti-growth, big-government agenda slammed the brakes on the economy and the labor market.After just 18 months of the Biden administration, inflation soared to 40-year highs, and the economy contracted for two consecutive quarters. Average monthly job growth has slowed 70%, and America remains 4.6 million jobs below ...

Michael Jai White saddles up for ‘Outlaw Johnny Black’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

As the writer, director and star of “Outlaw Johnny Black,” Michael Jai White revives the Hollywood Western of the 1970s Blaxploitation era.As a cowboy who pretends to be a preacher in order to avenge his father’s death and deal justice to a greedy land baron, White, 55, specifically nods to the light-hearted Sidney Poitier-Harry Belafonte ‘70s Western “Buck and the Preacher Man.”But isn’t White, who had a hit with “Black Dynamite,” another Blaxploitation riff, gambling with a Western?“I love Westerns. I think when they’re done right, people respond,” White, who has an exemption during the actors’ strike to promote his independent movie, said in a Zoom interview. “One of my favorites is ‘Unforgiven’ but I always intended on doing a Western in the Blaxploitation era, kind of harken back to that.“Just like with ‘Black Dynamite,’ this is a look back at movies set up to be circa 1972-73, that kind of thing. I guess if you look at the Duffer Brothers, they brought back the ‘80s with...

New hire eager for a promotion before Day 1 on job

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

Q. I’m extending an offer to a candidate soon. They’re a perfect fit for the job, but I know a promotion is on her mind. And she hasn’t even started yet. How can I manage her expectations that she needs to learn this job first before advancing?A. It’s a Catch-22 — terrific that you have an ambitious new hire who’s a perfect fit as you say and you don’t want to diminish her motivation and ambition. I’d meet with her in the beginning to set goals for the year and outline the path to promotion and what type of skills need to be developed and metrics/goals that need to be met for that to potentially happen. This way, she has a clearly defined road map, but is also aware of what needs to be accomplished.You may or may not want to include a timeline. She may be on the fast track so a promotion two years from now may occur sooner than that; or there may be budgetary constraints so you may say one year but a year from now, it may not be possib...

Editorial: JP Progressives are wearing blinders

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

The truth is endangered, especially on the Boston City Council.That’s why we must address the Jamaica Plain Progressives’ flawed support Sunday of District 6 Councilor Kendra Lara on the eve of Tuesday’s preliminary election.It’s a fact that members of the JPP went rogue and helped fund Lara’s independent crash analysis, as first reported in the Herald. It’s also true they did so without informing group leadership as Lara’s endorsement was being considered.It’s clear Lara is desperately trying to control the narrative so she can keep her job that will pay $115,000 next year. Her case remains in a court of law, but she doesn’t have time for courts. She wants her accident adjudicated in the court of public opinion.That cannot go unchallenged.Lara is accused of speeding on June 30. The officer who wrote the report said Lara had been traveling at least 53.41 mph, and as fast as 59.29 mph, at the point of impact.She is accused of cras...

Moore: Biden’s killing American dream of homeownership

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

In boasting about Bidenomics two weeks ago in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden declared that his policies are “restoring the American dream.” Then he went into his creepy whispering mode and assured us “it’s working.”Huh?Isn’t a big aspiration of the American dream owning a home? Biden keeps making first-time homeownership harder for young families for two reasons. One is that the overall jump in inflation and the slower increase in wages and salaries means that homes are more expensive. High home prices benefit those who already own their homes, but much of the increased value is due to general inflation, which reached a high of 9% last year and hurts everyone.A bigger killer for first-time homebuyers has been the steady rise in mortgage rates under Biden. When he came into office, the mortgage rate was 2.9% nationally. Now it is 7.1%, thanks in no small part to the Federal Reserve’s 11 interest rate increases prompted by the $6 trillion Bide...

Dear Abby: Teen’s antics leave bad taste with grandma

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

Dear Abby: I generally have an excellent relationship with my 14-year-old granddaughter. However, she thinks it’s funny to tell me outrageous lies with a straight face to see if she can get me to believe them. She laughs when I am unsure of whether she is telling the truth.Once she told me her family was going to Hawaii for a month (she lives with her father rather than with my daughter, so I’m not privy to his plans). Another time, she jerked her arms around and said she has “tics.” When I asked what she was talking about, she announced she had Tourette’s syndrome.Both were untrue. I had epilepsy as a teenager, so I’m especially sensitive about a grandchild developing a neurological condition at the age I was. It felt like a cruel thing for her to do to me, and I was not amused. When I told her I didn’t like it, she giggled and said, “Oh, Grandma!”I had arranged for her to do weekly yard work for me, but now I’m having sec...

The United States marks 22 years since 9/11, from ground zero to Alaska

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:17:46 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.Commemorations stretch from the attack sites — at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — to Alaska and beyond. President Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage.His visit, en route to Washington, D.C., from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote. The hijacked plane attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.On that day, “we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling — that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,” said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland Count...