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Ling Ma, Beverly Gage among authors honored by book critics

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Ling Ma’s sharp and surreal “Bliss Montage” and Beverly Gage’s sweeping biography of the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, “G-Man,” were among the winners Thursday night of the National Book Critics Circle awards. Ma’s story collection won the prize for fiction, with the judges praising her “sometimes startling” portraits of racism and xenophobia, and her gift for pulling readers “into a world where everything has been called into question.” Last week, “Bliss Montage” received the Story Prize for outstanding short fiction. Gage, whose book earlier in the day was honored by the New-York Historical Society, won Thursday night for best biography. “G-Man” has been widely praised as a thorough and nuanced take on one of the country’s most polarizing figures, and was cited by the critics circle for weaving together Hoover’s life and the “paradoxical national story involving American anxieties over security, masculinity, and race.”Other works ...

Messi mania grips Argentina in 1st match as World Cup champs

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Messi mania has gripped Buenos Aires as the Argentina national team led by Lionel Messi faces Panama on Thursday in a friendly match that essentially is a celebration of their World Cup victory last December.News channels carried live images of the players traveling to the stadium with a police escort as excited fans waited to see the team’s first game since it beat France in a thrilling final in Qatar.Outside the Monumental Stadium there was a party-like atmosphere from early in the afternoon as somebody impersonating Pope Francis blessed a World Cup replica, children almost universally donned Messi’s No. 10 jersey and street sellers hawked Messi dolls. Amid the celebrations there were also recriminations as many fans lamented they’d bought tickets for several times their face value from resellers that ended up being fake.“This World Cup was a miracle,” Marcelo Saracho, 49, said while dressed up like the pope, an Argentine, but with his ch...

Barefoot tours of Westminster Abbey offered after coronation

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Visitors to London’s Westminster Abbey will be allowed to stand for the first time on the exact spot where King Charles III will be crowned — though after the coronation. And they will need to make sure they don’t have holes in their socks for the shoeless tour, meant to protect the abbey’s medieval mosaic floor.Abbey officials said Friday that the section of the church’s floor known as the Cosmati pavement, where the coronation chair has been placed for some 700 years, will be on display during Charles’ crowning ceremony after being hidden away under carpets for decades because of disrepair. The pavement area, normally roped off to the public, will be open to small guided “barefoot tours” after the May 6 coronation. Visitors will be asked to remove their shoes to avoid wear and tear to the now-conserved floor.“Standing on the pavement and feeling that sense of awe of being in the central part of the abbey is a really amazing experience,&#...

Police: 2 shot while inside business on Chicago's South Side

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

CHICAGO — Two people were shot while they were inside a business Thursday evening on Chicago's South Side, according to police.A man, 38, and a woman, 48, were shot around 5:20 p.m. in the 700 block of East 79th Street, near South Cottage Grove Avenue. CPD officer Danny Golden files lawsuit against now-closed Beverly bar The man was shot multiple times and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition, according to the Chicago Police Department.The woman was shot in the back and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, according to police. Police haven't said if any arrests have been made.

Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash case: Neurologists, Sanderson's daughter take stand on third day

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

PARK CITY, Utah (KTVX) — The lawsuit between a Utah man, Terry Sanderson, and actress Gwyneth Paltrow entered day three on Thursday. Sanderson is suing Paltrow for over $300,000 and accuses the "Royal Tenenbaums" actress of severely injuring him in a 2016 collision at Deer Valley Resort. Sanderson claims Paltrow was skiing recklessly, but Paltrow says it was Sanderson who caused the crash. She's countersuing him for $1 and the reimbursement of her attorney fees.On Thursday, the jury heard the testimony from Sanderson's daughter, Polly Sanderson Grasham, a neuropsychologist who helped Sanderson, and a bioengineer who reviewed Sanderson's injuries.Missing GoPro footage?Gwyneth Paltrow's attorneys asked Sanderson's daughter about missing GoPro camera footage that they called “the most important piece of evidence" at trial Thursday.Steve Owens, Paltrow's attorney, asked Grasham about emails exchanged with her father about the mysterious footage and the possibility that the lawsuit was f...

Georgetown charter school parents ask for crosswalk after construction near school

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) — A charter school in Georgetown said it is working with city and county leaders to make crossing the street safer for its students after recent construction nearby changed traffic patterns.Gateway College Preparatory School is right next to the intersection of Westinghouse Road and Higgins Road.Construction on the part of Westinghouse Road that runs directly in front of the school wrapped up this week.Williamson County is currently widening parts of the road through 2024 to accommodate more cars.Adam Price with Gateway said the widening project has made it much easier for commuters to avoid getting caught in the school's drop off and pick up line.The school now has it's own turning lane, before parents waiting to drop off had to wait on Westinghouse Road itself - further backing up traffic.Another change made to the intersection included making it thru-traffic only.Price said before the recent changes a stop sign was in place which slowed cars down before t...

NCAA men’s hockey: St. Cloud State blanks Minnesota State to advance

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

FARGO — The St. Cloud State men’s hockey team was opportunistic, got great goaltending and won the special teams battle.It all added up to a 4-0 win for the Huskies over Minnesota State Mankato in the NCAA Fargo Regional semifinals on Friday at Scheels Arena. Senior Jaxon Castor stopped 34 shots to pick up his second straight shutout.The Huskies (25-12-3) will play the winner between Minnesota (26-9-1) and Canisius (20-18-3) at 5:30 p.m. Saturday (ESPNU) for the region title and a trip to the Frozen Four.St. Cloud State took a 2-0 lead into the third period on two second-period goals.On the power play, Veeti Miettinen, a Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick, used a screen to score at 12:30 for a 1-0 lead. Graduate student center Grant Cruikshank and freshman wing Adam Ingram got the assists.The Huskies took a 2-0 lead on a good hustle play. Freshman wing Jack Rogers flipped it into the corner of the Mavericks zone, skated through a check by Akito Hirose, raced to the puck behind the...

DNR: 30 invasive carp netted in Mississippi River at Winona, the biggest single capture yet

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has announced more evidence that invasive carp continue to muscle their way upstream in the Mississippi River.On Thursday, the DNR said that a commercial fishing operation contracted by the agency had netted 30 of the fish Monday in the river’s Pool 6, near Winona.While invasive carp have previously been captured as far north as the Twin Cities, Monday’s catch is the biggest number at one time this far upstream, the DNR said.The agency said it and its partner agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, are continuing their mitigation efforts in response to the netting of the fish, which were mostly silver carp.“While there is currently no ‘silver bullet’ to prevent or eliminate invasive carp, we will continue to use a combination of proven methods and the best available information to minimize risk by targeting and removing as many fish as possible,” DNR Invasive Fish Coordina...

Nita Farahany: The creepy race to read workers’ minds

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

Modern workers increasingly find companies no longer content to consider their résumés, cover letters and job performance. More and more, employers want to evaluate their brains.Businesses are screening prospective job candidates with tech-assisted cognitive and personality tests, deploying wearable technology to monitor brain activity on the job and using artificial intelligence to make decisions about hiring, promoting and firing people. The brain is becoming the ultimate workplace sorting hat — the technological version of the magical device that distributes young wizards among Hogwarts houses in the “Harry Potter” series.Companies touting technological tools to assess applicants’ brains promise to dramatically “increase your quality of hires” by measuring the “basic building blocks of the way we think and act.” They claim their tools can even decrease bias in hiring by “relying solely on cognitive ability.”But research ...

Kiszla: Revenge of the basketball nerds. CU women don’t need five-star recruits to create March Madness.

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:55:23 GMT

BOULDER – Basketball glory was buried so deep in Colorado’s past that when Buffaloes guard Frida Formann went digging to find it, she needed to summon the intrepid nature of Lara Croft, tomb raider.“I’m a basketball nerd,” Formann told me Wednesday, when I inquired how a player who grew up in Denmark unearthed artifacts from the golden era of CU women’s basketball.She went straight to the source.“My freshman year, I did a whole interview project with coach Ceal Barry,” Formann said, while standing inside the Buffaloes’ home arena. Over her shoulder, the glorious achievements of this program’s past were righteously displayed on a banner, hanging so high in the rafters the glory could seem so distant as to be out of reach.Contrary to rumors of its demise, the CU women’s basketball program never died.But by the time Formann arrived in Boulder in 2020, the CU program had been left in the dust at the foot of the Flatirons, largely forgotten as a national powerhouse once lovingly built by...