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A beginner’s guide to birdwatching

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

So you want to try birdwatching, or as some of us call it, birding.Something about our feathered friends has grabbed your attention. A great-horned owl, perhaps, hooting outside your window after dusk. Or an American robin slurping worms from your lawn. Maybe you spied a group of birdwatchers at the park across the street, hot on the trail of a rare warbler and, well, you want in on the action.Could be you simply overheard the ongoing debate of birb, borb or floof. Translation: which bird is cute, which bird is round, which bird is fluffy? You will have opinions on this – I know I do.Or maybe you’ve had a “spark bird,” a creature so magnificent, it sparked your interest in birding.BirdNote, a popular radio show, provides wonderful two-minute stories on how birds capture our imaginations. When I was on the show, I told interviewer Mark Bramhill my spark bird was a Vermillion Flycatcher, a glorious ruby. It’s a shining jewel of plumage and attitude. This bird is a show-off. Within a f...

The time is now and the price is right to visit El Salvador

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

Until recently, it never occurred to me to go to El Salvador. I’d been to Guatemala and Costa Rica and loved both of them. But somehow this never translated into a longing to visit their neighbor.There are two reasons for this — El Salvador has little media presence, so it seldom crosses most travelers’ minds, unless they have family ties or are surfers seeking the country’s world class surf breaks.Also, I’m old enough to remember the bloody 20-year-long civil war that ended in 1992, and that was always the first thing that came to mind on the rare occasion when I gave any thought to it.But let me tell you, I think differently now. My friend Cheryl and I flew there for a long weekend, after we scored incredibly cheap airfares on Avianca airlines.I bought the plane tickets knowing nothing about the country, except that they have volcanoes there and it’s hot. But I’ll go anywhere as long as the flight is cheap. And, as I began to research where we might go, I began to get excited.Casc...

Healey uses $5M in federal cash to fund overnight shelters as system nears capacity

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

A local nonprofit organization will take $5 million in federal dollars from the Healey administration to set up overnight shelter sites for families and pregnant people just as Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system is expected to reach capacity this week.But exactly when and where overnight shelter sites will house families is unclear, with Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, the state’s emergency assistance director, telling reporters Tuesday the funds will be shuttled to community-based organizations through a grant program that United Way of Massachusetts Bay will set up “later this week.”United Way President and CEO Bob Giannino said once resources are made available the organization “will begin the process of reaching out and finding providers” to set up short-term shelters for families who find themselves on a state-run waiting list for emergency shelter placement.“We’ve already begun to discuss and source potential partners as this program has been coming together. It’s certai...

What experts say parents should know before using school rating websites like Niche, GreatSchools

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

Kristen Taketa | The San Diego Union-TribuneFall is school choice season for families looking to get into limited-admission magnet or choice public schools and private schools for next year.Tens of millions of families nationwide have looked to school rating websites like GreatSchools and Niche for help in deciding where to enroll their children, as well as where to buy a home.But experts have for years warned that these ratings say less about how well the schools are serving students and more about who enrolls there. The ratings provide a limited picture of school quality and favor schools in neighborhoods that are wealthy and disproportionately White, while giving mostly poorer ratings to schools in neighborhoods that are low-income and are primarily Latino and Black, experts say.That’s largely because the ratings rely on data that, while easily accessible, correlate heavily with socioeconomic and race factors, such as standardized test scores.Niche, one website that profits...

The Pie Hole co-founder Rebecca Grasley talks pies and Thanksgiving

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

Rebecca “Becky” Grasley was a lifelong pie baker who spent her nursing career in rural Pennsylvania. She had dreamed of opening a pie shop while she was raising her kids, but she never thought she’d do it, let alone launch a California pie empire.Today, the Pie Hole has expanded far beyond its humble beginnings in Los Angeles’ Arts District to retail locations across Southern California and franchises in Japan and Saudi Arabia. You can get her pies and signature “pie holes” via GoldBelly.com and now at Whole Foods markets across the nation.We caught up with this pie phenom recently to talk about her story, her new cookbook — “Pie is Messy” (Ten Speed Press, $28) and how to bake a perfect Thanksgiving pie. Lemon-Pear, perhaps, or Chocolate.Q. Why pie?A. I grew up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania and still live there. I reinvented myself through the years probably 50 times. When my kids were growing up, we talked about having a pie shop. They were little, and I loved to bake pie....

New patient safety report gives 14 San Diego-area hospitals top marks

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

SAN DIEGO — More than a dozen hospitals in San Diego County earned top marks in a new study on patient safety that looked to analyze how health care centers have improved post-pandemic.On Monday, patient safety advocacy non-profit the Leapfrog Group released their fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grades, a bi-annual report that assigns a letter grade to thousands of hospitals across the country for how well they prevent medical errors, accidents and infections.The grades in the fall report are the first to reflect how hospitals are performing post-pandemic, according to the non-profit. Local health experts urge pregnant woman to get RSV vaccine Of the over 280 hospitals measured in California, 87 earned "A" grades in the report — 14 of which were San Diego-area hospitals. Those that received the highest grade represented the cities of San Diego, Chula Vista, Encinitas, Escondido, La Jolla, National City, Poway and La Mesa:Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical CenterKaiser Permanente Zion M...

13-year-old girl who 'ditches' school prompts search in North County

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County Sheriff's deputies launched a search for a missing 13-year-old girl who last seen near a North County school on Tuesday. She has since been found safe, the department confirmed.According to SDSO, the young girl was last seen just before 10 a.m. near San Elijo Middle School at 1600 Schoolhouse Road. The ASTREA helicopter was launched to assist in the search for the girl, SDSO said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Over 100 firearms collected at North County gun safety event: SDSO At 11:50 p.m., authorities told FOX 5 her disappearance was not believed to have been an abduction.A spokesperson for the San Marcos Unified School District (SMUSD) said that the girl's friends reported her missing to a "trusted adult" at the middle school, because they noticed she was nowhere to be found after seeing her dropped off at school this morning.SMUSD contacted SDSO to search for the student, who school officials later determined voluntarily left the campus ...

President Joe Biden to host Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the White House Nov. 13

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will host Joko Widodo, the president of Indonesia, for a meeting at the White House on Nov. 13.The two leaders will discuss, among other issues, continuing the clean energy transition, advancing economic prosperity, and promoting peace and stability in the region, the White House said Tuesday.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said Biden will “reaffirm the United States’ commitment to deepening our nearly 75-year-long partnership between the world’s second and third largest democracies.”The meeting with Widodo at the White House comes just before Biden travels to San Francisco later in the week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Biden and Widodo also spoke at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi in September.Biden was in Indonesia last November, when the country hosted that year’s G-20 summit. The Associated Press

Loblaw raises the affordability alarm as grocery code of conduct nears completion

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

As the grocery code of conduct nears completion, the Canadian industry’s biggest player is raising concerns the guidelines could add fuel to the food inflation fire.Loblaw Companies Ltd. said it’s worried the code could “raise food prices for Canadians by more than $1 billion” in a letter sent to members of both the steering committee developing the code and the industry sub-committee on Nov. 1, and obtained by The Canadian Press. The grocer cannot endorse the code in its current form, wrote chief financial officer Richard Dufresne in the letter, requesting a special meeting of the industry sub-committee to address Loblaw’s concerns.In a statement, Loblaw spokeswoman Catherine Thomas said the draft code has “a number of challenges,” which the grocer believes could risk product availability and increasing food prices. The Loblaw statement also mentioned the potential “$1 billion in costs,” which Thomas said refers to extra costs for Lob...

House advances effort to censure Rashida Tlaib over her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:24:56 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is headed for a showdown vote Wednesday on whether to punish Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — the only Palestinian American in Congress — for her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.A vote on whether to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House, advanced Tuesday in a procedural vote. Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia proposed the censure resolution in response to what he calls Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. “It’s a shame my colleagues are more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives, as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 10,000,” Tlaib said in a statement. “Many of them have shown me that Palestinian lives simply do not matter to them, but I still do not police their rhetoric or actions.” The censure push sets the stage for a dramatic vote on the House floor amid the political tensions over the ongoing, deadly Israel-Hamas war. While the majority of both parties have historically s...