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Montgomery Co. high school student to serve as county council member — for a day

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

Folashade Epebinu normally has very full days.The teenager is not only a Seneca Valley High School senior, but she’s also dual-enrolled at Montgomery College, taking classes in general engineering.Now, she’s adding another item to her agenda: she’s serving as a Montgomery County Council member — for a day.Epebinu won the annual contest with her video submission on an issue she cares about: affordable child care.In her video submission, she walked the halls of Seneca Valley High School and talked about a comment she overheard from a classmate who would have to miss classes to stay home and take care of their younger siblings.“This wasn’t the first time that they had to leave class or even miss a school day to go watch their younger siblings for their parents,” Epebinu said in the video. “Even I had to leave school on occasion to help my family to watch my younger siblings to offset the price of day care.”She said it’s an issue tha...

Deposit not returned over application format

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

A woman in South Florida paid a deposit and submitted the documents to rent an apartment. But the manager said she didn’t send the, in the proper format and she won’t get her money back. It’s why she called Help Me Howard with Patrick Fraser.Talk about loving to work. Deborah has a full time job.Deborah Knight: “And I work a 40 hour a week job.”She also has a second job, running her online clothing store.Deborah Knight: “I like dealing with people.”And when the weekend rolls around, she has a third job; cooking and cateringDeborah Knight: “I have a construction site, I have a nursing home, and I sell them food on weekends.”Obviously, she doesn’t have much spare time, especially for an apartment complex that has some of her money.Deborah Knight: “A two bedroom became available at the end of September.”Deborah was looking for a new rental so she filled out the application, paid the $300 fee and sent in bank statem...

Book the new presidential suite with private cabana at Intercontinental Hotel Miami

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

Time to start living the suite life, at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami.We all know the building and maybe you have already experienced its jaw-dropping view of the bay.But how about its new poolside cabanas?Deco’s Alex Miranda has more.The Intercontinental says they’re brand new cabanas are the hottest spots north of Havana.Anyway, I had the dreadful task of investigating their new poolside offerings and renovated auites. You heard me.The Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami…Rep: “We call ourselves an iconic hotel. A lot of people from Miami call us the ‘Inter Miami.'”Has just been renovated for its 40th anniversary, with…Rep: “More than $40 million just on the guest rooms alone.”Yeah… Alone, which means there’s more. Alex Miranda: “I’ll have the oceanview terrace cabana, please. All day. And some ice cream. Plus cookies. And a cake.”Where there once was a restaurant, now sit seven, priva...

Mother accused of accidentally striking son with car after trying to break up fight at school in Miami taken into custody

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

A mother was driven to extremes after, police said, she accidentally struck her son while trying to hit another juvenile after a fight broke out a South Florida school. And the danger didn’t end there.According to City of Miami Police, the woman’s 12-year-old son came home from school and told her that he lost his bookbag. The mother sent her son back to the school, Jesse J. McCrary, Jr. Elementary, located at 514 NW 77th St., to go look for it. While at the school, police said, the 12-year-old got into a fight with another juvenile. He then called his mom to let her know what happened. The mother arrived at the school and attempted to strike the other juvenile with her vehicle to break up the fight, but ended up hitting her own son. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital with a laceration to his leg.The other juvenile was not injured. The second juvenile’s mother was also at the school, picked him up and drove him home. Police said that instead of driving...

Hulu releases ‘Faraway Downs’ series, extension of Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 film ‘Australia’

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

What’s old is new again for Baz Luhrmann.In an era of reboots and re-launches, the director is trying something different with one of his biggest films.Just like Thanksgiving leftovers, Baz Luhrmann is making a new dish from his 2008 movie “Australia.”Baz Luhrmann: “I mean, we shot two and a half million feet of footage.”And that footage is now the new Hulu series “Faraway Downs.”Nicole Kidman (As “Lady Sarah Ashley”): “My husband was killed in a faraway land, this place is so barren I can’t understand what he would have seen out here, there she is faraway downs.”It all came together when someone got sick on the set of “Elvis.”Baz Luhrmann: “Tom Hanks gets COVID, quite famously. And we get shut down, and I’m like, well, what am I gonna do?”Nicole Kidman (As “Lady Sarah Ashley”): “Get off my property.”Uh-oh…Nicole Kidman means business as she tries to pr...

Germany’s far-right predicament — to ban or not

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

James Kirchick is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He is the author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age.”Germany is currently confronting one of the gravest challenges to its democracy since the Nazi regime — and its political establishment thinks the solution might be to ban the country’s second most popular political party.  “We all have it in our hands to put those who despise our democracy in their place,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier thundered in an August speech commemorating the 75th anniversary of Germany’s postwar constitution.Steinmeier didn’t name who exactly the despisers were, nor did he state what must be done to “put them in their place.” But there was no ambiguity in his remarks. The very next day, a Der Spiegel editorial entitled “Ban the Enemies of the Constitution!” called upon the country’s highest court to declare the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party unconstitution...

James Cleverly was meant to heal the Tory rift on immigration. It isn’t working

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

LONDON — When Rishi Suank reshuffled his Cabinet this month, he hoped to calm his party’s jitters over immigration.The U.K. prime minister’s grand plan was to deploy the charming James Cleverly as his new Home Secretary, replacing the divisive Suella Braverman with another Brexiteer — but one who has been instrumental in fostering more cordial relations with European capitals.“He was a Leaver himself, and a big Boris [Johnson] supporter, and he is very collegiate,” explained one U.K. government official closely involved in the reshuffle, in the days after Cleverly’s appointment.The hope in No. 10 was that as an amiable Brexiteer from the center-right, Cleverly — the MP for Braintree — would calm both sides of the warring Conservative party as the government tries to press ahead with its flagship Rwanda policy to combat undocumented migration. But the policy was ruled unlawful by the U.K. Supreme Court within days of his appointment and the government is still scra...

Mary Lou McDonald

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

Since assuming the presidency of Sinn Féin in 2018, Mary Lou McDonald has been shaking off the shackles of history. With Ireland due an election by 2025 — potentially as early as the fall of 2024 — the 54-year-old leader of the Irish republican party many still associate with terrorism and the Troubles is far ahead in the polls, making her the country’s likely next taoiseach. A successful bid for the country’s top job would dramatically change the narrative around McDonald’s greatest ambition: Irish reunification.McDonald has managed to walk a delicate path during her time at the Sinn Féin helm, attempting to distance her party from the violence of the past while simultaneously convincing voters it’s now a serious political contender in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Her strategy has been working. Following Ireland’s last election, in 2020, McDonald became leader of the opposition, dramatically upending the status quo in which center-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ...

Björn Höcke

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long lacked a charismatic leader such as Giorgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen, capable of capturing a broader supporter base and bringing it closer to real power. That could change with Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the state of Thuringia and one of the party’s most extreme figures, whose views on race and migration recall Nazi and fascist theories of the 1930s. The hold the 51-year-old former history teacher has on his base is significant. His motto: “The EU must die for the true Europe to live.”Once confined to the margins, the AfD is becoming acceptable to significantly more German voters — sending shock waves through the political establishment. Nationally, the party is polling second with 21 percent of the vote — 5 points ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD. In the states of the former East Germany, it’s on track to take first place in elections next year in Saxony, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Höcke’s...

Alexei Navalny

Published Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:01:05 GMT

Alexei Navalny has kept the dissident dream alive, even as he himself has withered away in a remote Russian prison. Despite President Vladimir Putin’s best efforts to threaten, poison and isolate the 47-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption activist — or rather, because of them — Navalny continues to provide inspiration and provoke dissent, shining a spotlight on the dictator’s brutal treatment of his enemies.Described by some as the Nelson Mandela of Russia, Navalny is effectively its only opposition leader. While his origins in nationalist politics — and his past stance on Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — make him a problematic hero for progressive Russians, the evolution of his political positions has seen many prominent former critics fall into line behind him. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Navalny’s investigative videos exposed millions of Russians to their president’s corruption and hypocrisy, helping to draw tens of thousands to the streets to protest Putin...