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IRS trying to protect workers to deter personal threats

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an effort to deter threats aimed at IRS employees, the agency said Thursday it will start limiting workers’ personal identifying information on communications with taxpayers.The change begins next month.The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration said in a report this week that it was “concerned that taxpayers and anti-government or anti-tax groups with malevolent intent may use the Internet or social media to track down and identify IRS employees, their families, their homes, and personal information to threaten, intimidate, or locate them for physical violence.”The IRS said it will remove workers’ first names from communications, leaving their last names and respective Mr., Ms., or a gender-neutral title. Phone numbers will still be included in communications.The decision comes as the agency has received increased attention after the climate, health care and tax legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden last year included $80 bi...

Loneliness has hit ‘crisis’ levels in the US. How do we get out of it?

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

Paloma Chavez | The Charlotte ObserverThere is a growing epidemic the country needs to worry about, and it’s only going to get worse if we don’t take action, the U.S. surgeon general says.Loneliness and isolation are on the rise in the U.S., and it’s quickly turning into a crisis — with roughly half of adults saying they’ve recently experienced loneliness, according to Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy’s 2023 advisory.“When I first took office as Surgeon General in 2014, I didn’t view loneliness as a public health concern,” he said in his advisory.It wasn’t until he traveled across the country to hear Americans share their stories of feeling “isolated, invisible, and insignificant” that he realized “social disconnection was far more common than” he “had realized.”The loneliness ‘crisis’Though the COVID-19 pandemic brought out feelings of isolation and loneliness in many, they were already on the rise.The two make up this national issue of disconnectedness, and though they are rela...

A sense of desperation grows amid final hours of Title 42

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

SAN DEIGO -- The conditions are becoming more unbearable for many migrants are waiting for Title 42 to expire. There are still hundreds of people waiting behind the southern border wall and many of them are families.People are sitting in groups according to the color wristband that they were given by U.S. Border Patrol. The color is supposed to help to determine what day they arrived and the order that they will be processed. San Diego County addresses looming impacts as end of Title 42 nears A sense of desperation is growing as the conditions are becoming more difficult. Night after night, migrants are having to sleep wrapped in blankets on the dirt and in the cold.You can hear children constantly crying during the day. There is only one porta potty for the hundreds who are there waiting.“Have you ever seen anything like this?" asked migrant advocate Pedro Rios, the program director of the American Friends Service Committee. "I have not ever seen anything like...

New fighting kills 2 Palestinian militant commanders, elderly man in Israel as Egypt pushes truce

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip killed two militant commanders on Thursday, while a 70-year-old man was killed by Palestinian rocket fire in the first fatality inside Israel amid the current wave of fighting. The continuing bloodshed, which has left 29 Palestinians dead, came despite Egyptian efforts to broker a cease-fire.It has been the worst bout of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza in months, with at least 10 civilians — mostly women and children — among the dead. The conflagration, now in its third day, comes at a time of soaring tensions and spiking violence over the past year in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian militants launched unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel throughout the day. One rocket struck an apartment block in the central Israeli city of Rehovot, killing a 70-year-old man, the MADA rescue service said. It said four others were moderately wounded.Earlier Thursday, Israeli military pressed ahead with...

What did Title 42 do, anyway? A look at US immigration policies and how they’re changing

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is putting new restrictions into place at its southern border to try to to stop migrants from crossing illegally and encourage them instead to apply for asylum online through a new process. The changes come with the end of coronavirus restrictions on asylum that have allowed the U.S. to quickly turn back migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border for the last three years. Those restrictions are known as Title 42, because the authority comes from Title 42 of a 1944 public health law that allows curbs on migration in the name of protecting public health. Disinformation is swirling and confusion is setting in during the transition. A look at the new rules (and the old ones):WHAT IS TITLE 42 AND WHAT DID IT DO? Title 42 is the name of an emergency health authority. It’s a holdover from the Trump administration and it began in March 2020. The authority allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants who came to the U.S.-Mexico border on the grounds of preventing the sprea...

Review: ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ builds on beloved predecessor

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

Before Nintendo introduced its successful Switch gaming console in 2017, the video game company made a bold move by making huge changes to one of its most beloved franchises.“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” released as a launch title for the Switch, eschewed the well-established conventions of the long-running series.Gone were the familiar massive dungeons series hero Link would explore in order to get the item or weapon needed to access the next part of the game world. “Breath of the Wild” introduced a sprawling open world that could be explored at the player’s pace.The resulting game was a smash hit. “Breath of the Wild” garnered lavish praise from reviewers, won several game-of-the-year awards and was a system-seller for the Switch. Nintendo says 29 million units of the game have been sold as of December 2022.Six years later, Nintendo is set to release the long-awaited next game in the Zelda series. “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” refines and expands o...

Canadians to receive one-time grocery rebate payments in July

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

The Department of Finance says the grocery rebate the Liberals promised in this year’s federal budget will be extended to eligible Canadians on July 5.That confirmation comes after Parliament passed legislation on the measure this week.The government has billed the one-time payment as targeted inflation relief for some 11 million low- and modest-income households.It repeats the temporary boost to the GST rebate that the government offered last year to address growing cost-of-living concerns.Eligible families of four will receive up to $467 by direct deposit or cheque from the Canada Revenue Agency, while single people without children will get up to $234 and seniors will see a rebate of up to $225.The new law also enshrines a $2-billion top-up to the federal health transfer that seeks to reduce backlogs and wait times and support pediatric hospitals and emergency rooms.

CNN faces backlash over chaotic Trump town hall event

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN is facing a backlash over its town hall featuring former President Donald Trump, an event that swiftly turned chaotic in a stark display of the tightrope facing journalists covering a leading 2024 Republican candidate who refuses to play by the rules.The town hall Wednesday was the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN defended its decision to hold it as a chance to put Trump in front of a wider audience, outside of the conservative media bubble he has largely kept to since early in his presidency.Critics said the event, which was staged in front of Republicans and unaffiliated voters who were expected to vote in the GOP primary, instead turned into a Trump campaign rally that produced little actual news and allowed Trump to repeat longstanding falsehoods while dodging difficult questionsTom Jones, a senior writer at the media research institute Poynter, said he had favored the idea of CNN holding the town hall at St. Anselm Coll...

Some scenes from the US-Mexico border, where immigration rules are set to change

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

From El Paso and Ciudad Juárez to San Diego and Tijuana, migrants were massing Thursday along some sections of the U.S.-Mexico border in a last attempt to cross into the United States in the hours before the pandemic-era health rule known as Title 42 ends.Migrants who have traveled from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Central American fear that it could be harder for them to stay on U.S. soil once the restrictions are lifted.Here are some of the scenes playing out along the 1,950 mile (3,140 km) international boundary:___María José Durán, a 24-year-old student from Venezuela, was on the verge of tears as she sat on a riverbank in Matamoros, Mexico.Mexican immigration officials were trying to move migrants back to an improvised camp and away from a spot where they could wade across the Rio Grande.Durán said she dropped out of college when her parents could no longer afford it and set out for the U.S. with a group of friends and relatives. They crossed the treacherous Darien Ga...

US approves $8.5 billion sale of Chinook helicopters to Germany

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:11:52 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday approved an $8.5 billion sale of Chinook helicopters to NATO ally Germany. The approval comes as the war in Ukraine continues to tax the military stocks of Western countries but is not directly related to the conflict. The State Department said it had notified Congress that the U.S. would sell Germany 60 Chinooks along with engines and associated spare parts, including missile warning systems. The Chinook is the Army’s key heavy-lift helicopter, used to transport troops and equipment, and was a familiar sight in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.The sale is meant to boost Germany’s heavy lift military capability and “deter regional threats,” the department said. The helicopters are not intended to be used in Ukraine. “This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of a NATO ally which is an important force for political and economic stability in Europe,” it sai...