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Cat’s test results could just be a fluke

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

Dear Dr. John,My husband and I own three cats that are all in good health. Recently they had their annual exams and two were determined to need dental cleanings and an extraction or two. Bloodwork was done to assess their suitability for anesthesia, and it turned out that one of the cats had a high total bilirubin. What is bilirubin and what does the high value mean? I asked my vet, and he talked about doing something called bile acids and some other diagnostic tests if a recheck in a few weeks’ time did not show a normalization of the increased value. My vet said that all the other bloodwork seemed relatively normal and since my cat showed no sign of being jaundiced then it may have been a fluke finding. Should I be concerned? S.M.Dear S.M.,Bilirubin is something that the body makes upon the breakdown or destruction of red blood cells. Red blood cells in cats have a life of about two to three months before they stop functioning and are broken down for elimination by the body as a c...

Bel Powley illuminates story of Holocaust hero in ‘A Small Light’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

Bel Powley “didn’t know anything” when she was cast as Dutch Resistance heroine Miep Gies in “A Small Light,” the new 6-episode NatGeo and Disney + series.In 1942 Amsterdam when the Nazis took began rounding up Jews to send to death camps, Otto Frank’s family went into hiding in a hidden attic above his business they called the Annex.  Their story became known after the war when Otto, the family’s sole survivor after they were discovered, published his daughter’s “The Diary of Anne Frank.”Anne’s diary was found and saved by Miep Gies (pronounced Meep Geez) who had worked for Otto and kept them fed when they hid in the Annex. If discovered, she would have been executed on the spot.“Obviously I had read the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ when I was younger, kind of educationally,” Powley said in a Zoom interview. “And I know a lot about this part of history. But I didn’t really know anything about Miep Gies. So I had a lot of learning to do.“And the more I discovered what she accom...

King: From plumbers to mechanics, U.S. gasping for skilled workers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

There is a terrible shortage of people who fix things. I am thinking of electricians, plumbers, glaziers, auto mechanics and many more skilled workers who keep life livable and society running.It is frustrating if you can’t get a plumber when you need one. But the skilled worker shortage has much more significant consequences than the inconvenience to the homeowner. The very rate of national progress on many fronts is being affected.More housing is desperately needed, but architects tell me some new construction isn’t happening because of the skilled worker shortage. Projects are being shelved.The problem in electric utilities is critical — and interesting because the utilities offer excellent pay, retirement and healthcare, and still, they are falling short of recruits. They are aware that many of their workers will be retiring in the next several years, adding to the problem.Auto dealerships are scrounging for mechanics, now euphemistically called “technicians.” Skilled workers ar...

Active Xavier wants to be a construction worker

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

Xavier is a charming teen boy.  Xavier has a very curious and kind personality. His many interests include art, electronics, LEGOs or anything having to do with building, SpongeBob and Disney movies. Xavier loves spending time outdoors, especially if that means shooting hoops at a local basketball court, swimming, building sandcastles, riding his bike, or playing “Dr. Dodge.” His dream job is to be a construction worker.Xavier is described as very caring, a hard worker who is eager to succeed, with a great sense of humor. When you first meet Xavier, there is a good chance he will share a smile and make you laugh.Xavier loves learning, especially if it’s interactive. He’s a very inquisitive child who is very happy to have conversations and ask questions about how different things work. Xavier is described as very bright academically.Xavier holds great hopes about growing up in a loving family with similar interests. He has remained very patient and open-minded about the k...

Western Mass. band High Tea serves up indie-folk-roots

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

High Tea went looking for a way to represent the themes of new album “The Wick and The Flame” that felt artistic and off kilter. The folk-roots-indie duo decided to set a dollhouse ablaze.“We ended up lighting this dollhouse on fire for the cover art,” singer-guitarist Isabella DeHerdt told the Herald. “But before we lit it on fire, we decorated it. We put fake moss on it. We covered it in glitter. We painted it. We put pinecones on it. We put in TLC before burning it down.”“It felt like an apt metaphor for creation and music and life,” DeHerdt added. “You create something and then you have to let it go.”“The Wick and The Flame” starts off with a tender, introspective tune about staring into the void. The Western Mass-based duo’s second LP rolls on with angry blues stomps and furious love songs and gentle ballads of survival. So, yeah, creation and music and life feels about right.DeHerdt and singer-percussionist Isaac Eliot struck up a friendship at a Berklee College of Music summe...

Dear Abby: Fiance’s shocking reveal puts wedding on hold

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

Dear Abby: My daughter and her fiance are intelligent, successful professionals in their early 30s. Her fiance just informed her he was a sperm donor for a friend and his wife a few years ago, resulting in two biological children with one more on the way.He never mentioned this to my daughter before. She suspected that something wasn’t right because he would hide his phone (he keeps the children’s pictures on it), and she finally confronted him last week.He bonded with the children during the first year of their lives with frequent visits, then tapered off because the friends had become uncomfortable with his being around (the children both closely resemble him).Her fiance says he hasn’t seen the children since my daughter began dating him two years ago. He says he tried to put the situation behind him, but confessed that he misses them and didn’t realize he would feel this way at the time he donated. Neither he nor the children’s parents have legal doc...

'Like Tatis right now': High school students play baseball series at Petco Park

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- While the Padres took to Mexico City, several local high school baseball teams got the chance to play a game in Petco Park Saturday afternoon.As part of the annual CIF High School Baseball series in Petco Park, Carlsbad High School took on La Costa Canyon in the last of seven student games that took place this weekend."I've been in this park many times, but I've never seen a high school team play here," one LCC student, Emerson Ostanik, told FOX 5. "It's kind of cool."The series kicked off Friday with three match-ups: Valhalla vs. West Hills, Mater Dei Catholic vs. San Ysidro, and Imperial vs. Brawley.Two schools, La Jolla Country Day and Maranatha Christian, took to the field the day prior, however, that game as not part of the Padres-sponsored series. Padres, Giants to play two-game series in Mexico City Saturday marked the final day of the High School Baseball Series at San Diego's downtown stadium. Before CHS and LCC, Kearny and Foothills Christian took on Mountai...

Battle for late Johnny Winter’s music to play out in court

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Nearly nine years after Johnny Winter’s death, a battle for control of the legendary blues guitarist’s music is being fought in court with allegations of theft and greed flying back and forth.The legal fight pits Winter’s former personal manager and bandmate, Paul Nelson, against the family of the bluesman’s late wife, Susan, who died in 2019.Winter’s in-laws say Nelson and his wife improperly took more than $1.5 million from Winter’s music business, including auctioning off some of the late musician’s guitars.Nelson and his wife have countersued, saying Susan Winter’s siblings swooped in when she was medicated and dying of cancer and tricked her into giving them control of Winter’s music, stripping away Nelson’s rights as the beneficiary of Susan’s Winter’s estate.The case was scheduled to go to trial in a Connecticut court in April, but was rescheduled for September. At stake is ownership of Winter’s music catalogue, proceeds from rec...

150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nation’s worst

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

DIXON, Ill. (AP) — Gertie Wadsworth was in the arms of her grandmother that bright day when sunshine dissolved distasteful memories of a long, brutal winter. Christan Goble held the 3 1/2-year-old girl in a crowd of more than 200 on the bridge over the Rock River. After a procession down Galena Avenue from the Baptist Church on May 4, 1873, the Rev. J.H. Pratt began baptizing parishioners in the brisk, rapid current. Then, with a sharp crack and a crescendo of shrieking spectators loaded on the pedestrian walkway in front of towering trusses, the 4-year-old bridge twisted, splintered and rolled over. Forty-six people perished, many immured by the unrelenting gridiron just below the water’s surface. Along with 56 injuries, the Truesdell bridge tragedy, 150 years ago Thursday, remains the worst vehicular-bridge disaster in American history. “It’s not as though the bridge just collapsed and went straight down,” says Tom Wadsworth, 70, a retired magazine editor and expert on...

Opposition bloc seeks to oust Paraguay’s long-ruling party

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:00:32 GMT

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — A broad-based opposition coalition in Paraguay is seeking to unseat South America’s longest-governing party Sunday in elections focused on corruption, the economy, health care and even ties with Taiwan. The Colorado Party has governed Paraguay almost uninterrupted since 1947 and the landlocked nation has been practically immune to the political change and social movements that have swept the region.All this could change with Sunday’s vote, which is focused on Santiago Peña of the Colorado Party and Efraín Alegre, the candidate of the Pact for a New Paraguay coalition who is also head of the Liberal party, the second-largest political force in Congress. Paraguay doesn’t have a runoff, so whoever of the 13 candidates receives the most votes will be the next president. Voters are also casting ballots for Congress members.Analysts expect a tight contest, with the opposition fueled by anger over high levels of corruption and the deficiencies in the h...