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Cat expert explains why your cat is always acting weird

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

By Melissa Hart, special to Southern California News GroupSamantha Bell’s Hollywood apartment is a cat’s dream home, filled with elegant scratching posts, plant-festooned cat trees and tasteful baskets holding feather wands and catnip mice. Window seats allow her kitties access to fresh air.“I think about the things my cats are missing from the outdoors and adapt their indoor habitat so their needs are met,” she says.Bell is the cat expert for Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal protection organization that includes a Los Angeles-based adoption center. She creates weekly short videos addressing behavioral issues in cats and kittens, tackling everything from litter box issues to tips for how to train your feline friends out of 5 a.m. breakfast demands.More than 46.5 million people in the U.S. own at least one cat, but few of us truly understand the feline brain as well as Bell.Please demystify what’s going on inside my cat’s head.Cats live in a world of predator and prey. ...

What mobile clinics in Dollar General parking lots say about health care in rural America

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

Sarah Jane Tribble | (TNS) KFF Health NewsCLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — On a hot July morning, customers at the Dollar General along a two-lane highway northwest of Nashville didn’t seem to notice signs of the chain store’s foray into mobile health care, particularly in rural America.A woman lifted a child from the back of an SUV and walked into the store. A dog barked from a black pickup truck before its owner returned with cases of soda. Another woman checked her hair in a convertible’s rearview mirror before shopping.Each went right by a sign exclaiming “Quick, Easy Health Visits,” with an image of a mobile clinic.Just after 10 a.m., registered nurse Kimberly French arrived to work at the DocGo mobile clinic parked in the store’s lot. She checked her schedule.“We don’t have any appointments so far today, but that could change,” French said. “Last night we didn’t have any appointments and three or four people showed up all at one time.”Registered Nurse Kimberly French works 10-hour shifts ...

MLB finalizes start times for Orioles-Rangers ALDS, with Games 1, 2 and 3 in afternoon, Games 4 and 5 in evening

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

Major League Baseball on Friday finalized the start times for the American League Division Series between the Orioles and Texas Rangers.After the Orioles’ 1:03 p.m. game Saturday, a time that was set at least in part to avoid conflicting with the Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks concert at neighboring M&T Bank Stadium that night, Camden Yards will host Game 2 of the best-of-five series Sunday at 4:07 p.m.The late-afternoon start time allows Baltimore fans to watch both the Ravens’ 1 p.m. game in Pittsburgh against the Steelers and the Orioles’ playoff game.After a day off Monday, Game 3 in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday will begin at 8:03 p.m. Game 4, if needed, at the Rangers’ Globe Life Field will start at 7:07 p.m. The if-necessary Game 5 on Friday at Oriole Park will begin at 8:03 p.m.Games 1, 2, 4 and 5 will be televised on Fox Sports 1. Game 3 will be on Fox.The Orioles, the AL’s top seed with a 101-61 regular-season record, earned a bye for the...

There's a dog-friendly speakeasy hidden in this Carlsbad corn maze

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- There's a speakeasy hidden in a North County corn maze that's offering craft cocktails, beer and wine for those with the secret password. Located somewhere along the Carlsbad Strawberry Company's pumpkin patch in a corn field at 1050 Cannon Rd., this fall popup is now welcoming guests over the age of 21 to venture out and enjoy award-winning spirits. Pumpkin patches to visit around San Diego County Open every Friday and Saturday from 4-9 p.m. throughout October, this speakeasy is provisioned by Pacific Coast Spirits -- a "grain-to-glass" distillery that operates a craft bar and kitchen on South Coast Highway in Oceanside. Maze wanderers will need a nightly password for entry. Pacific Coast Spirits will be posting clues and hints on their Instagram and Facebook stories every Friday and Saturday at 11 a.m. 5 San Diego beaches for sunset bonfires Guests who can find their way to this hidden gem are welcome to bring their dogs and children under age 2. Stroller...

New Mexico congressional map that was approved by Democrats can stand, a judge says

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New congressional boundaries approved by Democrats that divided up a politically conservative oil-producing region in New Mexico don’t violate the state constitution, a judge ruled in an order published Friday. Judge Fred Van Soelen wrote that the redistricting plan enacted by Democratic state lawmakers in 2021 succeeded in substantially diluting votes of their political opponents, but that the changes fell short of “egregious” gerrymandering.“Because ‘entrenchment’ is the touchstone of an egregious partisan gerrymander which the New Mexico Constitution prohibits, the court finds that the congressional redistricting map enacted under Senate Bill 1 does not violate the plaintiff’s equal protection rights,” the judge wrote.An attorney for the state Republican Party indicated that the decision will be appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. A final decision could influence which party represents a congressional swing district along the U.S. border with Mex...

Colorado funeral home owner where 115 decaying bodies found tried to conceal improper storage

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

CAÑON CITY, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner where 115 decaying bodies were found tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses and claimed he was doing taxidermy, according to a suspension letter sent to him by state regulators.The facility in the small Colorado town of Penrose had also been unregistered for 10 months after the owner for Return to Nature Funeral Home let it expire in November 2022.On Wednesday – the day after an “abhorrent smell” from the facility was reported, launching the investigation – owner Jon Hallford spoke by phone with a state regulator. Hallford acknowledged that he had a “problem” at the property. The document doesn’t explain what he meant.The document also doesn’t explain what Hallford was referring to with this taxidermy claim or exactly how he tried to conceal the improper storage of human remains.Hallford nor anyone else has been arrested or charged yet in relation to what authorities on Friday called a “disturbing discovery.” THI...

18 migrants killed, and 29 injured in a bus crash in southern Mexico

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least 18 migrants from Venezuela and Peru died early Friday in a bus crash in southern Mexico, authorities said.Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said the dead include two women and three children, and that 29 people were injured. There was no immediate information on their condition.Photos distributed by the institute showed the bus rolled over onto its side on a curvy section of highway in the southern state of Oaxaca. The cause of the crash on the town of San Pablo Huitzo, near the border with the neighboring state of Puebla, is under investigation.The institute said a total of 55 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, were aboard the vehicle.It was the latest in a series of migrant deaths in Mexico amid a surge in migrants traveling toward the U.S. border. Because migration agents often raid regular buses, migrants and smugglers often seek out risky forms of transportation, like unregulated buses, trains or freight trucks.Last week, 10 Cuban migrants ...

Migrating Venezuelans undeterred by US plan to resume deportation flights

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

LAJAS BLANCAS, Panama (AP) — At the edge of Panama’s Darien jungle Friday, Venezuelans made up the majority of migrants waiting for buses to speed them across the country to Costa Rica, where they planned to continue moving north.Annie Carrillo, a 38-year-old Venezuelan migrant traveling with her Colombian husband and another friend, said they had crossed the dense, lawless jungle from Colombia in three days after paying $350 each to a guide. When she heard about the U.S. government’s plan to restart deportation flights to Venezuela in the coming days, Carrillo said it was discouraging.“No one emigrates from their country because they want to. One migrates because you have basic needs and there isn’t support in your native country,” she said, starting to cry. The U.S. government hopes the threat of deportation will be enough to make Venezuelans reconsider trying to enter the United States illegally and opt instead for the online appointment system to make asylum claims or other lega...

NY appeals court declines to halt Trump’s civil fraud trial while he contests a pretrial ruling

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals judge declined Friday to halt Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, rebuffing the former president’s request to postpone it while he fights a pretrial ruling that could strip him of control of such assets as Trump Tower.The appellate judge agreed that control over the holdings will stay as-is for now. Friday’s decision came five days into the closely watched trial, which drew Trump to the courthouse to observe — and fulminate — for days this week. Trump’s lawyers had asked the state’s intermediate appellate court to suspend the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit and prevent Judge Arthur Engoron from enforcing his ruling of last week, which revokes the Republican frontrunner’s business licenses and puts a court-appointed receiver in charge of his companies.“This is a massive error. It is irreparable,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise told an appeals judge Friday afternoon. Kise argued that the ruling will make def...

Sam Bankman-Fried stole customer funds from the beginning of FTX, exchange’s co-founder tells jury

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:22 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Sam Bankman-Fried authorized the illegal use of FTX customers’ funds and assets to plug financial gaps at an affiliated hedge fund from the exchange’s earliest days, FTX’s co-founder Gary Wang told a New York jury on Friday, as prosecutors pressed their case that Bankman-Fried was the mastermind behind one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history. Eventually, the losses at the hedge fund, Alameda Research, became so large that there was no way to hide them any longer, Wang said in his second day of testimony. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried, 31, stole billions of dollars from investors and customers in order to fund a lavish lifestyle in The Bahamas and buy the influence of politicians, celebrities and the public. Wang was FTX’s chief technology officer and is part of what has been referred to as the “inner circle” of FTX executives who have agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried in exchange for leniency in their own criminal cases. Wang h...