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Von der Leyen yields to US protectionism as she heads to Washington

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

BRUSSELS — When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen crosses the Atlantic on Friday for a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, she will usher in a sea change on how Brussels thinks about trade.Von der Leyen is poised to give in to American pressure to join a newfangled steel and aluminum club in exchange for Washington dropping its threat to reimpose tariffs on imports of the metals from Europe. In their place, the U.S. and EU would erect a protective wall around both their markets in a bid to fend off China’s rise.It’s a move that will cement the political friendship between Biden and von der Leyen. But it’s one that may dismay European trade officials who have sought to uphold the rules-based global order and its guardian, the World Trade Organization. And there is unease in some EU capitals over the shift.Von der Leyen and her top aides are “in the pocket of what the U.S. wants,” said one EU diplomat of the impending strategic shift, speaking on condition of a...

D’Onta Foreman — pushed out of the running back mix early — is ready for his opportunity with the Chicago Bears

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

D’Onta Foreman has been here before — biding his time, waiting for his shot. And suddenly the opportunity arises.Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry fractured his right foot in 2021. The Carolina Panthers traded running back Christian McCaffrey in 2022. The Chicago Bears lost three running backs to injury in the same game Oct. 5 in a 40-20 win against the Washington Commanders.The first two times, Foreman felt as if he delivered for the teams that called him into action. And he’s hoping to do it again Sunday for the Bears against the Minnesota Vikings at Soldier Field.“Honestly I was prepared for that moment. I’m prepared for this moment,” Foreman said. “This is what I do. I’m calm. I’m confident. And I’ve just got to go show it. I feel like a lot of people are counting me out. I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about myself. So I’ve got to go prove something.”Foreman called it “cr...

‘Bosch: Legacy’ Season 2 starts with a bang

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

There’s no slow build as the Freevee series “Bosch: Legacy” begins its second season Friday with two incredibly intense episodes that make for one wild and wildly nerve-jangling ride.The first season ended with the discovery that a sadistic serial rapist on the loose was targeting Bosch’s daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), a rookie cop. Season 2 begins as she’s kidnapped and buried in a box with limited air. A desperate if determined Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) will move heaven and earth trying to rescue her.That unrelenting pace is why these first two episodes will be released in 180 markets as a movie.“I know some audience members were frustrated, I hope in a really good, delicious way, with our cliffhanger at the end of Season 1. So we wanted to immediately get into that,” explained Tom Bernardo, the series’ showrunner.“And do it in a way that we haven’t done before, which was treat our first two episodes structurally and dramatically as if they were a compressed story. A mo...

Lester: Businesses to lose $482M under patent proposal 

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

After years of decline, there are signs of a U.S. manufacturing rebound. Policymakers need to support this comeback, but new wide-ranging proposals from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and companion legislation introduced in Congress, would do the opposite.A bipartisan Congress modernized the patent system in 2011 with the America Invents Act (AIA). The AIA established a new USPTO patent quality review board – called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) – designed to address the economic destruction and waste generated by baseless patent infringement lawsuits. The PTAB provides an alternative for resolving patent disputes that is much more efficient than lawsuits and is overseen by trained patent judges who are better equipped to determine patent validity than an untrained jury. Now, a package of so-called “reform” is being pushed by special interests that would favor lawsuits, promote legal exploitation, and take nearly half a billion dollars out of ou...

‘Bare Minimum Monday’ tackles stress at work

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

TikTok trends don’t lie: Whether they’re “quiet quitting” or adopting “Bare Minimum Monday” to combat the “Sunday scaries,” people are pulling back at work.In one sense, making work a smaller part of life is a permanent shift that people working from home experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Cristina Banks, an industrial and organizational psychologist and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.While working from home, people had more autonomy. They also had a clearer idea of the value of their time, which they could spend exercising or playing with their kids rather than sitting in traffic on their way to the office.After many workers had that experience and are now being pushed to return to pre-pandemic norms, Banks says it’s hard for them to give up control over when or how much they work.So, some workers embrace trends like Bare Minimum Monday, which suggests doing only the most ...

Editorial: Gas furnaces next on Biden’s ban list

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

Progressives get upset when critics accuse the Biden administration of trying to ban gas appliances. They would have a much better case if the Biden administration didn’t keep banning gas appliances.Late last month, the Department of Energy issued new regulations on residential furnaces. By 2028, non-weatherized gas furnaces and those used in mobile homes must have an “annual fuel utilization efficiency of 95%.” The move would effectively ban new non-condensing gas furnaces. The American Gas Association estimates that this rule would eliminate 60% of the residential furnaces currently on the market.To justify this regulatory intrusion, the department claims this will “cumulatively save consumers $24.8 billion on their energy bills over 30 years.”That sounds like a big number. It’s not. That’s an annual savings of around $825 million. In a country of 335 million people, that’s a per-capita savings of less than $2.50 a year. Keep in mind that government estimates such as this represen...

Dear Abby: BF slow-walking his way down the aisle

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been with my man for seven years and I keep asking him when we’re getting married. He said we would — “someday.”Then COVID came along. Now he says after the pandemic is completely over. He has admitted he’s scared to get married again because he doesn’t want to be hurt like he was when his ex cheated on him. I told him I’m not like her. He says he knows that, and I’m the kindest, sweetest woman he’s ever met.I love this man with all my heart. We get along fine. I have my wedding dress and shoes. I’m tired of his excuses. I’m almost ready to say the heck with it and sell my dress and shoes. Should I? Please give me some advice. — Never a Bride in New EnglandDear Never a Bride: The COVID problem, with the many variants that keep cropping up, is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. Tell your reluctant bridegroom you love him, but seven years is enough time for him to decide whether he ...

Muslim boy killed and woman wounded in Illinois hate crime motivated by Israeli-Hamas war

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — A 71-year-old Illinois man accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old boy and seriously wounding a 32-year-old woman was charged with a hate crime Sunday. Police allege he singled out the victims because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas.In recent days, police in U.S. cities and federal authorities have been on high alert for violence driven by antisemitic or Islamophobic sentiments. FBI officials, along with Jewish and Muslim groups, have reported an increase of hateful and threatening rhetoric.In the Chicago-area case, officers found the woman and boy late Saturday morning at a home in an unincorporated area of Plainfield Township, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media. The boy was pronounced dead at a hospital. The woman had multiple stab wounds and was expected to survive, according to the statement. An autopsy on the child showed he h...

Judge Chutkan to hear arguments over proposed gag order in Trump’s election interference case

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Donald Trump will argue in court Monday over a proposed gag order aimed at reining in the former president’s diatribes against likely witnesses and others in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. In pressing U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose the narrow gag order, special counsel Jack Smith’s team has accused the Republican of using increasingly incendiary rhetoric to try to undermine the public’s confidence in the justice system and taint the jury pool. Trump’s defense has called the proposal an unconstitutional effort to “silence” his political speech as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. “This desperate effort at censorship is unconstitutional on its face,” his lawyers wrote in court papers. The gag order fight underscores the unprecedented complexities of prosecuting the former president as he tries to retake the White House while fighting criminal charges ...

Few Republicans have confidence in elections. It’s a long road for one group trying to change that

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:19:22 GMT

SUAMICO, Wis. (AP) — Kim Pytleski could barely sleep the night before. She replayed the PowerPoint slides in her head, packed her notebook and took a deep breath.The clerk from a rural Wisconsin county north of Green Bay was preparing for a public meeting to explain the election process to residents. She didn’t know who she would encounter. Would some in the audience deny the results of the last presidential election? Would the conversation get combative? Most importantly, would she get through to anyone?They were questions Pytleski never expected to ask herself when she started the job in Oconto County more than 14 years ago. But since then, election conspiracy theories have taken root in the rural, heavily Republican county in northeastern Wisconsin. It’s among large swaths of the country where distrust of voting and ballot-counting, fanned by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, maintains a stubborn grasp.Pytleski, who was born and raised in the coun...