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A sister vanishes, a brother seeks truth in ‘Burden of Proof’

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

What could be worse when your 15-year-old sister disappears than never knowing what happened and who was responsible?That was the impetus behind Stephen Pandos to make “Burden of Proof,” HBO’s four-part documentary that streams Tuesday on MAX.It was February 1987 when Stephen’s only sibling Jennifer disappeared in the middle of the night. His parents waited two days before notifying the police, who were stymied. The case remained inert for over 20 years until Stephen became obsessed with this mystery.“It started for me in 2009, seven years before the filming started, when the police suggested that my parents were responsible for my sister’s disappearance,” Pandos, 55, said last week in a phone interview. “Because I don’t have any other siblings, at that point I felt justice for my sister became my responsibility. For me, doing nothing” was not an option.His parents had divorced. Stephen was convinced his father, a Vietnam vet with PTSD given to explosive rages, had kille...

5 signs that you have a boring resume

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

Résumés are fairly cut-and-dry documents. Following the traditional “template” helps you convey your background and essential skills in a way that’s easily grasped by a hiring manager. But coloring inside the lines too closely could result in a resume that’s a yawner.“I read résumés and cover letters daily and there are usually a couple handfuls of those that are unique and different and pull me in, making me want to interview this person,” says Cheryl Hyatt, cofounder of Hyatt-Fennell Executive Search.While what makes a résumé interesting may be subjective, here are five signs that your résumé is lackluster:It’s Missing NumbersA résumé usually regurgitates the responsibilities you had in your position, but it shouldn’t be just a bunch of words. A vice president, for example, would list that they oversee a team, but that’s boring, says Hyatt.Numbers help underscore accomplishments and demonstrate that you understand your role and your job. For example, “I increased productivity in m...

Editorial: Not perfect, but a start on immigration reform

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

As the debt ceiling showdown moved toward the critical stages, a bipartisan House group offered a path forward on another controversial issue: immigration.A handful of Democrats and Republicans in the lower chamber announced they would introduce the Dignity Act, which The Washington Post described as “the most robust immigration proposal to date this Congress.”Notably, the six main co-sponsors — three Republican, three Democrat — are Hispanic members of Congress who represent border states. The primary authors are Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas.“We’re not each pursuing the perfect as we see it,” Rep. Salazar said. “We are pursuing a compromise that is real, that is common sense.”As such, the legislation has something for everyone to hate. It includes beefed-up border security, anathema to progressives, and a pathway to legal status for those in the country illegally, a thorn for conservative border hawks.Under the proposal, Congress would add m...

McCaughey: Democrats abandon working class, now pro-freeloader

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

The Democratic Party, long known as the party for working people, is now for freeloaders. Democrats want taxpayers to support people who refuse to get off the couch and get a job.That’s the major reason Democrats and Republicans in Washington were locked in a stalemate for weeks over hiking the debt ceiling. The biggest sticking point was whether people should be allowed to collect government assistance indefinitely to finance their nonworking lifestyle.For everyone who toils for a living, the idea of paying taxes to support healthy people who won’t work feels like a slap in the face.House Republicans proposed requiring food stamp recipients and people on Medicaid to work 20 hours a week or participate in some job-readiness activity such as training, high school equivalency courses or substance abuse treatment. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explained that government assistance programs are supposed to be “temporary, not permanent” and “a bridge to indepe...

Dear Abby: Money’s tight, should I ask for child support?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

Dear Abby: I have a child with a woman I’ll call “Kara,” who is now my ex-wife. Our son lives full time with me and my new wife, whom I married three years ago. Kara was diagnosed with schizophrenia five or six years ago, which is what ultimately led to our divorce. She has only recently been able to keep a job despite her condition, which is only being moderately well-managed, but she has a pretty good one now.Kara spends almost all her money on herself and rarely spends a day with our son without me present. I’m considering asking the court for child support payments, but I worry that because of her mental health issues, she’ll end up taking it out on our child.She’s never been a very good parent, largely because of her illness, and she lived with us for almost a year because I didn’t have the heart to see her homeless. I don’t make a lot of money myself. I’ve been disabled for quite some time, and the extra income would make a...

What to know about the legislative inquiry into Ronald Greene’s deadly arrest

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana lawmakers who last year demanded Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards testify about whether he was complicit in a cover-up over state troopers’ deadly 2019 arrest of Black motorist Ronald Greene have quietly abandoned their work without hearing from the governor or issuing any findings.Here’s what you need to know:WHAT HAPPENED TO RONALD GREENE?Greene’s May 10, 2019, death at the end of a high-speed chase in rural northeast Louisiana was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning, when state police troopers told grieving relatives and put in initial reports that the 49-year-old died in a car crash — an account questioned by both his family and an emergency room doctor. But it would take 464 days before the Louisiana State Police opened an internal probe, and officials from Edwards on down refused for more than two years to release the troopers’ body-camera video.That all changed in May 2021 when The Associated Press obtained and published the footage that sh...

Fizzled probe spares governor scrutiny over Ronald Greene’s deadly arrest

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana legislators who last year demanded answers from Gov. John Bel Edwards on whether he was complicit in a cover-up of state troopers’ deadly arrest of a Black motorist have quietly abandoned their work without hearing from the governor or issuing any findings.Lawmakers involved in the special committee probing the 2019 death of Ronald Greene offered an array of explanations, including election-year politics, concern the probe of state police wasn’t playing well with Louisiana’s mostly conservative voters and even a lack of resources in the legislature.“We only make $17,000 a year, and as much as I want to get to the heart of the Ronald Greene matter for justice, I also want my kids to have dinner tonight,” said state Rep. Tanner Magee, a Republican who chaired the bipartisan panel and ran unsuccessfully last year for a state judgeship.“We’re not the feds with unlimited resources,” Magee said. “Behind the facade, it’s a Mickey Mouse organization trying ...

Mexico president’s ruling party wins governorship of country’s most populous state

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

NAUCALPAN, Mexico (AP) — A quick-count sampling of votes for governor of Mexico’s most populous state suggested a victory late Sunday for the candidate from the governing party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which would end nearly a century of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.Preliminary results indicated Delfina Gómez of the Morena party was likely to win between 52.1% and 54.2% of the ballots in the State of Mexico, compared with 43% to 45.2% for Alejandra del Moral, representing the opposition coalition, according to the National Electoral Institute.The forecast was based on representative sampling of voting stations with at least 95% certainty. The outcome will not be final until all ballots were counted. Participation was between 48.7 and 50.2% of eligible state voters.Del Moral conceded shortly after the preliminary forecast was announced.“In democracy to be able to win, you have to know how to lose and I am a democrat,” she said, ad...

US releases video showing close-call in Taiwan Strait with Chinese destroyer

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — The United States military released video Monday of what it called an “unsafe” Chinese maneuver in the Taiwan Strait on the weekend, in which a Chinese navy ship cut sharply across the path of an American destroyer, forcing the U.S. ship to slow to avoid a collision.The incident occurred Saturday as the American destroyer USS Chung-Hoon and Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal were conducting a so-called “freedom of navigation” transit of the strait between Taiwan and mainland China. China claims the democratic self-governing island of Taiwan as part of its own territory, and maintains the strait is part of its exclusive economic zone, while the U.S. and its allies regularly sail through and fly over the passage to emphasize their contention that the waters are international.During the Saturday transit, the Chinese guided-missile destroyer overtook the Chung-Hoon on its port side, then veered across its bow at a distance of some 150 yards (137 meters), according to the U.S....

Rescuers in Japan search for 3 missing in or near rivers swollen by heavy rains last week

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:10:20 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Rescue workers in Japan searched Monday for three people who went missing in or near rivers swollen by heavy rains last week that left one person dead and dozens injured.A man in his 60s who was pulled from a flooded car Friday in the central city of Toyohashi was pronounced dead over the weekend.In Wakayama prefecture, a woman was seen being swept into a swollen river while driving and an older man who went to check on a friend in a riverside neighborhood is also believed to have been swept away. Rescuers also are searching for a person who lived beside a swollen river and was missing in the central prefecture of Shizuoka.On Monday, residents were cleaning up in flood-hit parts of Iwata city in Shizuoka, where a river bank was breached and dozens of homes were flooded. The residents, helped by volunteers, shoveled out mud that gushed into their houses, washed the floors and brought out mud-smeared furniture.Heavy rain also caused widespread damage in the Tokyo region. ...