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‘Shooting Stars’ shoots, scores as winning tale of young LeBron James

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“Shooting Stars”Rated PG-13. On Peacock.Grade: B+Based on the 2009 book by Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger (“Friday Night Lights”) and nicely directed by Chris Robinson (“Woke”), “Shooting Stars” is the 1990s-set coming-of-age story of James and his “Fab Four” crew of fellow basketball enthusiasts with whom he played and grew up in Akron, Ohio.When we meet James (Marquis “Mookie” Cook, making his debut) and his closest friends and surrogate brothers Lil Dru (Caleb McLaughlin, “Stranger Things”), Willy McGee (Avery S. Willis Jr, “Swagger”) and Sian Cotton (Khalil Everage, “Cobra Kai”), they are together in the basement of Lil Dru’s house, which he shares with his father Dru Joyce (an excellent Wood Harris), a some time basketball coach and mother Carolyn (Diane Howard). LeBron lives with his single mother Gloria James (Natalie Paul), who is an enormous influence on him and who will work as many shifts as pos...

Franks: Dems give hypocrisy a bad name on education

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

“Public schools are good for your kids but not good for… my kids?”This should be the Democrat Party’s motto. They practice this hypocrisy, and sadly, get away with it. The liberal media is AWOL on challenging them.Democrats would say “let public funds be used only for public schools.” Translation: If you do not have the personal means, you are screwed; you have no school choice. That is not very American. All children should have an equal opportunity at success with no child being trapped in a failing school.Why can’t people take their resources (public funds derived from taxes paid) with them to the school of their choice? Why should only the wealthy be able to choose the school of their choice?The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 changed America for the better. “With all deliberate speed,” it put us on course for a desegregated educational system meant in the bigger picture to convert us into an integrated society with no second-class citizens.For decades, th...

‘The Boogeyman’ delivers a Stephen King scare package

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“The Boogeyman”Rated PG-13. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.Grade: BWorking with writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods – who co-wrote “A Quiet Place” with John Krasinski – and also writer Mark Heyman (“Black Swan”), British director Rob Savage (“Host”) brings us “The Boogeyman,” a film based on a short story by the master of modern horror Stephen King. We all know how much King loves scaring his “children” aka readers with stories about kids being terrified by all the manifold horrors of childhood (psychotic clowns, ghost twins, insane parents, the thing in the water, possessed cars, vampires, etc.). The truth is that King just loves scaring himself (his vast output has not been “work;” it has been a runaway train of addictive self-amusement).In the amusingly titled “The Boogeyman,” King and director Savage go to something as primal as they get: the thing lurking in every child’s closet that comes out and gets them when they are a...

Editorial: BU hit by cancel culture, disruption theater

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

Noise is not wisdom, and obscenities are not the foundation of reasonable argument.Those facts were lost on the graduating students who booed and hurled obscenities at Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav during the May 21 commencement ceremony.Members of the Writers Guild of America picketed outside Nickerson Field, and it was the union’s strike that fueled the debacle.If the intent was to bring about an end to the strike with a favorable outcome for writers, it was a pointless display. If the desired effect, however, was to engage in disruption for disruption’s sake, then the sorry show was a hit.An angry Robert Brown, retiring president of Boston University, called out the alums for “cancel culture.” As the Herald reported, Brown slammed the students  “who were appallingly coarse and deliberately abusive to Mr. Zaslav.”“Our students were not picking a fight,” Brown wrote in a post on BU’s website Wednesday. “They were attempting to implement the cancel culture that...

Dear Abby: Boy’s sensitivity worries his grandmother

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

Dear Abby: My grandson is 6 and very sensitive, maybe too sensitive. He’s also lovable, super scientific-minded, good-hearted and generous with his little sister. However, he still uses a diaper at night and has CVS (cyclical vomiting syndrome). It’s heartbreaking. For that reason, he’s on a special gluten- free, no flour, no chocolate diet.The other day at school (he is in kindergarten), they had a presentation with a magician about the danger of drugs and alcohol. Just to let you know, his parents are very much into teaching their kids morals and values, and they only let him watch cartoons like “Paw Patrol” and similar programs. No movies and no TV in general. (Abby, isn’t this too early to introduce the subject of drugs and alcohol to children in school?) My grandson asked, “What are drugs and what is alcohol?” Long story short, he was super scared and started to cry in class.The school called his parents and he came home devastate...

IMF says Sri Lanka’s economic recovery shows signs of improvement but challenges remain

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Debt-stricken Sri Lanka, which declared bankruptcy last year, is showing signs of economic improvement but its recovery still faces challenges, the International Monetary Fund said Friday.The Indian Ocean island nation declared bankruptcy in April 2022 and said it was suspending repayment of its foreign debt. It reached an agreement with the IMF in March on a nearly $3 billion bailout program over four years.“Sri Lanka’s economy is showing tentative signs of improvement, in part due to the implementation of critical policy actions. But the economic recovery remains challenging,” said IMF deputy managing director Kenji Okamura after concluding a visit to Sri Lanka, where he met with the country’s top leaders and officials.Okamura said he welcomed Sri Lankan authorities’ “strong commitment to implement their ambitious economic program, which is supported by the IMF.”IMF previously said Sri Lanka’s economy is expected to resume growing in 2024 after cont...

UN anti-drug agency warns there is no let-up in methamphetamine trade from Asia’s Golden Triangle

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — The huge trade in methamphetamine and other illegal drugs originating from a small corner of Southeast Asia shows no signs of slowing down, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned Friday. “High volumes of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded,” said the agency’s 2023 report, Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia.The lion’s share of methamphetamine, in the form of tablets and crystal meth, comes from the area known as the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet. The production of opium and heroin used to flourish there, mainly because of the lawlessness around Myanmar’s remote eastern Shan State. The area, much of it jungle, remains the domain of various ethnic minority militias, some of them partners in the drug trade. “Methamphetamine continues to be the most used drug in East and Southeast Asia and that use ha...

El Salvador president proposes dramatic reduction in number of municipalities to reduce tax burden

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said Thursday he wants to cut the number of municipalities in the country from 262 to 44 to reduce the tax burden.The proposal would require the approval of the country’s Legislative Assembly, in which Bukele’s party and its allies hold a majority. The president also proposed reducing the number of lawmakers in that body from 84 to 60.“How is it possible that in a territory of 8,100 square miles (21,000 square kilometers) we have 262 municipalities?” Bukele said in a speech marking his fourth year in office. The president’s New Ideas party controls the majority of the current municipalities.The president said local identities would not be lost, but rather converted into districts by the same name.Bukele also said authorities were carrying out searches of all of the properties of former President Alfredo Cristiani who governed El Salvador from 1989 to 1994. It was not clear what the objective of the searches was.In M...

Despite flags, Border Patrol staff didn’t review fragile 8-year-old girl’s file before she died

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) — Border Patrol medical staff declined to review the file of an 8-year-old girl with a chronic heart condition and rare blood disorder before she appeared to have a seizure and died on her ninth day in custody, an internal investigation found.U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said the Panamanian child’s parents shared the medical history with authorities on May 10, a day after the family was taken into custody.But a nurse practitioner declined to review documents about the girl the day she died, CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility said in its initial statement Thursday on the May 17 death. The nurse practitioner reported denying three or four requests from the girl’s mother for an ambulance. A day before she died, Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez showed a fever of 104.9 degrees Fahrenheit (40.5 degrees Celsius), the report said.A surveillance video system at the Harlingen, Texas, station was out of service since April 13, a violation of fede...

National Spelling Bee champ Dev Shah goes from ‘despondent’ to soaking up the moment

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:30:50 GMT

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Fifteen months ago, Dev Shah spent a miserable five hours spelling outdoors in chilly, windy, damp conditions at a supersize regional competition in Orlando, Florida, only to fall short of his dream of returning to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.“Despondent is the right word,” Dev said. “I just didn’t know if I wanted to keep continuing.”Look at him now.Soft-spoken but brimming with confidence, Dev asked precise questions about obscure Greek roots, rushed through his second-to-last word and rolled to the National Spelling Bee title Thursday night.Dev, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, in the Tampa Bay area, first competed at the national bee in 2019, then had his spelling career interrupted. The 2020 bee was canceled because of COVID-19, and in the mostly virtual 2021 bee, he didn’t make it to the in-person finals, held in his home state on ESPN’s campus at Walt Disney World.Then came the disaster of last year, when he was forced to compete in t...