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Montgomery County sees ‘overwhelming’ amount of home improvement scams

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

Montgomery County, Maryland, is sounding the alarm for homeowners, as the county and state see an avalanche of reports of home improvement scams.“It’s just overwhelming how many complaints we are receiving,” said Eric Friedman, director of Montgomery County’s Office of Consumer Protection.Friedman said the scams don’t involve small projects, such as getting ripped off after ordering a new fence or window. Rather, they are usually big projects that cost a lot of money.“We’re talking about tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that consumers are paying upfront for all different kinds of home improvement work,” Friedman said.In many of these cases, so-called contractors show up to a person’s home and offer to do projects for them. They will say they have leftover materials from another project they are doing nearby and offer a deal to work on your home.Friedman said there are also those called “woodchucks” — people who get you to hire them to trim trees, and t...

Petro responde a su hermano y niega haber sido diagnosticado con el síndrome de Asperger

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

(CNN Español) –– El presidente de Colombia, Gustavo Petro, dijo en su cuenta de X que jamás ha “recibido un diagnóstico de síndrome de Asperger”. Petro responde así a las declaraciones que su hermano Juan Fernando Petro ha brindado a varios medios, en las que afirma que un psicólogo los diagnosticó a ambos con la misma condición.El mandatario colombiano agregó en su mensaje: “Es imposible que nos hayan diagnosticado ese síndrome cuando éramos niños porque esa enfermedad solo empezó a diagnosticarse en 1994, cuando tenía 34 años de edad, y dejó de estar en los tratados de diagnósticos en el 2013, porque la ciencia la rechazó como una enfermedad específica”.La controversia llega justo después de que algunos dirigentes de oposición en Colombia han pedido que el presidente Petro se someta a exámenes médicos, tras su ausencia en varios eventos oficiales.El síndrome de Asperger es una condición que se ubica dentro del espectro autista. Se suele diagnosticar cuando una persona menor de eda...

Buffs fans will sell you tickets if you don’t root for the Cornhuskers

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) – Jodi Bunn bleeds black, gold and silver. So you can imagine her excitement over the weekend as she watched the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team upset nationally-ranked Texas Christian University.“Those final ticks of the clock, I burst into tears. I had to excuse myself,” Bunn told FOX31. Ticket prices skyrocket for CU Buffs home opener against Nebraska Her family has held season tickets in Boulder for 71 years. Her grandparents first purchased them in 1952, and her parents bought more in the 1960s. They’ve been in the bleachers through good seasons and bad, and they’ve witnessed plenty of games that had them seeing red.“My entire life going to Folsom, it always turns into Lincoln,” Bunn said, referencing the countless matchups at the Buffs home stadium in which Nebraska Cornhuskers fans traveled and turned the stadium red. This year, ahead of Saturday’s nationally televised home opener between the two teams, she’s doing ...

CDOT plans road closures ahead of fall season

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

IDAHO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) -- Thousands are returning to the metro area from mountain destinations as the end of the summer travel season concludes with Labor Day weekend.“I love just hanging out with the kids,” said one Idaho Springs tourist. I-70 reopened after multi-vehicle crash The Colorado Department of Transportation said most travelers using I-70 were coming from Summit and Eagle counties.CDOT reports that in 2022, more than 188,000 cars and trucks passed through the Eisenhower and Johnson Memorial Tunnels.CDOT paused construction during the holiday weekend to ease traffic, but it will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 5.“Make sure that you’re using caution and using your brakes too,” said one driver in Idaho Springs.The Mt. Evans Highway closes from Summit Lake to the top with the section from Echo Lake to Summit Lake remaining open for the next few weeks, depending on weather conditions. Colorado fall colors forecast 2023: When and where to see peak colors Highway 82 over Inde...

Orioles beat Angels, 6-3, behind Gunnar Henderson’s bat, Grayson Rodriguez’s arm to extend AL East lead to 3.5 games

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

Brandon Hyde cheered for two major league teams Monday.In the afternoon, the Orioles’ manager watched an American League East game on television in his office, hoping the Boston Red Sox would beat the Tampa Bay Rays. At night, he peered from the top step of the visiting dugout as his AL-best club took on the Los Angeles Angels.Both of his teams won.After the Red Sox defeated the Rays on the East Coast, the Orioles took down the Angels, 6-3, on the West Coast to improve their lead atop the American League standings to a season-high 3 1/2 games.“It’s a great attitude to have,” Hyde said before the contest about his players’ mindset of focusing on their games and not the Rays’. “I’m maybe a little bit more guilty than they are. I was just watching the Rays game inside.“Huge Red Sox fan this afternoon,” he added with a laugh.The Orioles’ two youngest players led them to victory. Starting pitcher Grayson Rodriguez, 23, tos...

Editorial: Gender reveal party tragedies mount – they must stop

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

Gender reveal parties have come a long way from releasing pink or blue balloons and frosting cupcakes. They’ve escalated to using smoke bombs and pyrotechnics to announce the “big reveal,” resulting in injuries, wildfires and death.They need to stop.On Sunday, a gender reveal party in Mexico featured a pilot releasing pink smoke from his plane. According to a video posted online, the plane’s left wing appeared to separate from the fuselage as it flew away from the group of people below.The plane crashed, and according to reports, the pilot died after being taken to a hospital.This wasn’t the only tragedy to stem from a gender reveal.A Southern California couple set off a smoke bomb at their Sept. 5, 2020 gender reveal. It sparked the El Dorado wildfire that burned more than 22,000 acres. One firefighter was killed battling the flames and two others were injured, according to reports.The Sawmill Fire of 2017 was caused by a father-to-be detonating a target pac...

Millard: Biden’s union subsidies clash with green agenda: experts

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

President Biden told an audience of unionized workers in Philadelphia in July month that his drive for green energy means jobs for them.“A lot of my friends in organized labor know: When I think climate, I think jobs. I think union jobs,” Biden said.But for climate activists, “union jobs” can mean “more carbon and less green energy.”And that, some economists say, is the contradiction at the center of the administration’s policy of spending billions on green energy projects and paying incentives to meet higher “prevailing wage” mandates.“It’s obviously a terrible strategy,” National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad said. “They’re trying to shut down the vast majority of the workforce to help out Joe Biden’s union buddies who spent $2 million to get him elected.”Just 6% of the private-sector labor force belongs to a union.Biden acknowledged the Inflation Reduction Act was misnamed, saying it was “the single-largest investment in climate action in American history.” T...

Dear Abby: Husband’s daughter decides new wife is the enemy

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been married to “Frank” for 2 1/2 years. We met and married quickly. Best decision ever. We each had raised two daughters as single parents with different parenting styles. Our girls now range in age from 30 to 33. They are adults with lives and children of their own.My daughters have accepted and come to love Frank. They have always been respectful and inclusive. In the beginning, his daughters treated me OK. But after six months, the older one decided I could not be around her children because I “don’t like her.” I always treated her respectfully and did many things for her and her kids — babysitting, buying them things they needed, twice offering a place to stay when she was going through a divorce.She was always the boss of her father, and he puts her first over all else. There were things they would do secretly and exclude me. Now he doesn’t see them at all. They don’t talk; they explode. I’m certain at som...

As sports betting spikes, help for problem gamblers expands in some states

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

When the NFL season kicks off this week, Kentucky residents and visitors — for the first time — will be able to legally place sports bets on something other than horse racing. When they do, some of that money will also fund the state’s first-ever program for people with gambling problems. Since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for legalized sports betting five years ago, nearly three-fourths of the states have moved swiftly to allow it. State funding for problem gambling services has not kept pace, although more states — like Kentucky — are requiring at least a portion of sports wagering revenues to go toward helping addicted gamblers.“The funding is starting to flow, but the amount is still clearly inadequate in most states,” said Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. He added: “Most of these amounts are token.” Legal sports betting operators took in $220 billion during the past five years, generating $3 billion in state and local ...

The impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton is set to begin in the Texas Senate

Published Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:17:23 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Senate is set to gavel in Tuesday for the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a political reckoning of years of alleged corruption that could lead to his permanent ouster from office.The fate of Paxton, a 60-year-old Republican, is in the hands of GOP senators with whom he served before winning a statewide race to take charge of the attorney general’s office in 2015.In an era of bitter partisanship, the historic proceeding is a rare instance of a political party seeking to hold one of its own to account for allegations of wrongdoing. The impeachment also came as a sudden rebuke to Paxton, who has built a national profile fighting high-profile legal battles, including trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and who won a third term in 2022 despite long-pending state criminal charges and an FBI investigation.The Republican-led House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton in May, largely based on his forme...