The dog days of... winter? Dogs enjoy the nor'easter

Whether you love or hate the snow, one thing is certain: These dogs made the most of the powdery stuff falling from the sky.

Recommended Stories

  • Police arrest man after Wyoming boy found dead in dumpster

    The boyfriend of a Wyoming woman whose 2-year-old son was found dead in an apartment complex dumpster has been arrested, police said Tuesday. Wyatt Lamb, 27, was taken into custody after the disappearance of Athian Rivera triggered a search Friday. Lamb was listed as the boyfriend of Rivera's mother, Kassy Orona, 25, on Orona's Facebook page on Monday but the reference had been deleted Tuesday.

  • Family: Navy vet died after police knelt on his neck

    A Navy veteran who was going through an episode of paranoia died after a Northern California police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, his family said Tuesday. The family of Angelo Quinto called police on Dec. 23 because the 30-year-old was suffering a mental health crisis and needed help.

  • Indonesia president warns of forest fires as hot spots detected

    Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Monday local authorities should get prepared for potential forest fires later this year as hot spots had been detected on the island of Sumatra. The Southeast Asian country has suffered some of the biggest tropical forest fires outside the Amazon and Congo in recent years, putting at risk endangered animals like orangutans and tigers and sending choking haze across the region. "Ninety-nine percent of forest fires are perpetrated by humans, whether intentional or out of negligence," Jokowi, as the president is widely know, said in a virtual meeting with officials.

  • Antetokounmpo scores 38 as Bucks outlast Pelicans 129-125

    Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 38 points, Khris Middleton added 31 and the Milwaukee Bucks outlasted the New Orleans Pelicans 129-125 on Thursday night. It was the fourth straight win for the Bucks, who finished their first half of the season in third place in the Eastern Conference. Zion Williamson scored 34 points and Brandon Ingram added 23 for the Pelicans, who had won two straight.

  • Iraq's struggling Christians hope for boost from pope visit

    Nasser Banyameen speaks about his hometown of Qaraqosh in the historical heartland of Iraqi Christianity with nostalgia. Before the militants shattered his sense of peace. Iraq’s Christian communities in the area were dealt a severe blow when they were scattered by the IS onslaught in 2014, further shrinking the country's already dwindling Christian population.

  • UK's Prince Philip 'a lot better' but to stay in hospital for treatment for infection

    Britain's Prince Philip is getting a lot better, his youngest son said on Tuesday after Buckingham Palace said the 99-year-old husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth would remain in hospital for several more days to receive treatment for an infection. Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, walked into London's private King Edward VII Hospital last Tuesday evening after he was advised by his doctor to be admitted after he felt unwell, and has spent seven nights there. "He is comfortable and responding to treatment but is not expected to leave hospital for several days," Buckingham Palace said, adding he was receiving medical attention for an unspecified infection.

  • Rush Limbaugh flag honors won't be statewide

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is moving ahead with plans to honor recently deceased conservative radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh by lowering flags to half-staff despite protests from some public officials who don't see Limbaugh as worthy of the honor. DeSantis announced Tuesday that he was directing the U.S. and Florida flags to be flown at half-staff at the Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach, the City Hall of Palm Beach and the State Capitol in Tallahassee from sunrise to sunset on Wednesday.

  • Malaysia launches COVID-19 vaccination drive as PM gets first shot

    Malaysia on Wednesday launched its COVID-19 inoculation programme, which authorities hope will rein in a spike in infections and help revive an economy that recorded its worst slump in over two decades last year. Malaysia has set an ambitious target of vaccinating at least 80% of its 32 million people by February next year. Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was the first to be given the vaccine, developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and German partner BioNTech, as part of government efforts to reassure people of the vaccine's safety.

  • Iran says it hopes South Korea, Japan will release $1 billion in blocked funds

    Iran expressed hope on Tuesday that South Korea and Japan would agree to release about $1 billion of Iranian funds frozen in the two countries because of U.S. sanctions, but South Korea said it still needed to discuss the matter with the United States. Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati had reached preliminary agreements with the ambassadors of Japan and South Korea on the fund releases.

  • Was Europe's first COVID death in Serbia?

    A new study suggests that the first death from COVID-19 in Europe may have actually occurred in Serbia - 10 days before the first reported fatality came out of France.France reported Europe's first death on Feb. 15, 2020. But researchers in Belgrade now say that a 56-year-old construction worker from that city, who had not traveled abroad, was admitted to a hospital on Feb. 5 suffering from fever, cough and shortness of breath. He died within hours and an autopsy showed pneumonia was the cause. Months later, scientists at the Institute for Forensic Medicine of Belgrade's Medical Faculty, found evidence that the man had died from COVID.Milenko Bogdanovic, a forensic pathologist, says frozen samples were taken from the man's eye to prove the presence of the virus."One of the conclusions of this work would be that this is, for the time being, the first post-mortem corroborated death from COVID-19 in Europe to date."The study also says COVID-19 was probably the cause of reports of a pneumonia of unknown origin between January and February last year. Serbia's first official case was recorded on March 6, 2020.

  • Israel sharing some COVID vaccines with Palestinians, Honduras, Czech Republic

    Israel said on Tuesday it was giving small amounts of surplus COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinian-run territories as well as to several countries. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not name which countries in a statement announcing the move. But the government of Guatemala - which opened its Israel embassy in Jerusalem last year - said it was expecting to receive 5,000 doses from Israel on Thursday.

  • Biden, Trudeau pledge to counter China, climate change, in warm first 'meeting'

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought on Tuesday to turn the page on the Trump era, stressing the countries' deep ties and pledging to work together to counteract Chinese influence and address climate change. "The United States has no closer friend, no closer friend than Canada," Biden told Trudeau via an electronic video link with the Canadian leader and top aides. "That's why you were my first call as president (and) my first bilateral meeting," he said.

  • U.S. arrests wife of Mexico cartel chief El Chapo on drug charges

    The wife of Mexican drug cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was arrested and charged in the United States on Monday with helping her husband continue to run his drug trafficking cartel while he was behind bars. Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, a regular attendee at her husband's high-profile U.S. trial two years ago where he was convicted of trafficking tons of drugs into the United States, was arrested at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia. Her arrest is the highest profile U.S. capture of a Mexican on drug charges since former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos was detained in October, and experts said it indicated a deterioration in bilateral security relations.

  • Khamenei says Iran may enrich uranium to 60% purity if needed

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday Iran might enrich uranium up to 60% purity if the country needed it and would never yield to U.S. pressure over its nuclear programme, state television reported. Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six powers, which it has been breaching since the United States withdrew in 2018, caps the fissile purity to which Tehran can refine uranium at 3.67%, well under the 20% achieved before the agreement and far below the 90% suitable for a nuclear weapon.

  • Erdogan tells Rouhani he sees window of opportunity for Iran, U.S. on sanctions

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Sunday he saw a window of opportunity for Iran and the United States on sanctions after recent statements, adding he wanted U.S. sanctions on Tehran to be lifted, the Turkish presidency said. Tehran said on Sunday the United States must first lift sanctions on Iran if it wants to talk about salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal, reiterating it will not make the first move to restore the pact with major powers.

  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fearless Poet, Publisher, and Bookseller, Is Dead at 101

    Carlos Avila Gonzalez/GettyLawrence Ferlinghetti, the innovative bookseller and publisher of Ginsberg and Kerouac, one of the best friends free speech ever had, and the man who wrote that most anomalous thing—a poetry bestseller: A Coney Island of the Mind—died today at the age of 101.“If amendments had addresses, the address of the First Amendment would be right here at City Lights Books,” said historian Kevin Starr, standing outside Ferlinghetti’s legendary San Francisco bookstore at its 50th Anniversary in 2003 (City Lights was also the name of the poet’s equally celebrated publishing company). “You will never see the First Amendment so fully and so happily ensconced as it is here. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, congratulations. Literature, Culture, the First Amendment is better because of you.”A brave bookseller, an innovative publisher, and an author who introduced several generations of readers to the idea that reading poetry could be more fun than work, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born on March 24, 1919, in Yonkers, N.Y. Shortly before his birth, his father died of a heart attack, and his mother, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, was institutionalized. So, when he was one week old, his aunt Emily took him to France.Lawrence Fierling, as he was called before he returned his name to its original, grew up thinking he was French, and throughout his life, he carried a bistro-civil libertarian socialist point of view. Aunt Emily and Ferlinghetti left France for America when he was about six. Too poor to raise him, she sent him to an orphanage for about a year, until she eventually found work as a teacher with a wealthy family in Bronxville. But then Emily up and left again. No word. No reason. Just gone, back to France without the boy who up to that point believed she was his mother. When he turned 12, he reconnected with her and for a while, they corresponded in French, at which point, he later said, he knew he was a writer. But then Emily disappeared and this time for good, vanishing without a trace, and was never heard from again, by anyone.Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Romance of City LightsFerlinghetti’s life is best told through his poetry. He traces his father’s route to America at the turn of the century. (He even returned to Italy to see where his father was born and was arrested when he tried to get a look inside.) The story of his mother and father’s meeting at Coney Island is beautiful. Yet, how would he know? Who would have told him? That’s sort of the beautiful part. He’s emotional about the parents he didn’t know.He lived with the wealthy family in Bronxville as an unofficially adopted son. Their own son, also named Lawrence, had died as an infant, and Ferlinghetti was well cared for by the couple. A great library with massive volumes collected by his adoptive father surrounded him. For every poem he recited at dinner, his father gave him a silver dollar. He was an Eagle Scout but got kicked out of public school for stealing pencils at a dime store and then was shipped off to boarding school. There he learned about Thomas Wolfe and was enamored enough to follow Wolfe’s footsteps to the University of North Carolina, where, like Wolfe, he tried—unsuccessfully, as it turned out—to write for Carolina magazine.After Chapel Hill, Ferlinghetti enlisted in the Navy. On D-Day, he was aboard the smallest ship in the armada, from which he watched, offshore, as the troops storming the Normandy beaches were shot by the Germans.An interviewer once asked how he survived World War II. “I was lucky,” he said. “I had a guardian angel watching over me, because I was in the Normandy invasion, there were bombs dropping all around me, and nothing hit me. So I think it was a guardian angel watching over me.”With a Zelig-like ability to be seemingly everywhere, he was later transferred to the Pacific Theater and turned up at Nagasaki six weeks after the second atomic bomb was dropped. When he arrived the city was a ghost town—no Japanese army, no one guarding the city, which by then was nothing more than a pulp of ruins, flesh and bone fused to wood and steel and grass and dirt. “Made me an instant pacifist,” he said years later. “No doubt about it.”After leaving the navy, he went to work in the mailroom at Time Magazine, still hoping to become a writer, but he quickly became disillusioned with the news business. He bounced from Time to Columbia University on the GI Bill and received his M.A., then returned to Paris, where he did his doctoral work at the Sorbonne, and, perhaps more important, met George Whitman, who would become a lifelong friend and whose dream of opening a bookstore inspired the same desire in Ferlinghetti. Whitman soon opened Shakespeare & Co., inspired by the bookstore of the same name run by Sylvia Beach that had shuttered at the beginning of World War II. Ferlinghetti returned to America and settled in San Francisco, where, in 1953, he opened his own bookstore, City Lights, which housed his own publishing company as well.At soirees held by the poet Kenneth Rexroth in his home in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, Ferlinghetti became more politically engaged. Rexroth had a KPFA radio talk show with an extremely flexible format that allowed him to talk about the classics, philosophy, politics, astronomy—you name it, Rexroth would talk about it. Ferlinghetti would eventually publish Rexroth’s work, but at that point, he was content to be among the small group of writers milling around the better-known poet and political anarchist. They were just getting started with the poetry-set-to-jazz thing. They were just learning about the marriage of visual art and poetry. They weren’t called Beat Poets yet, but it wouldn’t be long.Soon thereafter, Ferlinghetti also effected a radical change in publishing. There was at that point no such thing as a quality paperback. But Ferlinghetti’s friend Peter D. Martin was publishing a literary magazine called City Lights, and Ferlinghetti had the notion of adapting the magazine’s design for the books he wanted to publish: paperbacks, yes, but printed on good stock, with well-designed covers, and often formatted to fit easily in a back pocket or a handbag. And so, with a handshake and $500 each from Ferlinghetti and Martin, City Lights was born.Beat poets were certainly among the best-known poets that City Lights, both publisher and book store, sold at first. But, as Ferlinghetti would spend the rest of his life reminding people in interviews, “the beats were only one generation of dissident writers that we published at City Lights.” His nutshell mission statement: “Our focus is on radical politics, radical deep ecology, feminism, and poetry.” From the beat poetry that put Ferlinghetti and City Lights out front, the publishing house moved into novels and translations. City Lights was a vehicle to publish himself first—Pictures of the Gone World (Pocket Poets #1)—and thereafter he cast a wide and eclectic net: William S. Burroughs, Noam Chomsky, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Lisa Gray-Garcia aka Tiny, Amy Scholder, Rebecca Brown, and even Ry Cooder. The press still thrives, and so does the bookstore.Pocket Poet series #4 nearly derailed everything, though.Allen Ginsberg said he “first read Howl at a small gallery performance space where all of us as a poetic group all got together on the same stage with Kerouac in the audience and with Neil Cassady in the audience.”It was October 7, 1956. Ginsberg read, and so did Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, and several others. It was mostly poets reading their work to other poets and writers that night. But Ferlinghetti was also there at 6 Gallery on Fillmore Street, and he wasted no time in sending Ginsberg a telegram that echoed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famously encouraging note to young Walt Whitman (“I greet you at the beginning of a career.”) and then followed that up with the query sent by every eager publisher since books were invented (“When do we get the manuscript?”).And just like that, Howl was published.If Ginsberg had little trouble getting Howl into print, his publisher Ferlinghetti had a very rough time once the book came out.“Now, as you may have seen in the papers, Collector of Customs Chester MacPhee confiscated 520 copies of a paperbound volume of poetry entitled Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg... You wouldn’t want your children to come across it,” said Kenneth Rexroth on KPFA in 1956 just after the confiscation of the books, which had been printed in London and shipped to the United States.The manager of City Lights Bookstore, Shig Murao, was arrested for selling the book to a police officer at the shop. Ferlinghetti wasn’t present, so a warrant was issued, and when he turned himself in, the 38-year-old publisher was charged with selling obscene books.When the case came to court, Ferlinghetti faced a possible six-month jail sentence as well as the possibility of losing his bookstore and his publishing company. For his defense, he had three attorneys from the ACLU, nine witnesses, and a favorable New York Times book review. The judge hearing the case was a conservative Christian.As it turned out, Judge Clayton W. Horn was also a thoughtful man. In ruling for the defense in the case of People of the State of California v. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1957), Judge Horn wrote, “The best method of censorship is by the people as self-guardians of public opinion and not by government. So we come back, once more, to Jefferson's advice that the only completely democratic way to control publications which arouse mere thoughts or feelings is through non-governmental censorship by public opinion.” Howl was ruled not obscene because it had social value. Or, as Horn put it, “In considering material claimed to be obscene it is well to remember the motto: 'Honi soit qui mal y pense.'" (Evil to him who evil thinks.)After the verdict, Ferlinghetti was a generous victor: “The San Francisco Collector of Customs deserves a word of thanks for seizing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems and thereby rendering it famous. Perhaps we could have a medal made. It would have taken years for critics to accomplish what the good collector did in a day, merely by calling the book obscene.”In the documentary Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder, novelist Herbert Gold commented, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti kicked open the door to free up publishing at a time when it really needed to happen. He risked a great deal for a lot of books that couldn’t have been published in this country. Many books that are now considered classics can now be freely read, carried in your back pocket, and taught in almost every university in the country.”Ferlinghetti knew how to make a stir and take a stand as a publisher, but as an editor, he also knew how to coax a book out of a writer, even if it took years. Frank O’Hara’s classic Lunch Poems was a much quieter process than Howl. It happened in postcards. And with a lot of patience. There’s romance in that. It took only one of O’Hara’s poems to prompt Ferlinghetti to write to him. The correspondence read: “How about a book of Lunch poems.” O’Hara returned a postcard with one word, “Yes.” But then nothing happened. So, Ferlinghetti sent another postcard: “How about lunch?” O’Hara responded, “It’s cooking.” It took a few years but eventually, in 1964, City Lights published the durably delightful Lunch Poems as number 19 in the Pocket Poets series.At the age of 95, Ferlinghetti published Poetry as Insurgent Art, a book that he said, “sums up what I’ve always considered the role of the poet—poetry should be dissident and subversive and an agent for change.”He continued writing, publishing, and holding readings almost to the very end of his long life, and even published a novel on the eve of his 100th birthday.And the upper floor windows of City Lights were always covered in handwritten signs. He called it his blog. There, he broadcast his views on change—an optimistic leftie until the end, always speaking up in support of community and free thought.The secret of life, he left for us: “Tenderness, live with tenderness.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Take note: At 26-6, Utah Jazz are the NBA's best team so far

    Looking at individual stats reveals nothing about the Utah Jazz. Take note: The Jazz are off to the best start in franchise history, are on pace to shatter the NBA record for 3-pointers made per game, have won 20 of their last 22 games and just handed the reigning champion Los Angeles Lakers their worst loss of the season. “They’re the hottest team in the league,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said after his team, which was without Anthony Davis and Dennis Schroder, lost 114-89 in Salt Lake City on Wednesday night.

  • Israel aims to resolve Iran disputes with Biden at adviser level

    Israel hopes to prevent personal tension between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden over their differences on the Iranian nuclear question by delegating talks on the topic to their senior staff, an Israeli official said. Netanyahu's foreign-policy fortunes have waned since Biden succeeded Republican president Donald Trump, who withdrew the United States from world powers' 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, deeming it too advantageous for Tehran - a view Israel shared. Biden, a Democrat, wants to rejoin the deal.

  • South African corruption inquiry wants Zuma jailed for two years after no-show

    A South African inquiry into corruption during Jacob Zuma's time in power is seeking the former president's imprisonment for two years, after he defied a summons and court order to appear and give evidence. In an application in the constitutional court seen by Reuters, the "state capture" inquiry is seeking an order that Zuma is guilty of contempt of court for not turning up last week or providing affidavits when instructed to do so. The inquiry is examining allegations of high-level graft during Zuma's period in power from 2009 to 2018.

  • Using trade ties to secure doses, Chile moves fast on COVID-19 vaccination drive

    Chile is streaking ahead of the rest of Latin America in its campaign to vaccinate its population against the coronavirus, which the Andean country's leaders hope can help not only beat back the virus but also unite the nation. As of Feb. 18, the copper-producing country had given over 2.5 million doses of vaccine, enough for around one shot for 12 in every hundred people, according to Our World in Data. It could fully vaccinate 10% of its population with two doses per person in just over 20 days at its current rate, Reuters data show.