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Bridge: April 8, 2023

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

“Simple Saturday” columns focus on basic technique and logical thinking.It may be well to put all your eggs in one basket, then keep an eye on the basket. But if yours tends to leak, you may need an extra basket.Today’s North-South bid easily to 3NT. South’s jump to 2NT promised a balanced 18 to 20 points, and North had an easy raise. West led the deuce of spades. When East played low to prevent dummy’s king from becoming an entry, South’s queen won.DOWN ONESouth next led the jack and a second diamond to dummy’s king. When no ace appeared, he gave up on the diamonds and led a club to finesse with his jack, losing. He won only two tricks in each suit: down one.South’s play wasn’t eggsactly best. He should lead a diamond to dummy’s ten at Trick Two, then try a club to his eight. If West won with the nine or ten and, say, shifted to a heart, South could win and lead a diamond to dummy. He would be safe if a defender held A-x o...

Word Game: April 8, 2023

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

TODAY’S WORD — NEAREST (NEAREST: NEAR-est: At or within a short distance.)Average mark 40 wordsTime limit 60 minutesCan you find 58 or more words in NEAREST? The list will be published Monday.YESTERDAY’S WORD — SAINTLY sail saint salt salty sanity satin satiny silt silty slain slant slanty slat slay slit snail snit stain stay alit anti antsy inlay inly nail nastily nasty tail tansy tiny lain laity last lint linty liny list litanyTo purchase the Word Game book, visit WordGameBooks.com. Order it now for just $5 while supplies last!RULES OF THE GAME:1. Words must be of four or more letters.2. Words that acquire four letters by the addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed.3. Additional words made by adding a “d” or an “s” may not be used. For example, if “bake” is used, “baked” or “bakes” are not allowed, but “bake” and “baking” are admissible.4. Proper nouns, slang words, or vulgar or sexually explicit words are not allowed.Contact Word Game cr...

Twitter Deploys Classic Musk Tactics to Hunt Down Leaker

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

Twitter last month submitted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to GitHub — a web service designed to host user-uploaded source code — demanding that certain content be taken down because it was allegedly “[p]roprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools.” Twitter subsequently filed a declaration in federal court supporting its request for a DMCA subpoena, the ostensible aim of which was “to identify the alleged infringer or infringers who posted Twitter’s source code on systems operated by GitHub without Twitter’s authorization.”However, Twitter appears to have revised its DMCA notice, essentially a claim of copyright infringement, the same day it was filed to request not only information about the uploader, but also “any related upload / download / access history (and any contact info, IP addresses, or other session info related to same), and any associated logs related to this repo or any forks thereof.” In other words, Twitter is now seeking infor...

2 Woodbridge teenagers charged in shooting that left 15-year-old injured

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

The sheriff’s office in Stafford County, Virginia, has arrested and charged two 17-year-old boys from Woodbridge in a shooting that left another teenager injured on Thursday.In a news release, deputies said the two suspects traveled to Stafford where they got into a fight with a 15-year-old boy. The fight escalated into a shooting, leaving the 15-year-old with a serious gunshot wound to his back and one of the 17-year-old suspects with a bullet wound to his leg.Around 4 p.m. on Thursday, deputies located the injured 15-year-old boy at the Park Ridge Community Pool on Parkway Boulevard. He was flown to a hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries.Deputies said the teen was still being treated for his injuries on Friday.By the time deputies arrived, the two Woodbridge teens had fled the scene and discarded their guns. Deputies with the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office later found three firearms in the woods after searching for around three hours.Deputies and...

US Supreme Court justice defends ‘family trips’ with Republican megadonor

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday defended the luxury vacations that he accepted from a Republican megadonor for more than two decades and kept secret from the public. His brief statement came in response to a ProPublica report that revealed the lavish trips that Thomas took with Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate billionaire.“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said in the statement. “I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.”Thomas said he and his wife have joined Crow and his wife “on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”He also pointed to recent changes that tightened the regulations governing judges’ annual finan...

Leaked military documents on Ukraine battlefield operations circulated as early as March

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

A tranche of leaked documents that detail plans about Ukraine’s spring military offensive circulated online as early as March — a month earlier than previously reported, according to researchers with Bellingcat and a review of social media postings.The batch includes more pages than originally known and also outlines sensitive information about other global hotspots.The Ukraine-specific documents, photographed and distributed on myriad social media sites, outline everything from Ukraine’s readiness and training capabilities to death tolls on the battlefield. They date from the end of February to the end of March — around the same time as senior American generals hosted the Ukrainian military at a U.S. base in Germany to wargame the spring operation.The materials that circulated in early March were uploaded on a Discord, an encrypted messaging app. They appear to be photos of slide deck printouts that were folded up and then smoothed out again. They have since been pos...

Iraq, Syria’s Kurdish leader condemn attack on airport

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

BAGHDAD (AP) — The commander of the main U.S.-backed force in Syria and Iraq’s presidency Saturday condemned what they say was a Turkish attack on an airport in northern Iraq. Iraq’s presidency called the late Friday explosion in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region a “flagrant aggression against Iraq and its sovereignty” in the area. It called on Turkey to issue a formal apology, saying it should not continue “terrorizing” Iraqis in the north. There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials. Turkey has spent years fighting Kurdish militants in its east and large Kurdish communities also live in neighboring Iraq and Syria, where they have a degree of self-rule.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition war monitor, and some local media reported Friday that the explosion next to the Suleimaniyah International Airport was a Turkish drone attack targeting Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The blast came days after Turkey clo...

Nuggets journal: Kevin Durant sees something special in Peyton Watson. “He has everything right now.”

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

PHOENIX – It was a mistake Peyton Watson probably won’t make in a year or two. But at this stage in his nascent career, it could be considered a growing pain.Ultimately, it was a valuable one.The Nuggets held an improbable 107-106 lead with barely four minutes left Thursday night at Phoenix. Down all five starters, Denver’s deep reserves had momentarily become its bench, and its bench had transformed into its starters. That placed Watson, whose recent emergence has made the final stretch of regular season games bearable, on the floor, in crunch time, against his mentor, Kevin Durant.As Suns guard Chris Paul rolled down a screen on the right side of the lane, Watson shaded over to defend the weak side. In doing so, Watson left one of the game’s greatest scorers unattended. Paul found Durant waiting in the corner. What followed was the inevitable splash.Watson, the long, rangy, 6-foot-7 ball of clay Denver drafted late in the first round a year ago, was trying to help. But it was a me...

With final games before Women’s World Cup around the corner, Coloradans prepare for pressure, new era

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

While the pressure on the Coloradans of the United States Women’s National Team is zeroing in, Windsor native Sophia Smith is more than happy to admit it’s a new era.Smith spoke earlier this week ahead of USWNT’s final tune-up matches with a pair of games against fellow World Cup qualifiers Republic of Ireland Saturday at Q2 Stadium in Austin, as the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup kicks off in July in Australia and New Zealand. A second game against the Irish will be held Tuesday, April 11 at the new CITYPARK in downtown St. Louis.“I don’t know if I’d refer to it as a villain era as I’m a sweet, happy person,” Smith started her answer Wednesday. “I think on the field, yeah, I don’t play games. I don’t step on a field to do anything but win and I take a lot of pride in that.“So, I think I guess this era is just winning. And doing everything I can to do that to help my team.”Smith has missed the last two ...

Avalanche journal: Avs have climbed all the way back from sixth place in division, but two recent wins could loom over them — in a bad way

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 10:02:14 GMT

Trying to put the Avalanche’s 2022-23 season into perspective is more daunting and nuanced than it was a year ago.Has something felt off, like consistency is harder to come by? Is that just the residue of high expectations after a dominant championship run combined with a high injury rate? Are the Avs about to repeat? Are they doomed to an early playoff ending?Winning a Stanley Cup can naturally make sorting through the labels of a successful vs. unsuccessful season more challenging, especially a season as bumpy as this one. The perception has changed in Denver. So has the roster.What hasn’t changed is that the Avalanche are one of the top teams in the West as they prepare for a sixth consecutive year of playoff hockey. They’ve come a long way to get to the point where they’re playing for something more than a playoff spot. But weirdly enough, two wins could loom over them in the final week — in a bad way.How did the Avs get to this point? After losing ...