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‘Frasier’ returns to TV but you don’t need to be a superfan of the original to laugh at its jokes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

You could say Joe Cristalli tweeted his role as co-executive producer and co-showrunner on the new “Frasier” sitcom into existence. About 10 years ago as a fledgling TV writer and “Frasier” super fan, Cristalli started a Twitter account with “random jokes” about the show and character made famous by Kelsey Grammer in the sitcoms “Cheers” and “Frasier.”“It was stupid and nobody cared about it. I think I had maybe 3,000 followers at its height,” he recalled in a recent interview.At this point, “Frasier” had been off the air for 10 years, but Cristalli used it as “an outlet to practice writing because I was such a super fan and I just loved the style of joke-telling, so I would work on it.”A few years later, Cristalli read that Grammer was interested in reviving the character. He had his agent send a sample script and examples from his “Frasier”-centric Twitter feed to Grammer’s team. He was eventually hired alongside “How I Met Your Mother” writer Chris Harris ...

Afghans reel from the earthquake that killed thousands

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

ZINDA JAN, Afghanistan (AP) — People dug through the rubble of the quake in western Afghanistan for their few possessions but the material losses seemed unimportant.Saturday’s 6.3 magnitude quake killed and injured thousands when it leveled an untold number of homes in Herat province. Picking through the rubble on Monday, Asadullah Khan paused to think about a future marred by grief. Khan lost three daughters, his mother and his sister-in-law. Five members of his uncle’s family have died. His neighbors are grief-stricken, too.“We have lost 23 people in this village,” Khan said.Mounds of rubble flank the road winding through Zinda Jan district. Some door frames remain standing. There were few people in sight on Monday.The Taliban-appointed deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and his team visited the quake-affected region Monday to deliver “immediate relief assistance” and ensure “equitable and accurate distribution of aid,” authorities said.Top U.N offici...

Stock market today: Oil prices climb following the latest Gaza war, but stocks rise on rate hopes

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices are climbing Monday on worries about the possible ramifications of violence in the Middle East. The stock market is less fearful, though, and flipped from early losses to gains. The S&P 500 was 0.7% higher in late trading following some potentially encouraging news on interest rates, which have been dragging Wall Street mainly lower since the summer. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 195 points, or 0.6%, with less than an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher. All three indexes perked higher after two officials at the Federal Reserve suggested they may not need to raise interest rates again at their next meeting Nov. 1, because a jump in longer-term bond yields may be helping to cool inflation without further market-rattling hikes by the Fed. That gave stocks some oxygen and helped them erase modest losses from the morning. The S&P 500 had sagged by 0.6% in its first trading after Hamas launched a surprise attack...

Human remains found at Toronto’s Cherry Beach

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

Toronto’s homicide unit has been notified after human remains were discovered at Cherry Beach on Monday.Investigators were notified of a suspicious incident at the Port Lands beach, located in the Cherry Street and Unwin Avenue area.Police said they received reports of human remains on the beach at around 10 a.m. on Monday, which was later confirmed by responding officers. The remains were spotted by a passerby, authorities said.The homicide unit has been notified. A police spokesperson said no further details could be provided at this time.An investigation is ongoing.SUSPICIOUS INCIDENT:Cherry Clarke Beach– reports of human remains on the beach– officers o/s have confirmed – Homicide has been notified– no further details to provide at this time– the investigation is ongoing#GO2349570^sc— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) October 9, 2023

Sudan and Iran resume diplomatic relations severed 7 years ago, promising to ‘open embassies soon’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan and Iran announced in a joint statement Monday the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries after a seven-year hiatus.Khartoum cut ties with Tehran in 2016 after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Arabian embassy in Iran. The oil-rich kingdom had executed a prominent Shiite cleric with 46 others days earlier, triggering demonstrations and severing Saudi-Iranian relations. At the time, Sudan was a close ally of Saudi Arabia and had deployed troops to fight in the Saudi coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen.“Both countries agreed to take the necessary measure to open embassies in the two countries soon,” Sudan’s foreign ministry said in an online statement. Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and his Sudanese counterpart, Ali al-Sadiq, met in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku in July, the first known high-level meeting between the two countries since 2016. “The two sides agreed to enhance...

Israel seals off Gaza after attacks by Hamas; Americans among the dead

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel increased airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and sealed it off from food, fuel, and other supplies in retaliation for a bloody incursion by Hamas militants, as the war's death toll rose to nearly 1,600 on both sides. Hamas also escalated on Monday, pledging to kill captured Israelis if attacks targeted civilians without warnings.The State Department said at least nine American citizens have been killed in the Hamas attack on Israel. It said an undetermined number of American citizens remain unaccounted for. It was not yet clear if the missing are dead, in hiding, or had been taken hostage.In the war's third day, Israel was still finding bodies from Hamas' stunning weekend attack into southern Israeli towns. Rescue workers found 100 bodies in the tiny farming community of Beeri — around 10% of its population — after a long hostage standoff with gunmen. In Gaza, tens of thousands fled their homes as relentless airstrikes leveled buildings. State Departmen...

Mark Wahlberg on leaving California for Las Vegas: 'Everybody’s happy'

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

(KTLA) - Mark Wahlberg says he has no regrets about leaving Los Angeles for Las Vegas a year ago.In 2022, the actor told The Talk that he moved his family to the Silver State to give his kids a "better life."Wahlberg is married to model Rhea Durham, and the couple has four children."Everybody's adapted nicely. The kids are all out at school, and everybody's happy," the actor told PEOPLE magazine in an exclusive report.Mark Wahlberg hosts the opening of F45 Training at Miramar MCAs. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for F45 Training)“I want to be able to work from home. I moved to California many years ago to pursue acting, and I’ve only made a couple of movies in the entire time that I was there,” he said at the time. “So, to be able to give my kids a better life and follow and pursue their dreams, whether it be my daughter as an equestrian, my son as a basketball player, my younger son as a golfer, this made a lot more sense for us.” Mark Wahlberg hints he may quit acti...

New species of sea snail, Cayo margarita, named with Jimmy Buffett in mind

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

(The Hill) -- It’s 5 o’clock somewhere for a new species of sea snail, Cayo margarita, whose name was inspired by the late singer Jimmy Buffett.The creatures, native to the Florida Reef, were named in a study published Monday in the journal PeerJ.The “margarita” in the mollusk’s name is a reference to “the vividly lemon-yellow coloration that this species shares with the citrus-juice-based cocktail drink,” according to the study cited in the journal.The study’s author, biologist Rüdiger Bieler, told CNN that the snail serves as an underwater tribute to “Margaritaville” singer Buffett, who died last month at 76.“In some ways, our team was no stranger to the regional signature drink. And of course, Jimmy Buffett’s music,” Bieler said.“So when we came up with a species name, we really wanted to allude to the color of the drink and the fact that it lives in the Florida Keys,” Bieler said, noting that he’s a “bit of a Parrothead,” the term Buffett fans are known ...

How common is long COVID among children?

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

(The Hill) -- New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has shed light on the rate at which long COVID affects children, indicating the condition occurs among only a small minority of them.In a new survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the CDC found that 1.3 percent of children had long COVID in 2022 and 0.5 percent now have it. Long COVID is the condition that manifests following a COVID-19 infection through a wide variety of different symptoms. Reported symptoms include general fatigue, changes in mental health, neurological changes or even organ damage.Lingering post-infection conditions are not exclusive to COVID. UK researchers recently found that lingering symptoms can be detected in people recovering from other non-COVID respiratory illnesses.The majority of people who contract infections are believed to recover without developing long COVID, though the exact rate at which it occurs is unclear as a consensus on what can...

Gov. Greg Abbott extends Texas' 'complete support' to Israel amid Hamas attack

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:09:38 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared his condemnation of the Hamas' attacks on Israel and announced Monday an allocation of extra funds to protect Jewish organizations statewide.More than 1,000 people have died since the attack began this weekend, according to reporting from NBC News. RELATED: Austin rabbi reacts to outbreak of Israel-Hamas war “The State of Texas condemns these heinous acts of violence and inhumanity against Israel and its people by ruthless terrorists, and we stand ready to offer our complete support to the Israeli and Jewish communities,” Abbott said in the release. “I firmly denounce the act of war against Israeli citizens and Americans in Israel and support Israel’s right to defend itself from these barbaric attacks. Working with local partners across Texas, we are actively increasing security at Jewish and Israel-related locations such as synagogues and schools. In response to these cowardly attacks, we stand united with our Jewish neighbors a...