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TasteFood: Bake up a batch of these easy, zesty lemon bars

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

It’s easy to be greedy with citrus when summer fruits are a mere warm weather promise. Early spring is high season for lemons, and these bars will bring a warming ray of sunshine to your plate.The key to a good lemon bar, in my book, is that the filling must be intensely lemony. It should pack a wallop of puckery tartness balanced by just enough sweetness without being cloying. For this task, rely on the Eureka lemon, the ubiquitous lemon readily found in our markets. They have the requisite tartness for these bars, which their sunny cousin, the Meyer lemon, lacks. No knocks to Meyers — they are delicious in their own right. However, they’re likened to a cross between a lemon and a tangerine and are noted for their sweetness and lack of tartness.The infallible Eureka lemon will deliver the zingy, cheek-sucking filling you want for these bars. A thick curd, rippling with lemon zest, is spread over a simple, supportive shortbread crust. A smidge of sea salt is a fina...

What’s the reason for Oakland kitten’s intense bedtime kneading?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

DEAR JOAN: I adopted my cat, Chong, when he was 3 months old. He is now 10 months old. I have had cats all my life.Chong has been neutered, has a chip and has all of his shots. The one thing I can’t figure out is when we go to bed, he has a cushion he sleeps on and a fluffy pillow, but instead of sleeping on them, he kneads them. His body gets stiff and tight, including his tail.I never have seen that with my other cats. Is there a reason for this?— Phil Wilson, OaklandDEAR PHIL: This actually is common behavior in cats and nothing to worry about. Kneading cushions, blankets, pillows and, on occasion, humans is a sign of contentment and happiness. Cats find it relaxing, and Chong is simply winding down and getting ready for a nice nap.Kneading in an instinct from birth. Kittens gently knead their mothers to help with the flow of milk. If kittens are taken from their mothers early, they often suckle on the things they are kneading. You often see this behavior at bedtime, too, a...

What happens to mixed martial arts athletes when the fighting is over?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

Fighting doesn’t last forever.Retired mixed martial arts fighter and San Jose native Josh Thomson knows that now.The 44-year-old, who grew up on the east side and earned the nickname “The Punk,” came up at a time when the sport — which combines a wide range of martial arts styles from jiu-jitsu to karate — started gaining widespread popularity.In the early 2000s, around the time of his debut, he remembers making $4,000 from a fight. As an early 20-something, he thought he was rich. Then the money was gone.“I was at the club that night, bottle service, buying bottles, I was going on vacation the following week and literally it was gone within a week and a half to two weeks,” said Thomson, whose 5′ 10”, 155-pound stature put him in the lightweight division.It’s a problem he knows is still common among young fighters today — many of whom, he said, never learned how to save or invest their money.“They don’t ge...

Increase Your YouTube Views With The Best YouTube Promotion Service

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

Sponsored ContentWhether YouTube is your passion or you are just trying out something new, views on your videos are usually the defining factor for your channel. Views turn into subscribers, and together they have the power to get you to monetization.If you’re new on the platform, you are constantly ideating, writing scripts, shooting videos, editing them, and then doing your promotion. To make things easy for yourself, you can use some expert promotional help.The best way to solve your YouTube problems is with YouTube promotional services. Many of these services provide a one-stop solution for your YouTube channel’s performance. But unfortunately, a lot of them sell bots to boost your YouTube views, which will bring you no real engagement and crush your dreams of becoming an established YouTuber.So to increase YouTube views, you need VeeFly.VeeFly is an official Google Partner, and they promote your videos to a larger target audience through Google ads. This service checks all the ...

Bay Area cities struggle to balance housing mandates, wildfire risks

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

ORINDA — How can cities balance new state guidelines restricting development in high-risk wildfire zones with parallel — and often conflicting — mandates for aggressive housing construction?In vulnerable areas like Orinda, where virtually the entire hillside city is subject to high fire risk, many local leaders say they are doing the best they can. But critics who think they aren’t doing enough to keep the city safe have reached out to the California Superior Court to weigh in on the conflict.Orinda is home to nearly 20,000 residents living across roughly 13 square miles of rolling, dense hills and secluded valleys nestled in between Berkeley and Walnut Creek along Highway 24.In January, the Orinda City Council adopted “Plan Orinda,” a roadmap to meet the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s lofty mandate to build 1,359 new units of housing by 2031. This looming need to boost residential housing development sparked rezoning efforts, including on Orinda’...

U.N. chief warns humanity “on thin ice” as new climate report details urgent need to cut emissions

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — U.N. chief warns humanity “on thin ice” as new climate report details urgent need to cut emissions.Source

The Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced disparities in healthcare, report says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010 by former President Barack Obama, has expanded health insurance coverage across the U.S. and significantly reduced racial and ethnic disparities in access to healthcare, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.Coverage inequities between Black, Hispanic, and white adults have narrowed substantially since 2013. All groups reported improvements between 2019 and 2021. (The Commonwealth Fund)“Since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped cut the U.S. uninsured rate nearly in half while significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in both insurance coverage and access to care — particularly in states that expanded their Medicaid programs,” reads the report.Data shows that prior to the 2013 implementation of the Medicaid expansion — a provision of the ACA that made more families eligible for Medicaid coverage — 40.2% of the Hispanic population, 24.4% of the Black population, and 14.5% of the White...

School library book bans are seen as targeting LGBTQ content

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Teri Patrick bristles at the idea she wants to ban books about LGBTQ issues in Iowa schools, arguing her only goal is ridding schools of sexually explicit material. Sara Hayden Parris says that whatever you want to call it, it’s wrong for some parents to think a book shouldn’t be readily available to any child if it isn’t right for their own child.The viewpoints of the two mothers from suburban Des Moines underscore a divide over LGBTQ content in books as Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds pushes an especially sweeping crackdown on content in Iowa school libraries. The bill she’s backing could result in the removal of books from school libraries in all of the state’s 327 districts if they’re successfully challenged in any one of them.School boards and legislatures nationwide also are facing questions about books and considering making it easier to limit access.“We’re seeing these challenges arise in almost every state of the union,” sa...

Speaker of Czech parliament’s lower house to visit Taiwan

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

PRAGUE (AP) — The speaker of the Czech Parliament’s lower house is set to visit Taiwan to boost mutual ties, a step that has angered China.Marketa Pekarova Adamova said Monday she will be heading a large delegation on the March 25–30 trip that focuses on business, trade, research, education, culture and other relations.She will be accompanied by around 150 people, including representatives of some 100 Czech companies as well as academia, lawmakers and others.The Czech Republic, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but it maintains robust informal contacts. Taiwan’s high-tech companies are also significant investors in the Czech Republic.Pekarova Adamova said she will meet the island’s leaders, including Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the prime minister, and she will address the Parliament.She said China has warned against the trip.China in recent years has upped its threat to bring Taiwan under its control, by force if necessary, prompting new sales ...

China says deadly 2022 plane crash still being investigated

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:22:55 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — Experts are still investigating the cause of the crash of a China Eastern Airlines jetliner that killed 132 people one year ago, China’s government said Monday.The March 21, 2022, disaster was a rare failure for a Chinese airline industry that dramatically improved safety following deadly crashes in the 1990s. The Boeing 737-800 en route from Kunming in the southwest to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, went into a nosedive from 8,800 meters (29,000 feet), appeared to recover and then slammed into a mountainside. Everyone aboard was killed.The Civil Aviation Administration of China said investigators were reviewing the plane’s controls and other debris but gave no details of what they might have found.“Due to the complexity and rarity of this accident, the investigation is still being carried out,” said a six-sentence statement on the CAAC website. “The investigation team will continue to carry out analysis.”The China Eastern crew reported no problems before losi...