P.J. O’Rourke, the great satirist and journalist who championed liberty with humor, died on Tuesday at the age of 74. O’Rourke, born in Toledo, Ohio in 1947, came to embrace a fusion of conservatism and libertarianism in the 1970s after a period in his youth as a self-described left-wing hippie. Over the course of his…
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Turn the pages of Stephen White‘s new book on California photography and every so often a familiar name or image jumps out. Dorothea Lange’s iconic 1936 photograph of a migrant mother is here. One of Ansel Adams‘ pictures of Yosemite in winter shows up too. But then you stop, unable to turn away from a…
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BEIJING — The British have clinched their first medal of the Beijing Games, thanks to Bruce Mouat and the men’s curling team. Four Scottish lads beat the American defending Olympic champions 8-4 in the semifinals Thursday night to clinch no worse than a silver medal and earn the right to play Sweden for the gold.…
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Mortgage rates soared again this week, approaching levels not seen since 2019. The average rate on a 30-year loan reached 3.92%, up from 3.69% the previous week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. A year ago, the long-term rate was 2.81%. The last time the 30-year rate was higher was in May of 2019 when…
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LOS ANGELES — A disbarred personal injury lawyer who operated in Irvine, Los Angeles and El Segundo faces sentencing Thursday for stealing the majority of a multimillion-dollar settlement that should have been paid to a car accident victim, as well as cheating on his taxes. Philip Layfield was found guilty of 22 counts, including wire…
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LOS ANGELES — The number of annual high-risk fire days in Southern California could double by 2100 thanks to steady temperature increases brought on by climate change, according to a UCLA study released Thursday. The study, published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, found that in terms of actual acreage burned in the…
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I don’t get it. If none of us will “look back on our lives and regret the things we didn’t buy,” as celebrity spokesperson Ewan McGregor purred in the Super Bowl Expedia commercial, then why am I so vexed by which cryptocurrency to hoard? Or which electric vehicle to plug in? And doesn’t anyone sell…
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By TOM KRISHER | The Associated Press DETROIT — U.S. auto safety regulators have launched another investigation of Tesla, this time tied to complaints that its cars can stop on roads for no apparent reason. The government says it has 354 complaints from owners during the past nine months about “phantom braking” in Tesla Models…
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As the greatest inflation spike of the last 50 years occurs, the utter failure of economists, their models and many pundits to foresee what was coming is worth highlighting. Of course, the biggest malfunction in the story was that of the Federal Reserve itself, which had a clear mandate to keep prices stable, and seems…
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At the Ravens’ offseason planning meetings in the Bahamas last month, team officials talked about how they should spend and how they can spend more. This is one of the most important offseasons in franchise history. It also might be among their least flexible. “I think we’ll have enough salary cap room to do everything…
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