- Monday, 29 December 2025
AP
Uvalde school board fires police chief after mass shooting
The Uvalde school district fired police chief Pete Arredondo on Wednesday under mounting pressure in the grieving Texas town to punish officers over letting a gunman at Robb Elementary School remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than an hour with an AR-15 style rifle as 19 children and two teachers were killed.
US airstrikes target militia-controlled areas in east Syria
The U.S. military said early Wednesday it carried out airstrikes in eastern Syria that targeted areas used by militias backed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
3 Arkansas officers suspended after video captures beating
Federal authorities said Monday they have started a civil rights investigation following the suspension of three Arkansas law enforcement officers after a video posted on social media showed two of them beating a man while a third officer held him on the ground.
Trump’s turbulent White House years culminate in Fla. search
Mounds of paper piled on his desk. Framed magazine covers and keepsakes line the walls. One of Shaquille O’Neal’s giant sneakers displayed alongside football helmets, boxing belts, and other sports memorabilia, crowding his Trump Tower office and limiting table space.
Car blast kills daughter of Russian known as ‘Putin’s brain’
The daughter of an influential Russian political theorist often referred to as “Putin’s brain” was killed in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow, authorities said Sunday.
Indonesia announces its first case of monkeypox
A man in Indonesia has tested positive for monkeypox, making him the country’s first confirmed case of the disease, authorities said late Saturday.
African migratory birds threatened by hot, dry weather
Africa’s migratory birds are threatened by changing weather patterns in the centre and east of the continent that has depleted natural water systems and caused a devastating drought.
For hire or food, garden sitters save the day during summer
By LEANNE ITALIENEW YORK, Aug 19 : Take my chard, please! The season has come when many home gardeners, their numbers booming since the pandemic began, are being rewarded with fully matured, ready-to-pick vegetables and flowers. It’s also vacation season, and this summer travel is back.How do you maintain your garden and take advantage of all that homegrown goodness during extended trips away? Even experienced gardeners can end up with more tomatoes, beans and zucchini than they’d expected come late summer.Garden sitters are one answer.Some home gardeners hire professionals, while many just rely on neighbors and hope for the best.“It’s really hard to leave the garden,” said Theresa Fiumano-Rhatigan, a longtime home gardener in Brooklyn. She relies on her parents and other nearby relatives as garden sitters during her five weeks each summer in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “Nobody does it quite as I do.”Having an experienced sitter who isn’t afraid to take control can help. Avoid a free-for-all of inexperienced neighbors and friends traipsing through to pick what they want with no care given to the plants and no idea when to water.“The first thing is to find one friend with a garden you like and make sure you’re willing to return the favor,” said Adam Cooper, associate director for outdoor gardens and sustainable horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. He suggests walking your garden sitter through the process beforehand to make sure things are done just right. Setting up sprinklers or soaker hoses will make things easier while you’re away. For container gardens, group the containers together in the shade so your plants won’t dry out as quickly if your vacation is just a week or two, Chopper said. Some gardeners place containers in kiddy pools with water that a garden sitter needs only to fill up if necessary.Chopper also recommends putting down mulch before heading out for long periods. That helps the soil conserve water and keeps weeds at bay.For gardeners without trusted neighbors or loved ones, garden sitters for hire are abundant on local online message boards or at nurseries and horticultural societies.Rachel Mulkerin tends to about 3,000 square feet of garden space on her 9-acre property in Sherman, Connecticut, and has hired special needs helpers she found through her mother, a former adult education teacher.“It’s a wildly mutually beneficial arrangement,” she said.Mulkerin uses about half of what she produces for herself and her family and gives away the rest to those in need in her community.Through time, gardens have offered a sense of safety and comfort, so entrusting them to others can be difficult, said Ambra Edwards, a gardening historian, and co-author of “The Story of Gardening.”Edwards, who gardens herself in England’s rural Dorset, considers the holiday a reprieve from the toil, but she knows a lot of manic gardeners who can’t tear themselves away.“I’ve got one friend in particular and she has to travel a lot. She travels the length and breadth of the country. And when she does, she takes all her vegetable plants, all her sweet peas, and a particular myrtle in a pot that she got from a very dear friend, now deceased, and loads them in the car. They go with her. She’s the snail carrying a house,” Edwards said. Gardeners, generally speaking, are sharers, and sharing vegetables while away not only produces more after picking but also avoids rotting tomatoes and other crops.“Rotten tomatoes will cause other tomatoes to rot, and they’re also really smelly,” Chopper said.Some vegetables, like cucumbers and zucchini, need to be picked so they don’t grow into monsters that aren’t as pleasant to eat.A designated garden sitter can take what they want and leave the rest on a front porch or at the end of a driveway after putting out the word of free fresh food.Heather Grabin in Hampton, New Jersey, has 10 garden plots on her 40-acre property. She also owns a cafe in a city an hour away that doesn’t have access to much fresh produce. She uses her vegetables and herbs at her restaurant and sells some of her excesses there at a low cost. Grabin had to delay a three-week trip to California this year because of a new school schedule for her two kids. By the time she and her family left, her tomatoes and zucchini were abundant. With such an overwhelming amount, she went the hired garden sitter route.“It’s different when you’re doing it yourself versus when you have to ask someone else to do it for you,” she said. “He’s been flash freezing everything. It’s a lot.”Doug Guttenberg and his wife, Tal, grow herbs in their backyard and vegetables in a community garden plot just a few minutes from their Brooklyn home. They also own a house in Detroit and spend a month in Michigan every summer. They entrust their Brooklyn plants to a neighbor, a fellow gardener, and know firsthand what happens without a sitter after choosing to forgo one last year.“When we came back, the cucumbers had attacked everything,” Tal said. “It was like this tornado of cucumbers. It was a bit crazy, and they didn’t even fruit. I mean, no cucumbers came of it.”
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Salman Rushdie attacker ‘surprised’ the author survived
The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack.
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Flooding forces Bangladesh family to flee
When the Meghna River swallowed Mohammad Jewel and Arzu Begum’s tin-roofed family home overnight in southern Bangladesh just over a year ago they had no choice but to leave their ancestral village.
Bombing at Kabul mosque kills 10, including prominent cleric
A bombing at a mosque in the Afghan capital of Kabul during evening prayers on Wednesday killed at least 10 people, including a prominent cleric, and wounded at least 27, an eyewitness and police said.
Mideast’s Jordan River: Rich in holiness, poor in water
Kristen Burckhardt felt overwhelmed. She needed time to reflect, to let it sink in that she had just briefly soaked her feet in the water where Jesus is said to have been baptized, in the Jordan River.
Prehistoric fish may spawn in Georgia: 1st time in 50 years
Scientists and students embarking on a census of Georgia lake sturgeon have found three females with mature eggs — an indication the armored “living fossils” may be reproducing in that state for the first time in a half-century.
Murkowski advances in Alaska Senate race, Palin in House
Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka have advanced from Tuesday’s primary, while Republican Sarah Palin, seeking a political comeback, was among the candidates advancing to the November general election in the race for Alaska’s only House seat.
Explosions rock Crimea in suspected Ukrainian attack
Explosions and fires ripped through an ammunition depot in Russian-occupied Crimea on Tuesday in the second suspected Ukrainian attack on the peninsula in just over a week, forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 people.
