It’s just plain good to start a new year on a happy note. My 2018 has been terrific so far (I’ve skied every day) and I hope it continues. Take New Year’s Day, for example. It’s something of a tradition…

What’s for Dinner: This week in his video blog, Republican-American photojournalist and home cook Steven Valenti shows how to make blueberry scones. Related

WASHINGTON (AP) — The descriptions are haunting. Some victims felt fine in the morning and were dead by night. Faces turned blue as patients coughed up blood. Stacked bodies outnumbered coffins. A century after one of history’s most catastrophic disease…

Fried rice needs to be crisp and flavorful. That’s the key to this pork fried rice. Chinese restaurants use special equipment to get their woks very hot. For home cooking, add the ingredients and let them sit for one or…

MOSCOW (AP) — Even thermometers can’t keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia’s remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas Tuesday. In Yakutia — a region of 1 million people…

BERLIN (AP) — German linguists have declared the phrase “alternative facts,” popularized by White House aide Kellyanne Conway, the non-word of 2017. Conway used the phrase last year when asked why President Donald Trump’s then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer mischaracterized the…

MILAN (AP) — Mialan has long been the world’s ready-to-wear fashion leader. Now, dogs are getting in on the Italian city’s sartorial scene with a new line of haute couture for canines. Dog a Porter, by the Milan brand Temellini,…

DETROIT — It’s the year of the pickup truck at the 2018 North American International Auto Show in Detroit as General Motors, but an American classic made popular in a Steve McQueen movie was the star Sunday. The auto show…

This is how the great horned owl presents itself. Not always, but most often. If you’re lucky, or diligent, you may see it perched in silhouette at dusk as it begins its nightly hunt or see it on a clutch…

The signs are everywhere: The motorcycle industry is wobbling and possibly heading for a crash. Older riders are gradually giving up motorcycling and new, younger riders aren’t replacing them and engaging in what is an exhilarating (if occasionally dangerous) recreation….

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — An ongoing shortage of fluids used to deliver medicine and treat dehydrated patients has hospital workers scrambling in the midst of a nasty flu season and supplies from factories in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico have been slow…

PARIS (AP) — French prosecutors have opened an investigation into Apple over revelations it secretly slowed down older versions of its handsets. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday a probe was opened last week over alleged “deception and planned obsolescence”…

LONDON (AP) — Kensington Palace has released two images of Princess Charlotte as she begins her first day at nursery school. The 2-year-old is shown on the steps of the palace in one photo and standing holding onto a rail…

The highly anticipated wear-black protest at the Golden Globes took off Sunday as soon as the red carpet opened, including A-listers Meryl Streep in a deep V-cut gown and Michelle Williams in an embellished off-the-shoulder look with “Me Too” founder…

At the end of December, a Hartford Superior Court judge rejected as “wholly frivolous” a lawsuit to assign legal personhood to three elephants – Beulah, Karen and Minnie – at the R.W. Commerford & Sons zoo in Goshen. In its…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lynn Tran and Richard Hazen built a Florida beachfront treehouse that would be the envy of any child. It’s got two levels, hammocks and windows looking out on the Gulf of Mexico. But the hangout has cost…

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday advised against making the pursuit of money, a career or success the basis for one’s whole life, urging in his Epiphany remarks to also resist “inclinations toward arrogance, the thirst for power…

Ford Fairlane is down to earth Related

As the year was drawing to a close, Merriam-Webster named “feminism” 2017’s word of the year. The American dictionary publisher said the word, which it defines as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” barely…

I went on another Christmas Bird Count last weekend. It was horrendous. Saturday, Dec. 23, was as ugly a day as we’ve endured in 2017. It was cold, but not cold enough for snow. It was just a daylong soaking…