Last Surviving 'wizard Of Oz,' Munchkin Jerry Maren Dies

A judge Monday rejected a U. S. Department of Justice request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Tallahassee-based companies that face the possibility of being prevented from working on federally funded projects after being affiliated with an engineering firm that designed a collapsed Florida International University pedestrian bridge. U. S. District Judge Allen Winsor issued a seven-page decision that will allow the lawsuit, filed by a group of companies and owner Linda Figg, to move forward.

For a period of time on Dec. 30, anyone tuning into the X account of Ford Motor Company could see three pro-Palestinian tweets that had nothing to do with the car company’s business. “Free Palestine

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer U. S. stock indexes are losing ground in afternoon trading Tuesday, on pace for a downbeat finish for Wall Street as it closes out another milestone-shattering year of gains. The S&P 500 gave up an early gain and was down 0.6%. The benchmark index is coming off back-to-back declines of more than 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 113 points, or 0.3%, as of 2:04 p.m.

The Israeli government plans to offset wartime spending and an economic slowdown with tax hikes and deep cuts to public services. But the proposed budget for 2025 also includes a massive new allocation: toward pro-Israel advocacy efforts abroad. Under the new budget, Israel’s Foreign Ministry will receive $150 million, on top of what it gets for its existing activities, for what’s officially known as public diplomacy, or in Hebrew, hasbara.

By BRIDGET BROWN, Associated Press New York (AP) — A new year is the time to set new goals. Yet studies have shown that most people don’t tend to uphold their New Year’s resolutions much past the first month. In an attempt to reframe the thinking around new year goal-setting, a new wellness trend has popped up online.

Victor Brombert, 101, a literature scholar and World War II hero Victor Brombert fled the Nazis for America as a teen, and went on to a distinguished career as a professor of comparative literature at Yale and Princeton Universities. But while analyzing others’ stories he kept one of his own hidden: During World War II, he worked for a secret American intelligence unit that deployed multilingual refugees in the fight against Hitler. Brombert revealed his role only in 2004, in the acclaimed documentary “The Ritchie Boys,” named for the Maryland base where they trained. Until then, he had been known mainly for his scholarship on French culture, literary tropes and authors including Stendhal, Flaubert and Victor Hugo. Born in Germany to Russian-Jewish parents, he grew up in Paris but fled to the United States during the German occupation of France, experiences he recounted in a highly regarded memoir, “Trains of Thought: Memories of a Stateless Youth” (2002).