All posts tagged: Empty

What Is ‘Empty Weekend Parenting’?

What Is ‘Empty Weekend Parenting’?

Published by Sam Flores

There are plenty of families who have weekends so jam-packed there’s not a moment to spare. Then there are the families embracing ‘empty weekend parenting’. As the name suggests, empty weekend parenting is about keeping your weekends, well, empty. Instead of rushing around trying to get kids to a combination of extra-curricular activities (football, ballet, swimming, climbing, you name it), alongside the inevitable double-bill birthday party, empty weekend parenting is about clearing the schedule and just seeing where the weekend takes you. After a busy week of school, childcare and work, it’s all about maintaining a relaxed, low-stress environment (well, as low-stress as is possible with kids) and focusing on family bonding with spontaneous activities or prioritising rest. Colin Drury has made a consistent point of keeping his weekends free with his kids. Writing for the i Paper, he said: “We wanted their weekends to be filled with something those clubs don’t necessarily provide: new experiences, variety and spontaneity.” He also noted they wanted to have the odd lie-in, too. (And hey, who can blame …

Afghan migrant jailed after rape leaves woman ‘feeling broken and empty’ | UK | News

Afghan migrant jailed after rape leaves woman ‘feeling broken and empty’ | UK | News

Published by Sam Flores

A migrant from Afghanistan has been jailed for 10 years for the rape of a “vulnerable intoxicated” woman. Musafar Hotak, 25, was convicted after a trial at Southampton Crown Court of the rape and sexual assault by penetration of the woman in the early hours of July 12, 2022. The victim, 22 at the time, was asked to leave the Cafe Parfait bar in Southampton by bouncers for being drunk, the court was told. Hotak then followed her while she attempted to contact her girlfriend. She can be heard telling him to stop on a voicemail sent from her phone. The next thing the victim remembered was waking up in Hotak’s home with him lying on top of her. He then sexually assaulted and raped her, the court heard. She repeatedly told him to stop, but felt unable to get him off because he was using “a lot of force”, the court was told. She contacted the police after she escaped, and an intimate swab taken from her matched Hotak’s DNA. In an impact statement …

How empty offices are becoming homes : NPR

How empty offices are becoming homes : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Two vacant office buildings near the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., are being turned into more than 500 apartments. Valerie Plesch for NPR hide caption toggle caption Valerie Plesch for NPR The room looks like your typical office suite: white walls, low ceilings, gray carpet worn thin from years of foot traffic. But for this vacant office outside Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., real estate developers see potential. Matt Pestronk is the president of Post Brothers, a development company that bought the entire office building back in 2021, along with a neighboring building. Instead of making updates to attract new business tenants, Post Brothers decided to convert the old offices into more than 500 apartments. “ This location is a little bit off the beaten track for major office tenants, and it’s an incredible residential neighborhood,” Pestronk says. “The most obvious use, to us, was to make it into a residential building.” In the former office suite, once home to an AmeriCorps program, Pestronk estimates how many units they can squeeze out of this one …

UK issued empty shelves warning as Spain and Morocco hit by storms | UK | News

UK issued empty shelves warning as Spain and Morocco hit by storms | UK | News

Published by Sam Flores

The impact of storms in Spain and Morocco has led a think tank to warn supermarket shelves are at risk of emptying of some fruits and vegetables. Tom Lancaster from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said it was too soon to say whether recent floods would affect supplies in the UK, but recalled the effects of extreme weather seen in 2023 when Tesco limited the sale of certain fruit and veg. The thinktank’s analysis shows Spain and Morocco combined make up 57.9% of all tomato imports in the UK. Spain also accounts for most cucumbers and sweet peppers sold in this country, at 65.2% and 71.4% respectively. More than one third of the strawberries and raspberries come from Morocco (36%), according to the analysis. A series of winter storms have wrought havoc on Europe in recent weeks, including Storm Kristin and Storm Leonardo, which forced thousands to flee their homes and claimed lives. The storms have destroyed crops in Spain and Morocco, increasing the risk of shortages of some fruit and vegetables. Mr …

Apartments to take over empty office buildings with new L.A. ordinance

Apartments to take over empty office buildings with new L.A. ordinance

Published by Sam Flores

Los Angeles officials just made it easier to convert empty commercial buildings to housing, opening the door to the creation of thousands of apartments across a city clamoring for housing. Developer Garrett Lee already is rolling. After years of struggling to find white-collar tenants for a gleaming office high-rise on the edge of downtown, he has just begun converting its office space into close to 700 apartments. With the new Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance going into effect this month, many more housing conversions are coming to Los Angeles, Lee said. “This is monumental for the city,” he concluded. The ordinance opens the possibility of conversion for many more buildings than the 1999 guidelines, which paved the way for converting older downtown buildings and jump-started a residential renaissance that turned downtown into a viable neighborhood after decades as a commercial district where few wanted to live. The first ordinance applied to buildings erected before 1975 and was focused primarily on downtown. Under the new guidelines, commercial buildings that are merely 15 years old throughout Los Angeles …

The “Melania” movie is empty, foul and worse than we imagined

The “Melania” movie is empty, foul and worse than we imagined

Published by Sam Flores

What do you get the woman who has everything — if “everything” constitutes a collection of ghastly hats, a Grinchian disdain for Christmas and a giant golden cage from which she manages the occasional stiff smile? Well, a documentary, of course! After all, what Melania Trump really needs is busywork. It’s not as if anything in American politics is more pressing for her right now than executive-producing a film about her life in the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration, simply called “Melania.” As its one-word title suggests, “Melania” is as stilted and mind-numbing as its subject, an “intimate” glimpse of one of the world’s most talked-about women that couldn’t be more distant from human emotion if its interminable 104 minutes were just a blank screen with no picture. But it wouldn’t take a geopolitical genius to figure out that would be the result. Five minutes — heck, even one minute — spent watching Melania Trump speak would tell you all you need to know about what this exclusive documentary has in …

Community health hubs could use empty classes

Community health hubs could use empty classes

Published by skeptic

More from this theme Recent articles Classrooms in schools rocked by falling rolls could be used by the NHS as “community health hubs”, the boss of the Department for Education’s property arm has said.  Lara Newman, the chief executive of LocatED, also said she was “seriously worried” about plunging birth rates undoing the free schools programme.    A drop in birth rates since the early 2010s has left primaries struggling to fill places and forced the worst-hit urban councils to slash intakes and close schools.  Councils ‘can’t afford it’ Speaking at a Westminster Education Forum on school buildings last Thursday, Newman said: “Local authorities are in a really difficult position around their own funding. They cannot afford to keep empty schools going.” Lara Newman She argued that “finding some medium-term way of usefully utilising” empty space was “absolutely crucial”.  Options that could keep school buildings occupied and viable “if and when children return”, included using empty spaces as “community health hubs” alongside public health and wellbeing services.  A slide shown during her talk noted paediatric …

Thieves empty Dutch museum of silver in morning heist

Thieves empty Dutch museum of silver in morning heist

Published by José Betancourt

A museum in the eastern Dutch city of Doesburg has been hit by thieves who lifted its entire silverware collection in the early hours of Wednesday morning. According to museum staff, more than 300 “irreplaceable” objects were stolen, valued at tens of thousands of dollars. At approximately 4:30 a.m. local time, two men forced entry into the Doesburg Silver Museum, housed in the 13th-century Martini Church. CCTV footage shows the duo using a crowbar to force open a door and shatter display cabinets before making off with the loot. Among the silver was a treasured collection of mustard pots assembled by the museum’s founder, Martin de Kleijn. “Only the ceramics, which were on temporary display, were left behind,” Ernst Boesveld, the museum’s chairman, told Dutch regional broadcaster Omroep Gelderland. The museum is insured, he said. “The silver price is high… but for us it is far more than the silver price. It is about the stories behind every mustard pot—it is history and cultural heritage. We are enormously disappointed and angry.” Related Articles Sietske Annevelink-Schurer, a …

Marco Rubio’s Empty Victory in Venezuela

Marco Rubio’s Empty Victory in Venezuela

Published by José Betancourt

In early 2019, Marco Rubio pressed his way through a dense crowd near Colombia’s border with Venezuela, his aides holding back refugees clamoring for a handshake or a photo with the man heralding the imminent arrival, they all felt sure, of liberty for Venezuelans. With his polo shirt dotted with sweat and a Venezuela Libre cap shielding his face from the tropical sun, the then-senator made an urgent appeal to the country’s security forces: Do the right thing and defy Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian orders. “In every person’s life there sometimes comes a key moment,” Rubio said, “when they have to make a decision, a decision that will define the rest of their life.” This may be that defining moment for Rubio, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, national security adviser, and, now, unofficial Venezuelan viceroy. Maduro’s ouster begins to fulfill an objective central to Rubio’s political identity: ending the reign of Latin America’s leftist strongmen. But it leaves a tandem goal—replacing them with democratically elected governments—nowhere closer to reality. That latter objective is instead colliding with …

Front Companies? Bombshell Report Exposes Network Of Somali-Linked “Empty” Daycares Across Minnesota

Front Companies? Bombshell Report Exposes Network Of Somali-Linked “Empty” Daycares Across Minnesota

Published by Jenni Sidey

Left-wing Governor Tim Walz, under intensifying federal pressure, faces a widening Somali-linked fraud scandal in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors state that the scheme currently totals at least $9 billion, with the final figure potentially much higher. Recent reporting by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo alleges that some welfare funds were funneled into an overseas terrorist organization. Now, a bombshell video from a citizen journalist suggests the fraud extends beyond Medicaid into the state’s daycare system. A 42-minute bombshell video by journalist Nick Shirley and a local private investigator documents an on-the-ground investigation in Minneapolis that alleges massive, ongoing fraud in government-funded social services. The main focus is on Somali-owned businesses in child daycare, adult/autism care, home healthcare, and non-emergency medical transportation programs that draw from the taxpayer-funded Child Care Assistance Program. Shirley claims his team uncovered more than $110 million in questionable payments to Somali-owned businesses on just the first day of their investigation, as part of a broader welfare fraud scandal totaling upwards of $9 billion. Shirley and the investigator visited several childcare facilities …