After a fun meal with a big group at a restaurant, it’s the last thing you want to deal with: how to split the check.

The etiquette, and the math, often prove baffling. Should the whole table divide the bill evenly if only a few ordered liquor? Who pays for the appetizers that some people ate, but not all? What if the restaurant places a limit on how many credit cards it will take?

The divvying-up process can damage friendships, as there’s always someone who feels forced to pay more than they should.

South Floridians voiced strong opinions about how to split a tab when the question was asked in Let’s Eat, South Florida, the Sun Sentinel’s foodie Facebook group.

“I don’t drink and I should not have to subsidize others’ bar bills,” Oakland Park resident Mary Damiano wrote.

“I have seen this go sideways so many times with large groups,” wrote Karen Schneider Cangelosi, of Fort Lauderdale. “Especially when there’s a big shot ordering 10 appetizers for the table and one person didn’t eat any.”

Even if there’s agreement on how to divide the check, other problems can arise with a big party. The inputting of multiple credit cards is time-consuming for serving staff, which has other tables impatiently waiting for orders to be taken.

“I once split a check 18 ways,” wrote Boca Raton resident Kaitlyn Doherty, a former server and manager at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. “The splitting is not the issue, as long as you know in advance. It’s the running 18 credit cards that takes 10 to 15 minutes, and waiting 10 minutes when you are ready to walk out the door can ruin the end of a lovely experience. I also never carried 18 pens. I have all the horror stories.”

There are ways to ease the tensions. Here are some strategies for carving up a large restaurant bill to minimize stress on wait staff and prevent fights among tablemates. Each will take some advance planning, but the effort will be worthwhile to ensure a satisfying dining experience and no hard feelings among friends.

Plan ahead. Start a pre-dinner texting group and discuss how to handle upcoming scenarios. Does the group want to divide the bill equally or get separate checks for each person/couple? Should the drinkers pay for their alcoholic beverages?  How should shared appetizers and desserts be split? Expect a lively discussion to ensue, but hopefully it will be over before you arrive at the restaurant.

Ask the restaurant in advance if they have rules about check-splitting. Some place a maximum on the number of credit cards they will run.

Aliosha Stern, owner of Novecento restaurant in Delray Beach, said most large tables pay with three or four credit cards, although he has seen as many as 10.

“But these cases come rarely,” Stern said. “We would get way more complaints if we set a limit.”

Share your plan with your server at the very beginning. “My husband and I go out with two other couples and a single lady, so there are seven of us every Saturday night,” Boynton Beach resident Laura Sattler said. “As soon as we are greeted by a waitress, one of the couples announce that they will be on their own check. Then they point to the other couple and say they will be on their own check. And then one of us says the three of us will be on one check. We eat all over Boca, Delray, and Boynton Beach and have never had a problem.”

Sit next to the person on your check. This will make it easier on the servers to remember who’s with whom as they assemble the final tab.

How big should the table get?  Some recommend limiting the size of your dining group to make it easier to calculate the bill. “I don’t go out with large groups of people. Four is optimal, six max,” said Mike Mayo, host of South Florida streaming show “Mike Mayo’s Lunchbox” and a former Sun Sentinel food columnist. With a smaller-size group, he recommends splitting the check “in half or thirds. No tallying, no hair splitting. In the end, after multiple meals, it should all even out. Or get new friends.”

There’s an app for this. Download Splitwise, Splid or Tricount, which can track expenses among friends, calculate who-owes-what and allow them to settle up.

Use a single card. In this scenario, one person is willing to front the full tab and get paid back by fellow diners. This is the best way to get out of the restaurant speedily and easiest on the wait staff. And there’s a reward: That credit card will get lots of points that night that can be used toward travel or the group’s next outing.

Authorities have released images of a suspect they believe is responsible for vandalizing rainbow Pride flags in St. Paul last week and are asking the public’s help in identifying the person.

Police say there have now been 30 instances of vandalism of rainbow flags, including one case where there was damage to the new Minnesota flag, in the Highland Park and Macalester-Groveland neighborhoods last week.

St. Paul police are asking the public’s help in identifying this suspect they believe may be connected to the vandalism of rainbow flags. (Courtesy of St. Paul Police Department)

“While we believe this person is responsible for a number of those incidents, we cannot definitively say they are responsible for ‘all’ of the cases at this time,” said Nikki Muehlhausen, a St. Paul police spokesperson.

Neighbors have been rallying together, buying more flags and signs and planning to display them in their yards.

Three of the cases have been on Jefferson Avenue, between the 1700 and 2000 blocks; another two were on the 1200 block of Palace Avenue and two more on the 1700 block of Bayard Avenue.

There have also been reports of vandalized flags at Half Priced Books & JS Bean Factory and police are investigating whether those incidents are connected to the other ones.

Investigators are urging people in the Highland Park and Macalester-Groveland neighborhoods to come forward if they have any surveillance footage that may show the suspect or related information.

Tips can be called into the department’s Western District at 651-266-5512 or by emailing charles.graupman@ci.stpaul.mn.us.

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By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Anxiety, grief, anger, fear, helplessness. The emotional toll of climate change is broad-ranging, especially for young people.

Many worry about what the future holds, and a daily grind of climate anxiety and distress can lead to sleeplessness, an inability to focus and worse. Some young people wonder whether it’s moral to bring children into the world. Many people grieve for the natural world.

Activists, climate psychologists and others in the fight against climate change have a range of ways to build resilience and help manage emotions. Some ideas:

Get active in your community

Feeling isolated? Find ways to connect with like-minded people and help nature, said climate psychologist Laura Robinson in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There are many ways to get involved.

FILE – Rosei Warren hauls compost to a garden plot in preparation for planting vegetables at the Ivanhoe neighborhood community garden, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Work locally to convince more residents to give up grass lawns and increase biodiversity with native plants, for instance. Help establish new green spaces, join projects to protect water, develop wildlife corridors, or decrease pesticide use to save frogs, insects and birds. Work to get the word out on turning down nighttime lighting to help birds and lightning bugs.

“I see people struggling with these emotions across the age range,” said Robinson. “I have parents who are themselves really struggling with their own feelings and really worried about their children in the future.”

Make a positivity sandwich

Climate news and the onslaught of disaster and mayhem in general has become heavy and overwhelming for many with the rise of social media and mobile phone use. Try scheduling breaks from notifications on your phone or stepping back from the news cycle in other ways.

Consider the idea of a “positivity sandwich,” where you begin with a good piece of news, followed by a harder tidbit, then finish with a second feel-good story.

Model behaviors for your kids

Phoebe Yu, 39, gave up a cushy job in health technology to work on an MBA with a focus on sustainability. She started a business selling sponges made from the luffa gourd. And she does it all while raising her 6-year-old son with her husband in Fremont, California.

In this June 2023 photo provided by Phoebe Yu, she poses with her son Teddy Vucurevich, center, and husband Daniel Vucurevich in the Stanislaus National Forest near Sonora, Calif. (Phoebe Yu via AP)

“I am generally a very happy person and I’m very optimistic. And I’m still that, but sometimes it becomes very difficult to manage. Like, what will happen and thinking about the long term,” she said. “At points, I’ve regretted bringing a child into this world, knowing how things could get much, much worse.”

Part of managing her own emotions is trying to model sustainable behaviors for her son while educating him on the importance of helping the environment. The family drives an electric vehicle. They don’t eat meat and have encouraged extended family to do the same. They recycle, compost and limit travel by air.

“I try to explain things to my son so he can at least have some understanding of how the world and the ecosystem works as a whole,” Yu said. “I do think kids are able to absorb that and turn that into some level of action.”

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Remember: We’re all connected

Britnee Reid teaches middle school science for Gaston Virtual Academy, a K-12 virtual public school based in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Reid participated in a pilot project for a free teacher tool kit on climate put together by the National Environmental Education Foundation and the Climate Mental Health Network, a collective of community advocates working on the emotional impacts of climate change.

The kit is full of ways to help teachers support students’ mental health and manage their own climate-related emotions. One of the exercises involves students documenting their interactions with the natural world in an environmental timeline. Laying it all out often stirs action, Reid said.

“They can be anxious, they can be angry, they can feel fearful, but they’re like these go-getters of, ‘I’m going to make the change in this world.’ There’s kind of two truths at once where they feel scared but they also feel like, you know, I can do something about this,” she said.

“The timelines,” Reid said, “provided some good, rich conversations.”

Find the words to express your feelings

Psychotherapist Patricia Hasbach, just outside of Eugene, Oregon, has written several books on eco-psychology and eco-therapy and has taught graduate students on those topics.

“We incorporate nature into the healing process,” she said. “And we address a person’s relationship with the natural world. Certainly with climate change, eco-therapy has a huge role to play.”

FILE – Visitors walk down a ramp after climbing Shark Valley observation point in Everglades National Park, Fla., Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

One of her most important missions is helping people find their words to talk about climate change in pursuit of resilience.

“There have been some studies done that show an increased number of young people reporting concern, like 84% of young people in the U.S. reporting concern about climate change, but only like 59% of them think that other people are as concerned as they are,” Hasbach said.

That, she said, contributes to inaction and feelings of anxiety, depression or isolation.

You’re not one. You’re many

Climate scientist Kate Marvel, a physicist and author of the new book “Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About our Changing Planet,” urges people to think differently about their place in preserving the environment.

FILE – People are silhouetted against the sky at sunset as they walk at Shawnee Mission park, Sept. 26, 2024, in Shawnee, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

“A lot of times, the anxiety and the hopelessness comes from a feeling of powerlessness. And I don’t think any of us is powerless,” she said.

“I think collectively, we’re incredibly powerful,” Marvel said. “The atmosphere cares about what all of us together are doing, and I think you can have much more impact if you think of yourself as part of the collective.”

Today is Saturday, June 28, the 179th day of 2025. There are 186 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On June 28, 1914, in an act that sparked World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip.

Also on this date:

In 1863, during the Civil War, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. George G. Meade as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, following the resignation of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

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In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the First World War.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the Smith Act, which required adult foreigners residing in the U.S. to be registered and fingerprinted.

In 1969, riots broke out following a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, an LGBTQ+ bar in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, leading to six days of violent protests that served as a watershed moment in the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

In 1997, boxer Mike Tyson was disqualified from his rematch with heavyweight titleholder Evander Holyfield after Tyson bit Holyfield twice in the third round, including biting off a portion of Holyfield’s right ear.

In 2000, seven months after he was found adrift in the Straits of Florida, Elian Gonzalez was returned to his native Cuba.

In 2017, a man armed with a shotgun attacked the offices of The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, killing four journalists and a staffer before police stormed the building and arrested him; authorities said Jarrod Ramos had a long-running grudge against the newspaper for its reporting of a harassment case against him. (Ramos would be convicted and sentenced to six life sentences plus 345 years in prison.)

In 2019, avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields, who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a young woman and injuring dozens, apologized for his actions before being sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.

In 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.

Today’s Birthdays:

Filmmaker-comedian Mel Brooks is 99.
Diplomat and politician Hans Blix is 97.
Actor Bruce Davison is 79.
Actor Kathy Bates is 77.
Football Hall of Famer John Elway is 65.
Actor John Cusack is 59.
Actor Mary Stuart Masterson is 59.
Actor Tichina Arnold is 56.
Filmmaker-actor Mike White is 55.
Business executive Elon Musk is 54.
Actor Alessandro Nivola is 53.
Country singer-TV personality Kellie Pickler is 38.
Olympic track gold medalist Elaine Thompson-Herah is 33.