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Column: A marquee pitching matchup Sunday at Wrigley Field, Patrick Wisdom versus ‘Kong’ and other baseball thoughts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

A smorgasbord of baseball for a lazy Sunday on the couch.Marquee mattersIf you grew up watching Bob Gibson and Fergie Jenkins duel at Wrigley Field, you should love watching Los Angeles Dodgers star Clayton Kershaw face off Sunday afternoon against the Chicago Cubs’ Marcus Stroman.Kershaw won his 200th game Tuesday and has one of the top winning percentages in major-league history. Stroman has allowed only two earned runs over 24 innings in four starts for a 0.75 ERA.Marquee matchups such as Stroman-Kershaw are what MLB needs but doesn’t know how to market.When Kerry Wood faced Roger Clemens on June 7, 2003, the Wrigley Field marquee simply read “Wood vs. Clemens” instead of Cubs vs. Yankees. That was the definition of a marquee matchup.The juicy Stroman-Kershaw matchup is what MLB should be marketing instead of promoting the success of the new pitch clock like it saved the game.“It’s always good to see marquee starters go head-to-head,” Dod...

Howie Carr: They don’t make mobsters like Zip Connolly anymore

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone.At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career.He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family.But “Mob hitman” is a bit much.Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin” from his c.v., after a pathetically feeble attempt in Florida to clear his name.A state appeals court in Florida this month denied Zip “post-conviction relief” from his second-degree murder conviction. He was found guilty of setting up the 1982 gangland hit on a Boston businessman who was preparing to testify against Zip and his serial-killing, cocaine-dealing gangland bosses, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi.Zip r...

‘People are suffering’: Food stamp woes worsen Alaska hunger

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

EAGLE RIVER, Alaska (AP) — Thousands of Alaskans who depend on government assistance have waited months for food stamp benefits, exacerbating a long-standing hunger crisis worsened by the pandemic, inflation and the remnants of a typhoon that wiped out stockpiles of fish and fishing equipment. The backlog, which began last August, is especially concerning in a state where communities in far-flung areas, including Alaska Native villages, are often not connected by roads. They must have food shipped in by barge or airplane, making the cost of even basic goods exorbitant. Around 13% of the state’s roughly 735,000 residents received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — or SNAP — in July, before the troubles began. “People are struggling and having to make choices of getting food or getting heating fuel,” said Daisy Lockwood Katcheak, city administrator in Stebbins, an Alaska Native village of 634 people, more than 400 miles (644 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage. ...

GOP lawmakers push for state control of St. Louis police

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Ten years after gaining local control of its police for the first time since the Civil War, the city of St. Louis has more murders than ever before — and Missouri’s Republican lawmakers are again pressuring for a state takeover of the police force. The debate over policing power in St. Louis — a racially diverse, heavily Democratic city long vexed by violent crime — carries political and racial overtones like those that have roiled other cities and states this year. But data suggest neither state nor local control may make much difference when it comes to stemming homicides.“Lots of things matter a whole lot more, like widespread social unrest, the economy crashing, that sort of thing,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who analyzed the city’s crime statistics.With violent crime troubling many large cities, Republicans nationwide have pushed a tough-on-crime agenda that would make it harder for the ...

Report: Ukrainian forces cross key river, raising hopes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

Ukrainian military forces have successfully established positions on the eastern side of the Dnieper River, according to a new analysis, giving rise to speculation Sunday that the advances could be an early sign of Kyiv’s long-awaited spring counteroffensive.The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, reported late Saturday that geolocated footage from pro-Kremlin military bloggers indicated that Ukrainian troops had established a foothold near the town of Oleshky, along with “stable supply lines” to their positions.Analysts widely believe that if Ukraine goes ahead with a spring counteroffensive, a major goal would be to break through the land corridor between Russia and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, which would necessitate crossing the Dnieper River in the country’s south.Responding to Ukrainian media reports proclaiming that the establishment of such positions indicated the counteroffensive had begun, Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for Ukrai...

Tourism booms in Jamaica after pandemic, overwhelms airport

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The number of tourists flocking to Jamaica’s sun-drenched beaches soared nearly 100% in the first three months of the year, causing long queues and hours-long waits for arriving passengers at the island’s main airport.Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett told The Associated Press that the problem stemmed from a shortage of airport staff to process the unexpected volume of people flying into Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay since the end of the pandemic.Bartlett told Parliament later that day that there were 1.18 million arrivals from January through March — 94% more than the same period of 2022 and a record high for Jamaica’s tourism high season.“The recovery has been stronger than anticipated and everybody all over the world is having difficulty with their airports because … (many) of the workers have not come back,” Bartlett said.He said authorities plan to spend more on technology as they strive to do away with paperwork at the airport, inc...

Brazil’s school violence mirrors US. Its reaction doesn’t

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

About two weeks after a man killed four children in a Brazilian daycare center, authorities already have rounded up some 300 adults and minors nationwide accused of spreading hate speech or stoking school violence.Little has been revealed about the unprecedented crackdown, which risks judicial overreach, but it underlines the determination of the country’s response across federal, state and municipal levels. Brazil’s all-hands effort to stamp out its emerging trend of school attacks stands in contrast to the U.S., where such attacks have been more frequent and more deadly for a longer period, yet where measures nowadays are incremental.Actions adopted in the U.S. – and some of its perceived shortcomings – are informing the Brazilian response, said Renan Theodoro, a researcher with Center for the Study of Violence at the University of Sao Paulo.“We have learned from the successes and the mistakes of other countries, especially the United States,” Theodoro told The Associa...

What to do when Medicare doesn't cover your prescription drug

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

(NerdWallet) - Although recent changes to Medicare Part D will eventually make covered prescription drugs more affordable for Medicare beneficiaries, there’s still a loophole: What if Medicare doesn’t cover your drug at all?Specific drug coverage varies by plan, and you may not be able to immediately switch to a plan that covers your drug, or you may find that no plans cover it.“The problems are the more expensive brand name medications,” says Katy Votava, who holds a doctorate in health economics and nursing and is president and founder of Goodcare, a consulting firm focused on the economics of Medicare. “That can be difficult for people, and they’re often based on medical necessity anyway, and prior authorization is typically required.”If you find that a medication you’ve been prescribed isn’t covered by your Medicare plan, here are some options to consider.Check the Medicare landscapeFirst, is this a medicine that’s ever covered by Medicare — just not your plan? Does Medicare cov...

Marijuana tax dollars and how they're spent in different states

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

(NewsNation) — All across the country, the once-widely-criminalized drug is becoming more and more a mainstream part of American life. Twenty states, plus the District of Columbia, have legalized the use of recreational marijuana and more than three dozen states, territories, and D.C. allow for the use of medical marijuana. One of the reasons why an increasing number of state governments are legalizing marijuana is to tax its sales, opening up an additional stream of revenue. "One of the big talking points, one of the big focal points was, 'Hey, we'll shift the market from illegal to legal and that will create jobs, create tax revenues.' And in fact, many of the early campaigns... really tried to sell the tax revenue towards what might be viewed as the swing voter," Douglas Berman, a researcher at Ohio State University who has spent years studying marijuana legalization. But getting that taxation right can be tricky. "There's kind of a Goldilocks challenge here, how do you set the t...

Sunday Brunch: Sushi By Buo

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:14:52 GMT

Executive Chef from Sushi By Bou joins us in the studio to make some special sushi recipes.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.