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Column: The Chicago Cubs are in a tailspin. Someone notify David Ross and Marquee Sports Network.

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

Panic time at Wrigley Field?Not yet perhaps, but the Chicago Cubs’ struggles in September have fans on edge entering the final regular-season series at Wrigley Field.Manager David Ross noted after Thursday’s loss to Pittsburgh that the Pirates were not a team of “our caliber.” If that’s the case, neither are the 96-loss Colorado Rockies, their weekend opponent. The Rockies sent Noah Davis, a pitcher with a 9.58 ERA, against the Cubs in Friday’s opener.The Cubs were expected to beat teams like the Pirates and Rockies in September, but have instead lost four of their last six games to the two bottom feeders over the last week and a half.Every game is big from now on.“Expectations are one thing, but they’ve all felt big,” Ross said Friday morning. “They felt big in Arizona, right? The Pirates, we need to beat those teams and we didn’t. We start dwindling down (in games) and you’re in a race and there’s a bunc...

Step back in time with these 4 crime fiction novels

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

Moira Macdonald | (TNS) The Seattle TimesFor this month’s edition of The Plot Thickens, I decided to take a little meander into crime fiction set in the past. (Because the present, i.e. the endless late summer, was just too hot. Reading cools one down, I think.) First up: Amy Chua’s fiction debut “The Golden Gate” (Minotaur Books, $28), set in the Bay Area in the 1940s, where homicide detective Al Sullivan is trying to solve the murder of a presidential candidate — which took place in the same posh Berkeley hotel where a child mysteriously died 10 years earlier. The ghost of that girl haunts this story, which mingles socialites, hotel workers, politicians (Madame Chiang Kai-shek plays an arch cameo role), cops, monks, immigrants and one very smart 11-year-old in a rich and satisfying stew.Chua, a Yale law professor best known for her 2011 nonfiction work “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” has clearly done her research: “The Golden Gate”...

Giorgio Napolitano, former Italian president, 1st ex-Communist in that post, has died, at 98

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

ROME (AP) — Giorgio Napolitano, the first former Communist to rise to Italy’s presidency, died on Friday, the Quirinal presidential palace said.Napolitano, who was also the first person to be elected twice to the mostly ceremonial presidency, was 98. A statement issued Friday night by the presidential palace confirmed Italian news reports of the death of Napolitano, who had been ailing in a Rome hospital for weeks. The current president, Sergio Mattarella, in a message hailed his predecessor as head of state, saying that Napolitano’s life “mirrored a large part of the history” of Italy in the second half of the 20th century. As a prominent member of what had long been the largest Communist party in the West, Napolitano had advocated positions that often veered from party orthodoxy. He sought dialogue with Italian and European socialists to end his party’s isolation, and he was an early backer of European integration. The Associated Press

Arrests made in boy’s shooting death that sparked New Mexico governor’s aggressive guns ban

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Two people were arrested Thursday in connection with a shooting outside an Albuquerque baseball stadium that killed an 11-year-old boy and prompted the New Mexico governor to issue a controversial gun ban.Jose Romero, 22, and Nathen Garley, 21, were being held for the Sept. 6 shooting after an Albuquerque Isotopes game in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identity, Police Chief Harold Medina said at a news conference.Medina said the two men had argued with people during the ballgame and mistakenly opened fire on a truck carrying the boy and his family as it was leaving the parking lot because it closely resembled the truck of the intended targets.“These cowards thought they were tough,” Medina said in an earlier social media post. “They killed an innocent child.”Romero was taken into custody on Thursday evening. He already was wanted for failing to appear in court in connection with alleged drug dealing, Medina said.Garley was already in custody when he...

Medicaid expansion to begin soon in North Carolina as governor decides to let budget bill become law

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced Friday he would let the state budget bill coming to his desk become law without his signature, opening the way for Medicaid coverage for 600,000 low-income adults, with some receiving the government health insurance soon. The Democratic governor unveiled his decision on the two-year spending plan minutes after the Republican-controlled General Assembly gave final legislative approval to the 625-page measure. A Medicaid expansion law that Cooper signed in March said that a state budget for this fiscal year still had to be enacted before coverage could be implemented. Negotiations on that budget plan, which was supposed to take effect July 1, carried on throughout the summer. The final two-year plan accelerates individual income tax rate cuts, broadens private-school scholarships to all K-12 children and contained other items that weaken the governor’s office while strengthening the GOP-dominated legislature and its p...

It’s not all grim across regional theater. Some venues offer ways to beat the post-pandemic blues

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Everyone who enters Barter Theatre in southwestern Virginia is met and welcomed by Katy Brown, the producing artistic director.It’s a simple touch but a telling one for the 90-year-old theater in Abingdon that has forged a very human connection with its 8,000 residents. Barter Theatre is not just a theater; it’s their theater.“You can feel the ownership from the people that are here,” Brown says. “Really being a part of your community in that way is vital to the future of regional theater.”Barter — a scrappy venue with roots in the Depression when patrons bartered goods for seats — may offer a roadmap as regional theaters struggle to reconnect with lagging post-pandemic audiences.Lessons from other regional theaters — like embracing digital ways to connect, hosting events like LGBTQ Nights, rethinking the traditional calendar and even re-configuring theater lobbies — could help. “The theater companies that are succeeding have taken the time during COVID t...

Canada Post reviewing use of address data following criticism from privacy watchdog

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

OTTAWA — Canada Post said Friday it is reviewing how it uses data for tailored marketing campaigns after the federal privacy watchdog found the post office was breaking the law by gleaning information from the outsides of envelopes and packages.Privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne said in a report released this week that information collected for the post office’s Smartmail Marketing Program includes data about where individuals live and what type of online shopping they do, based on who sends them parcels. The information is then used to help build marketing lists that Canada Post rents to businesses.The commissioner found Canada Post had not obtained authorization from individuals to indirectly collect such personal information, a violation of Section 5 of the Privacy Act.He recommended Canada Post stop the practice until it can seek and obtain consent from Canadians.Dufresne’s report said the post office disagreed with his conclusion and declined to take the correct...

Spain’s World Cup winners return to action after sexism scandal with 3-2 win in Sweden

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

GOTHENBURG, Sweden (AP) — Spain’s World Cup-winning women’s team got back to being soccer players on Friday.A 3-2 victory over Sweden in Gothenburg — secured by a penalty with virtually the last kick of the game — was Spain’s first match since capturing the biggest prize in women’s soccer last month in Australia. That achievement ultimately was tarnished by a sexism scandal sparked by the former Spanish soccer federation president, Luis Rubiales, kissing player Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the World Cup awards ceremony.The fallout has been far-reaching, remaining high up the global news agenda and continuing right up to the eve of the match when a deal was reached between the players, federation and government mediators that Spain’s players believe will lead to real reform inside the beleaguered federation and mark a turning point in the fight for equality.To get to that point, the players were engaged in through-the-night meetings and constant telephone calls, all the whi...

Russia says Armenian separatists surrender arms after Azerbaijan reclaims Nagorno-Karabakh

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Ethnic Armenian separatists in Azerbaijan’s region of Nagorno-Karabakh surrendered arms Friday to Russian peacekeepers, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, two days after Azerbaijan reclaimed control of the breakaway region that has long been at the center of a conflict with neighboring Armenia.The ethnic Armenian armed groups handed over six armored vehicles, more than 800 small arms units and 5,000 rounds of ammunition to the peacekeepers, the ministry said in a statement. Azerbaijan on Tuesday launched a major military operation against Armenian positions in what it called an “anti-terrorist operation,” demanding that the Armenians lay down arms and that the separatist government disband. A day later, Nagorno-Karabakh authorities agreed to the military demands, but talks on how to reintegrate the region into Azerbaijan are continuing.The Russian Defense Ministry said it recorded two ceasefire violations in the region Friday but said there were no c...

Hawaii economists say Lahaina locals could be priced out of rebuilt town without zoning changes

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 16:57:25 GMT

HONOLULU (AP) — Residents who survived the wildfire that leveled the Hawaii town of Lahaina might not be able to afford to live there after it is rebuilt unless officials alter the zoning laws and make other changes, economists warned Friday.“The risk is very real,″ Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, told a virtual news conference ahead of the group’s release Friday of its quarterly state economic forecast.Soaring housing prices have already forced some Native Hawaiians to leave the islands and move to the U.S. mainland. The wildfire that claimed at least 97 lives and destroyed 2,200 buildings in the West Maui community of Lahaina — 86% of which were residential — amplifies that problem for the survivors. Nearly 8,000 of them have been placed at 40 hotels or other accommodations around the island of Maui.“Market prices for this new housing are likely to far exceed the already high prices that existed in Lahaina before the fire...