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Column: From the White Sox home opener to the NFL draft, April is shaping up to be an all-timer for Chicago sports fans

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

The spring of our discontent has arrived, and April figures to be an interesting month for followers of Chicago’s not-so Fab Five.Four of our professional teams— the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox— are all in action, while the Bears are on the clock. Throw in a mayoral election and some inclement weather and you have the three staples of the Chicago food group — sports, politics and weather — intermingling. When all is said and done, it could be an April for the ages, a month of potential goodbyes and welcome backs, from Jonathan Toews and Nikola Vučević to Jason Heyward.April also marks the opening steps of the six-month slog for our two summer teams and very well could be the end of the line for our winter teams, the two occupiers of the United Center. Even for Chicago sports fans used to multitasking games, it’s everything everywhere all at once.The re-rebuild of the Hawks, not to be confused with the Stan Bowman-led rebuild of...

Pakistan denies Israel trade after businessman’s export

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan on Sunday denied rumors of trade with Israel following a Jewish businessman’s tweet about successfully exporting food samples to Jerusalem and Haifa.Fishel Benkhald, a Pakistani-Jew based in the southern port city of Karachi, went viral for tweeting about his first kosher food shipment to Israel. The two countries do not have diplomatic ties.“Congratulations to me as a Pakistani. I exported the first batch of Pakistan food products to Israel market,” he said last week.Benkhald shared a video clip showing his visit to an Israeli market. He walks past stalls with containers of dates, dried fruit and spices with product tags in Hebrew.Pakistan denied having any diplomatic or trade relations with Israel. “There is no change in the policy,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told media in response to queries about bilateral trade.Pakistan officially backs a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and has a longstanding position of n...

Harris finds new connections in Africa as historic figure

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris may have traveled halfway around the world to reach this corner of Africa, but she was welcomed as a “daughter of our own country” when she sat down with Zambia’s leader.The visit, President Hakainde Hichilema said, was “like a homecoming.” It was a reference to a childhood trip to Zambia when Harris’ grandfather worked here, but she heard a similar refrain throughout her weeklong trip to Africa that ended Saturday. In Ghana, President Nana Akufo-Addo told Harris “you’re welcome home.” In Tanzania, a sign in Swahili told Harris to “feel at home.” The greetings were a reflection of the enduring connections between the African diaspora in the United States and Africans themselves, something that America’s first Black vice president fostered during her trip. Although her historic status has led to extreme scrutiny and extraordinary expectations in Washington, it was a source of excitement over the past week. “She is t...

States aim to boost school safety after Tennessee shooting

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — In the wake of an elementary school shooting in Tennessee earlier this week that left three 9-year-olds and three adults dead, state legislatures across the country are moving forward with bills aiming to improve school safety.The bills have been introduced in blue and red states alike and would require schools to install technology ranging from panic buttons, video surveillance and emergency communications systems. Most have bipartisan support, with lawmakers seeing them as a way to boost school security while avoiding political gridlock on the hot-button issue of gun control. But some experts say teacher safety training is more effective and less expensive than the new technologies, which also can require upgrades or ongoing maintenance that may not be funded.That hasn’t stopped states from Oregon to Missouri to Tennessee from pursuing the systems.“I was asked by a colleague if our schools will have to become fortresses to keep our kids safe. And I told...

Poland marches defend John Paul II from abuse cover-up claim

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Thousands of Poles joined marches Sunday in defense of the late pope, St. John Paul II, following a TV documentary that alleged he covered up child sex abuse involving clergy in his native Poland before his election as pontiff.The marches, which took place in Warsaw and other cities on the 18th anniversary of John Paul’s death, were organized by an anti-abortion group under the slogan: “You awakened us, we will defend you.”Participants prayed before marching behind religious relics in the capital. Some marchers carried photos of John Paul. Since the anniversary fell on Palm Sunday, they also carried pussy willows and other tree branches, which is a Roman Catholic tradition on the Sunday before Easter.The investigative documentary was aired last month by TVN, an independent broadcaster often critical of Poland’s conservative government. Many Polish Catholics saw it as an attack on the legacy of a man revered in Poland as one of the greatest figures in the nation...

Activists’ network in Mexico helps U.S. women get abortions

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico (AP) — Marcela Castro’s office in Chihuahua is more than 100 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, yet the distance doesn’t prevent her from assisting women in the United States in circumventing recently imposed bans on abortion.From the headquarters of Marea Verde Chihuahua, an organization that has supported reproductive rights in northern Mexico since 2018, Castro and her colleagues provide virtual guidance, as well as shipments of abortion pills for women who want to terminate a pregnancy on their own. This abortion model, in which no travel, clinics or prescriptions are needed, sparked interest in the U.S. — and a surge of requests for help — as the Supreme Court moved to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion last year. But the model was developed by Mexican activists through decades of facing abortion bans and restrictions in most of Mexico’s 32 states.“We don’t offer medical attention because we are not doctors,” Castro said. “Part of our work, though,...

Voters with disabilities often overlooked in voting battles

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Patti Chang walked into her polling place in Chicago earlier this year, anxious about how poll workers would treat her, especially as a voter who is blind. Even though she was accompanied by her husband, she said she was ignored until a poll worker grabbed her cane and pulled her toward a voting booth.Like many voters with disabilities, Chang faces barriers at the polls most voters never even consider — missing ramps or door knobs, for example. The lack of help or empathy from some poll workers just adds to the burden for people with disabilities.“It doesn’t help you want to be in there if you’re going to encounter those kinds of low expectations,” said Chang, 59. “So why should I go vote if I’m going to have to fight with the poll workers? I’m an adult and I should be able to vote without that.”Chang had a better experience when she cast an early ballot in March in the runoff election for Chicago mayor, a race that will be decided Tuesday, even as access to the ba...

Pastors: Palm Sunday a balm after Nashville school shooting

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

FRANKLIN, Tennessee (AP) — It’s Palm Sunday, and across the greater Nashville, Tennessee, region, many Christians headed to worship services grief-stricken and hurting for the lives stolen too soon in The Covenant School shooting. Their heartsick pastors sought to bring comfort to those seeking answers to unanswerable questions after a heavily armed assailant turned a regular day into a horror story for the private, Christian grade school in Nashville. On the first Sunday after the attack — and the start of Christianity’s most sobering and sacred week — the tragedy could not and should not be avoided, said Pastor George Grant, a local Presbyterian leader with ties to the school and the adjoining Covenant Presbyterian Church.“We have to engage with what has happened,” he told The Associated Press a few days after the Monday shooting. “The Bible calls us to mourn with those who mourn, to weep with those who weep and so we will.”Authorities say a 28-year-old former Covenant stude...

How to run against Trump? GOP considers lessons from 2016

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Chris Christie, one of the only 2016 presidential candidates to seriously consider taking on Donald Trump again, says he and his fellow Republican rivals made a strategic error in that race.Instead of going after Trump directly, Christie said, each hoped to winnow the GOP field before taking on the combative outsider.“None of us ever got there,” the former New Jersey governor said last week. “It was over quick.”More than seven years later, Republicans are still trying to figure out how to run against Trump, a calculation that’s only become more complicated with an indictment of the former president by a Manhattan grand jury.Trump’s unrestrained and norm-busting style carried him from reality TV to the White House, transforming the Republican Party in his image along the way. But his style has befuddled those who try to compete against him, especially now as they seek to win over some of his supporters rather than draw their ire. Some in 2016 tried to ignore Trump, li...

Japan protests China’s detention of citizen, maritime action

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:44:11 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi protested in a meeting Sunday with his Chinese counterpart the detention of a Japanese national in Beijing and raised “strong concern” about China’s escalating military activity near Taiwan and around Japan.Hayashi is making a two-day visit in China, becoming Japan’s first diplomat to make the trip in more than three years as frictions grow between the countries. He was also due to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang and top diplomat Wang Yi later Sunday.During his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Hayashi demanded an early release of an employee of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma, who was detained in Beijing last month over what the Chinese Foreign Ministry described as spying allegations. Neither side has offered further details about the man or the allegations against him. Hayashi told reporters he also raised “serious concern” about China’s increasingly assertive maritime ac...