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Cactus League report: Cubs catchers’ big-picture approach to competitions — and Oscar Colás tries out center field for Sox

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

Cody Bellinger finally hit his first spring home run — at least the first one that counted.Bellinger’s homer last week against Team Canada is not applied to Cactus League totals because it was an exhibition matchup. His home run Thursday, though, prevented the Cubs from getting shut out in a 3-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Left-hander Drew Smyly went 4⅓ innings, giving up two runs on three hits. He walked one and struck out four batters.Jameson Taillon threw 72 pitches in a minor-league game against the San Francisco Giants on Thursday after his sim game was rained out Wednesday. He surrendered four runs and seven hits, walked one and struck out seven in five innings.Sox manager Pedro Grifol saw some positives from the rain that canceled Wednesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.“I didn’t plan the weather but when I saw it (in the forecast) a few days ago it was something that we thought would be good for us,” Grifol said Thurs...

Two one-way flights or one round-trip ticket: Which is better?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

Booking a flight involves navigating a maze of decisions. Is it better to fly with a budget airline or full-service one? How about basic economy versus regular economy? And would you prefer pretzels or a cookie?Choosing between a single round-trip or two one-way tickets is the most basic decision and — you might be surprised to learn — one of the more nuanced.The cost between the two is usually the same for domestic flights but can vary significantly for international routes.Given that airfare was 26% more expensive in January 2023 than January 2022, according to the latest consumer price index data, budget travelers need to save every penny they can.In general, it can be more convenient to book a round-trip flight for a trip with specific start and end dates, but other considerations, such as cancellation policies and pricing, could make booking one-ways more appealing in some cases. And everything works differently for flights booked with miles.Let’s break it down.Domestic flights...

Commuters feel stranded by decision to replace decommissioned Scarborough RT with buses until 2030

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

For nearly four decades, thousands of Torontonians have relied on the Scarborough RT as an essential part of their commute. But when the transit line is decommissioned later this year, it will be replaced with shuttle buses until the Line 2 East Extension opens in 2030 — seven years from now.“Seven years! That’s horrible. I used to drive for the TTC and the shuttle buses, I tell you, is not the answer. Not the answer at all,” said John Petch, a commuter who uses the Scarborough RT.“They waited way too long,” Petch continued. “We still haven’t got a subway all the way out to Scarborough. And it’s been, what, 50 years now? 50 years is a long time. I mean, the last time the Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup was in 1967.”“I have to travel to Kipling and coming to Scarborough Centre every day and taking [the] blue line,” said another commuter, Monica. “If I don’t have this, it will become longer for me.” In 2022 alone, nearly five million trips were take...

Mass to be held in honour of victims in Quebec town where pedestrians struck by truck

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

AMQUI, Que. — A memorial mass will be held this evening in the Quebec town where two people were killed and nine injured when a pickup truck crashed into pedestrians.Two men, Gérald Charest and Jean Lafrenière, died after being struck on Monday afternoon.Police have said those injured in the crash range in age from less than a year old to 77, and on Thursday a Quebec City hospital said two injured adults remained in critical condition.The mass will be held at Saint-Benoît-Joseph-Labre church in Amqui.A candlelight vigil was held in front of the church Thursday evening in the town about 350 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.Steeve Gagnon, 38, is facing two counts of dangerous driving causing death, and prosecutors have said more charges will follow.This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 17, 2023.The Canadian Press

Discarded explosives in South Sudan kill 10, including kids

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — At least 10 people in South Sudan, including three children, have been killed after mistaking unexploded ordnance for scrap metal, an official said Friday.The commissioner of Jur River county, James Bak, confirmed Thursday’s accident in Western Bahr el Ghazal and said two other children were injured.He said people in Jebel-Mille area had been gathering mangoes when they came across the unexploded ordnance and assumed it was metal scrap. They started collecting it for sale when it exploded, he said.“It killed seven women and three children,” Bak told The Associated Press. The wounded children’s mothers were among those killed.Mines and other unexploded ordnance remain a major problem in South Sudan, which is recovering from a five-year civil war that ended in 2018. More than 5,000 South Sudanese have been killed or injured by land mines and unexploded ordnance since 2004, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service. Hundreds of victi...

UK officer guilty of misconduct for clubbing ex-soccer star

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A British police officer was allowed to keep her job Friday after a disciplinary panel found her guilty of gross misconduct for unlawfully clubbing former professional soccer player Dalian Atkinson, who died after another officer used a stun gun and kicked him in the head.An independent police disciplinary tribunal gave constable Mary Ellen Bettley-Smith a written warning after finding she unlawfully struck the Black former Aston Villa striker three times with her baton after he was subdued by her partner during an altercation in August 2016.The West Mercia officer could have been stripped of her badge by the panel that was convened in Telford after she was acquitted at a criminal trial of causing bodily harm.Bettley-Smith’s conduct was “indeed serious” but she was on the periphery of the event and her partner’s role was “several stages of magnitude different,” prosecutor Dijen Basu said at the hearing.Constable Benjamin Monk was sentenced in 2021 to ...

Farmworkers use Florida march to pressure other companies

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

Farmworkers were leading a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions.The farmworkers said they were marching to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Taco Bell and Whole Foods to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. They hoped to use the march to pressure other companies, like Publix, Wendy’s and Kroger, to join the program that started in 2011.The march began Tuesday from the farming community of Pahokee, one of the poorest in Florida, where the median household income is around $30,000. The march’s launching point was a camp where farmworkers were coerced into working for barely any pay by a labor contractor who was convicted and sentenc...

Haaland criticized over ‘difficult’ choice on Willow project

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In early March, President Joe Biden met with members of Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation as they implored him to approve a contentious oil drilling project in their state. Around the same time, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland held a very different meeting on the same topic.Gathering at Interior headquarters a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) from the White House, leaders of major environmental organizations and Indigenous groups pleaded with Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet member, to use her authority to block the Willow oil project. Environmental groups call the project a “carbon bomb” that would betray pledges made by Biden — and Haaland — to fight climate change and have mounted a social media #StopWillow campaign that has been seen hundreds of millions of times.The closed-door meeting, which was described by two participants who insisted on not being identified because of its confidential nature, grew emotional as participants urged Haalan...

Wisconsin Democratic Secretary of State La Follette resigns

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette resigned on Friday, three months into his 11th consecutive term in office.Gov. Tony Evers appointed former Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who ran for U.S. Senate last year but lost in the primary, to fill out the four-year term. Wisconsin’s secretary of state is not in charge of elections and has almost no official duties. La Follette, 82, won reelection in November over a Republican who wanted to shift election duties to the office. La Follette — a distant relative of “Fighting” Bob La Follette, a progressive governor and 1924 presidential candidate — was first elected secretary of state in 1974. After a failed try for lieutenant governor in 1978, he won the office in 1982 and has won reelection nine times.Republicans have gradually stripped the office of almost all its duties and staff and relegated La Follette to a cramped office in the Capitol basement. However, since the 2020 presidential el...

Quadruple murder trial begins for former NY police officer

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:30:09 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal jury in New York began hearing testimony in the murder trial of a former New York police officer accused of masterminding the killing of four people — one strangled to death with a zip tie and three others shot execution-style — over money in a drug operation.All four men were found buried on the property of the former suburban New York police officer, Nicholas Tartaglione, whose trial, which began Thursday, is expected to last a month in U.S. District Court in White Plains.But defense attorneys asserted that Tartaglione had nothing to do with the killings and was being used by the government as a convenient fall guy.Tartaglione gained further notoriety as a former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein, before the disgraced financier committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges.Prosecutors contend that Tartaglione lured one of the victims, Martin Luna, to a bar because he believed Luna had stolen money intended for ...