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Editorial: Q: Why do the Bears need taxpayer help for their move to Arlington Heights? A: They don’t.

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

Forgive Bears fans for being transfixed by the NFL draft, which begins Thursday in Kansas City. The first game of the 2023 season won’t kick off until September, but that doesn’t matter to a fan base starved for whatever morsel of hope of a turnaround the draft might provide.In Chicago’s northwest suburbs, however, taxpayers and taxing bodies are preoccupied by a very different Bears game plan — the playbook for enlisting as much taxpayer help as possible to build a new, stadium-anchored megadevelopment at what was once Arlington International Racecourse.Most residents of Arlington Heights and surrounding suburbs have reacted enthusiastically to the prospect of the Bears coming to their patch of the Chicago region. What they’ve been less enamored with is the Bears’ insistence that taxpayers subsidize nonstadium components of the project, including the new roadways, utilities and other infrastructure needed to make it happen.A couple of legislative...

Protest over disabled access in France before Paris Olympics

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

PARIS (AP) — An influential disabled rights group in France is boycotting a conference on disability Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, amid frustration at years of unmet promises to make Paris more accessible ahead of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.The group Collectif Handicaps, an umbrella group for more than 50 organizations advocating for disabled rights, announced hours before the conference in Paris that it would not take part. Its leaders had asked for the opportunity to speak in front of Macron and were refused. The group worries that measures Macron is expected to announce Wednesday will fall short of what is needed.Even getting to the conference at the Elysee Palace is an ordeal for many people it’s designed to help. The nearest wheelchair-accessible Metro line is about a kilometer (half a mile) away. Public buses in Paris are hard and time-consuming to ride for people with limited mobility. The 2024 Olympics risk highlighting how inaccessible France i...

Meryl Streep wins Spain’s Princess of Asturias award

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Meryl Streep has won one of Spain’s most prestigious awards in the arts for her long career of acting excellence, the jury of the Princess of Asturias awards said Wednesday.The jury said that in her nearly five decades on screen, Streep has “developed a brilliant career that given life to full and complex feminine characters which inspire reflection and a critical spirit in the spectator.”The 73-year-old actor has won multiple accolades, including three Oscars for her work in “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Sophie’s Choice” and “The Iron Lady.”The 50,000-euro ($55,000) award is one of eight prizes covering the arts, communication, science and other areas that are handed out annually by the foundation named for Spanish Crown Princess Leonor.Flamenco musical artists Carmen Linares and María Pagés won the arts award last year. Other past winners include English director Peter Brook, and American directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.The prizes are among the most ...

Officials banned for false report for Olympic qualification

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

MONACO (AP) — Two track and field officials in Albania have been banned from the sport for falsifying an athlete’s result to help him qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, the Athletics Integrity Unit said Wednesday.Long jumper Izmir Smajlaj was cleared of being part of the conspiracy to register a national record in May 2021 that gained him entry to compete at the Tokyo Games.The AIU had said Smajlaj, Albanian track federation president Gjergj Ruli and federation general secretary Nikolin Dionisi “conspired together and submitted falsified wind measurement readings” for the athlete’s 8.16-meter leap in Tirana.The jump, which was not legal by track and field rules, earned Smajlaj one of two available “universality” entries — an Olympic wild card given to lower-ranked nations — in the 32-man lineup for his event.He was Albania’s only men’s track and field athlete at the Tokyo Olympics, where Ruli traveled as his coach, the AIU said. Smajlaj also competed at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Ol...

Iran court issues $312.9M judgment against US amid tensions

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian court issued a $312.9 million judgment against the United States over a 2017 Islamic State-claimed attack on Tehran, authorities said Wednesday, the latest judicial action between the nations amid their decadeslong enmity. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, in reporting the decision, offered no direct evidence to support the court’s allegation that American officials had any part in the June 2017 attack that killed at least 18 people and wounded 50 others. The assault saw gunmen attack Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum and the country’s parliament, starting an hourslong siege. However, the court ruling comes after the United Nations’ highest court in March rejected Tehran’s legal bid to free up some $2 billion in Iranian Central Bank assets frozen by U.S. authorities. Meanwhile, U.S. judges have issued rulings that call for billions of dollars to be paid by Iran over attacks linked to Tehran, as well as thos...

Prison sex abuse must be rooted out, Justice official says

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

AURORA, Colo. (AP) — Sexual abuse in the nation’s federal prisons must be rooted out, the Justice Department’s second-highest-ranking leader told prison wardens gathered for their first nationwide training since revelations that a toxic, permissive culture at a California prison allowed abuse to run rampant.The Associated Press gained exclusive access to the training Tuesday for wardens of the country’s 122 federal prisons, the first since AP investigations uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest law enforcement agency.Teams of experts and officials will soon be fanning out to women’s prisons around the country to follow up on on reforms the agency adopted last fall, and they’ll speak to both staff and incarcerated people, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a speech at the training facility outside Denver.At the training, wardens sat at round conference tables dotted with quotes abo...

A look at sports gambling rules among Big 4 pro leagues

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Murphy vs. NCAA ushered in a new era of legalized sports betting in the U.S., allowing states to establish their own sports wagering laws. Despite opposition from the major sports leagues, the high court overturned a federal law – the 1992 Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act – that had barred betting on football, basketball, baseball and other sports in most states.With the ruling came a new approach to how the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL associate with the industry. Each league prohibits its employees and players from betting on their own games. But there are variations. Here’s a look at how the leagues operate:IS ANY FORM OF GAMBLING BY PLAYERS PERMITTED BY THE LEAGUES?Yes, but with caveats. In the preamble of its 2018 gambling policy the NFL states, “Gambling, particularly on NFL games or other sports, presents potential risks to the integrity of our competition and can negatively impact team cohesion.”But that same policy goes on to outl...

Jailed Russian opposition leader Navalny to face new trial

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — A court in Moscow held a hearing Wednesday to set the stage for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to face a new trial on extremism charges that he has described as a Kremlin-ordered effort to extend his time behind bars.Navalny, who exposed official corruption and organized massive anti-Kremlin protests, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He initially received a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for a parole violation. Last year, he was sentenced to a nine-year term for fraud and contempt of court. He is currently serving time at a maximum-security prison 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of Moscow.The new extremism charges against Navalny relate to the activities of his anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. His ally Leonid Volkov said the accusations retroactively criminalize all the activities of Navalny’s foundation sin...

Turkish president cancels campaign stops over health issue

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced he was canceling a day of election campaigning on Wednesday to rest at home, a day after he was forced to briefly interrupt a television interview over a stomach complaint.Erdogan was being interviewed live by Turkey’s Ulke TV and Kanal 7 stations late on Tuesday when the program was suddenly stopped. When the interview resumed around 20 minutes later, Erdogan, 69, explained that he had developed a serious “stomach flu” while campaigning and apologized for the interruption.The president, who was scheduled to make a series of appearances in the cities of Kirikkale, Yozgat and Sivas on Wednesday, announced on Twitter that he would rest at home on the advice of his doctors and that Vice President Fuat Oktay would represent him at the events. He would resume his duties on Thursday, he tweeted. Erdogan, who is seeking a third term in office as president, has been campaigning hard in the run up to the May 14 presidenti...

US to send nuclear ballistic submarines to Korean Peninsula

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:19:40 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidents Joe Biden and Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday will sign an agreement that includes plans to have U.S. nuclear-armed submarines dock in South Korea for the first time in more than 40 years, a conspicuous show of support to Seoul amid growing concern about nuclear threats by North Korea, according to senior Biden administration officials.The planned dock visits are a key element of what’s being dubbed the “Washington Declaration,” aimed at deterring North Korea from carrying out an attack on its neighbor. It is being unveiled as Biden is hosting Yoon for a state visit during a moment of heightened anxiety for both leaders over an increased pace of ballistic missile tests by North Korea over the last several months.The three senior Biden administration officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement, said that Biden and Yoon aides have been working on details of the plan for months and agreed that “occasion...